How to turn a work friend into an actual friend, from people who’ve done it

“It’s the WFH coffee-to-bush-doof pipeline of it all.”

For any full-timers pulling an eight hour day, five days a week, that’s 40 hours you’re spending with colleagues. Multiply that by the average number of working days in a calendar year (260), and the number jumps to 2,080 hours of time clocking on.

Considering the only other activity typically allocated that much time is sleeping, fingers crossed you actually like your job. Or, if you don’t, hopefully you at least like the people you’re spending all that time with.

For more content like this, tap through to our Life section.

If you’re lucky enough to have formed a work friendship with a colleague, then you know how essential they are for surviving and injecting joy into the nine-to-five. There’s a certain  camaraderie that forms when you share demanding bosses, tough deadlines and scandalous office gossip.

As writer and marketing manager, Steph Simons, points out, its a unique relationship; one where “you can be in someone’s day every day, know their coffee order [and] know how they talk when they’re stressed”.

The beauty of work friendships also rests in their unlikeliness. You can connect with people from countless walks of life, of different ages and interests to you, that you might never have had the chance to meet otherwise. I’ve worked retail jobs alongside people both younger and older than me, where I’ve been on shifts talking to colleagues about gap years, uni courses, upcoming weddings and children’s birthdays.

All too often, when I’ve left jobs, I’ve left behind those friendships as well. While we might’ve been able to spend eight hours a day together, I’d never quite figured out how to make the friendship exist in the real world.

Work friends versus IRL friends

There’s often an invisible boundary when it comes to taking a work friendship beyond the florescent lights of an office and into the real world. Where work friends can often rely on the convenience of seeing each other every day, committing to an IRL relationship involves effort and vulnerability.

“There’s a weird adult coolness around friendship, like you’re meant to act like it just happens,” Steph tells me. And it’s a common feeling. The further you get into your mid-twenties, the more it can feel like people’s friendship circles are already locked in, or at capacity.

There’s also the idea that while your best friends have seen you at so many other stages of your life (hungover, in the throes of a breakup, at your most insufferable), you might feel like you need to maintain a level of professionalism.  “I’ve found it hard at times to cross that line, not because the connection isn’t there, but because work comes with roles, dynamics and that low-level feeling of being observed. Even when you’re being yourself, you’re still partly ‘at work’,” Steph adds.

Of course, not every work friend is designed to endure a life beyond the office. But sometimes, it’s worth seeing if it can.

@johnanderso.n @Ruby Lou ♬ original sound – mc cece

Venturing beyond the office

Steph is someone who, after struggling to make genuine connections in her twenties, seems to have nailed the secret recipe for bridging the work-to-IRL-friends gap.

“It’s usually not a big moment,” she says. “It’s more like friendship starts leaking out around the edges. You find yourself checking in on each other without a reason. You talk about life in a way that isn’t just filling time between meetings. And then eventually, someone makes it real with a simple invitation that isn’t attached to the job.”

One friendship that’s stood the test of time has been with Jess Head, the creator of gifting brand, Short Talk. After meeting on a PR and comms project together, Steph took the leap and sent Jess a text, asking her if she wanted to be friends. “It felt vulnerable in that adult way, but she’s genuinely one of my closest friends now,” she says.

She met artist Bobby Clark on different work project, noting it just as easily could’ve stayed a fond memory of a successful job, or a quick hello at a work event. Instead, Steph invited Bobby to a fashion show as a plus one, and the rest is history.

John Anderson, the former content manager at a PR agency, is another person who seems to have mastered the hack, turning his work friendship with Ruby Staley into a relationship that’s lived on, despite both of them moving on from their jobs.

“The first time we intentionally planned to hang out not for work was about a month after I started, during Melbourne Fashion Festival, when Ruby offered me a spare ticket,” John says. “Literally tell me a better feeling than being invited to hang out by a newly-met co-worker. We love when the graft pays off.”

He also notes work-from-home (WFH) days as another easy way to socialise beyond the office. WIPs at Florian eventually spilled into happy hour wines, martinis and fries at their local wine bar down the road. “One thing led to another, and somehow we ended up in a field in the middle of nowhere at Strawberry Fields Festival,” he remembers.

Making the first move

When it comes to transitioning the friendship, John’s advice is to take it slow. “Building a strong foundation over time is key, so the friendship doesn’t interfere with your professional relationship. Not to be that bitch, but we do still have work to do at the end of the day.”

For Steph, the key lies in getting comfortable with being a little uncomfortable. “Work gives you built-in contact, so asking for connection outside of that can feel like you’re sticking your neck out,” she tells me. “A lot of people want more community than they have, but no one wants to be the one who says it first… I think being a little direct is underrated.”

If you have someone in mind, someone whose company you genuinely enjoy, who you can have conversations with that aren’t always about work, then it might be time to make your move. This could mean putting a feeler out there to see if they bite back, like an after-work drink. A low-stakes offer, it’s an easy way to move from the office into a non-work setting without having to plan it too far in advance.

Another option might be bonding over common ground. It could be a restaurant you’ve both said you want to try, a book club where you discuss shared reads, a movie you don’t have anyone else to go with, or a bush doof where you’re suddenly sharing a tent together.

Worst case, it stays a work friendship. But there’s something nice about allowing yourself to imagine a best case scenario where you end up with a genuine connection. And who knows? You might be like John and Ruby, where it no longer matters if you work together or not. “It’s the WFH coffee-to-bush-doof pipeline of it all, really,” he adds.

For more on making friends as an adult, try this.