Walking grimly into the office. Avoiding eye contact. Ducking out of group conversations. Packing your things in silence at the end of the day. Dread coming in the next day.
Work life can feel isolating and even depressing when you don’t work among friendly faces. Or if you don’t know how to befriend the friendly faces.
You’re all going through the same thing, same stresses, same highs and lows every day — who better to turn to than your colleagues when you need help or just a bit of a boost? Co-workers often experience an improved sense of office morale and feel stronger as a team when they are able to be friends with one another — particularly because we are more likely to trust that our friends are competent and skilled in their jobs.
However, the pandemic brought many changes to how we work together. Along with losing access to our office spaces, we lost the ability to see our colleagues every day, and hence lost a vital part of our daily human connection.
No more waving and smiling at Colin as you pass his desk every morning. No more bringing emotional support tea and biscuits to your cubicle buddy Gillian when she’s worried about her performance review. No more secretly signing and passing round Jasmine’s birthday card and gathering for cake of an enthusiastically bad rendition of happy birthday.
Small and silly as these things may seem, it can be surprising just how much of an impact these little moments make us feel happier in our jobs and our workplaces. Multiple studies have found that positive relationships with our co-workers dramatically improve job performance and employee satisfaction.
So how do you recreate office camaraderie when you’re working remotely? Where’s the virtual staff kitchen or water cooler for you to congregate with co-workers now that you’re working from home? Where’s the online cubicle to huddle in and vent about work stresses when you’re overwhelmed? What’s the play by play for keeping office banter alive from behind a screen?
Recreate your rituals
If you and your colleague used to look forward to bringing in chocolate for Malteaser Monday, revive it! Plan a tea break Zoom call every Monday morning where everyone comes with a snack and a cup of tea — even better, there’ll be no squabbling over who gets the last treat!
If Casual Friday was your favourite day in the office, bring it back! If you all swapped suits for sweatpants months ago (even the CEO!!) try one day a month where you all “dress up” and make yourself feel and look nice. Or maybe if your company is strict about office attire even on Google Hangouts, you could have a silliest hat competition to brighten up the necessity of wearing a blazer even on your sofa.
Don’t wait for that monthly video call that your team keeps rescheduling for your fix of office camaraderie — instead, recreate your rituals. This will help bring back a sense of normalcy to this strange situation we find ourselves in and will help work days feel less lonely, especially if you’re home alone. Even if it’s a simple routine like messaging your Slack work chat with a silly joke every morning, find fun ways to bring structure back to your socialising!
Find a new staff kitchen
If you used to rely on your ability to gather in the kitchen and chat with your work friend whenever you were feeling low, find a new staff kitchen! While you’re unable to pick each other up in person, try creating a group on Slack or Whatsapp that’s a safe space and a source of emotional support.
Add in co-workers that cheer you up (with their permission of course!) and let everyone know that this is where they can go for advice or to be cheered up if their work day is getting them down. You could even organise calls that focus on promoting healthy living or nurturing mental health. There are even tools available that can aid with office socialisation, which provide socials called ‘Fikas’, which organises a monthly coffee break via video call with a random member of your team.
If you miss waving hello to people in the morning to give yourself a boost of positivity, messaging a creative or funny ‘good morning’ message on a work group chat could be an amazing way to bring back that sense of community. Of course, beware of chats with coworkers that are mainly focused on the negative, for example when co-workers start every day with a rant about a project or even another colleague. While venting definitely is important for bonding, daily messages of this kind can quickly create a toxic atmosphere that makes it hard to find the positive at the start of each day. If need be, try to avoid posting or reading messages that are angry in the mornings, and instead find ways to support co-workers to get through tough situations.
Make a shared calendar specifically for work social events — and let co-workers add coffee mornings and board game nights to their heart’s content! It could be a good place also to make others aware of life events that can be collectively celebrated — i.e. when a co-worker is having their last day, a birthday or a promotion.
Befriend the friendly (or not so friendly) faces
Is there someone at work you always wanted to start a conversation with but always ended up walking past their desk without saying hello? Do you love how funny and upbeat someone is in meetings but haven’t ever had time for a one-on-one chat? Did you always used to find someone intimidating but think they might not be so scary since they joined the last meeting in their pyjamas?
With everyone easily accessible on so many platforms these days, this is the perfect opportunity to be brave and throw a few friendly messages out to co-workers you don’t usually speak to. Of course, this approach might feel scary — but really, the worst that can happen is they don’t reply to your message (or maybe they didn’t even see it!)
In the best case scenario, your co-worker might be thrilled that you’ve reached out to them — especially as they might have been finding it hard as well to connect with other co-workers while isolated at home. Maybe your message will only result in a short, brief (hopefully pleasant) conversation and then you don’t really talk again — but there’s always the chance that it could be the start of a beautiful friendship!
Don’t be afraid to ask for help
Maybe you miss being able to wander over to someone else’s desk and get an immediate response to a question — or maybe even when your co-workers were right in front of you, you still used to prefer emailing them to ask about a problem.
Either way, just because someone isn’t sitting on the desk opposite you anymore doesn’t mean you can’t still ask them for help if you need it. Businesses are often made stronger when employees can approach each other comfortably and openly to solve problems together. With so many tools for online office communication at our fingertips, it’s easier than ever to get in contact with a co-worker to ask them a work question — so use this gift wisely!
On the other hand, try not to bombard your co-workers with constant messages, especially if you’re only facing a minor problem, as this might overwhelm them! But this doesn’t mean you shouldn’t feel able to shoot off a message if you’re really stuck with a problem and need a second opinion.
Make time for socialising
Even though in the office, you saw your co-workers everyday, you still might not have taken full advantage of that in-person time to connect. Maybe you were the person to decline every invite to a staff party, or make excuses to get out of staff drinks. Maybe you were always too busy to stop for a chat or too keen to get home as soon as work was over.
Now you’re working from home, it still might be all too easy to ignore messages about online work socials — but you might not really have a reason to say no anymore. After all, you don’t have a busy commute home to take up your evenings anymore!
If you genuinely prefer not to interact with co-workers outside work, don’t feel pressured to change your ways. But if you are thinking back longingly to all those times you could have gone for drinks and chose your desk or your bed instead, this could be the time to put aside excuses and attend those staff parties!
Let’s say your work schedule always feels too hectic to commit to plans. Try to cap your work day at a certain time — like 6 or 7pm — after which you can say yes to online work socials. If you really need to work in the evenings, try to carve a short break to hop on a video call and make an appearance. This might particularly help if you feel shy on video calls, as you will only be available for a short time and won’t be sucked into a 4-hour Google Hangout extravaganza that you feel too awkward to leave.
Give social events a chance. You may find even the most unappealing Zoom call invite turns into bonding with your co-workers in a way you never expected or weren’t able to achieve in the office. And the benefits to your job performance, mental health and overall happiness may be too notable to pass up!
If you’re looking for more tips on how to build better, stronger connections with your coworkers — even while working from home — go ahead and dive into our other articles.
Written by Holly Dixon
WellBe is spearheading the way to a brighter future for corporate wellness. Our innovative portal is scientifically designed and tailored to each individual employee to improve their wellbeing. We specialise in a range of services from coaching and therapists, to meditation and reading materials. Our aim is to reduce workplace stress that costs UK businesses £42 billion per year. Get in touch with us by visiting our site wellbe.global for more information.
