How to make work friends in hybrid 

Maybe this sounds familiar: You come into the office only to spend the majority of your time working solo at your desk, or stealing away to a phone booth or empty conference room for virtual meetings. You nod at colleagues in passing, but aren’t sure if you should engage them in conversation over the espresso machine.  

If you and your teams are struggling to make friends in hybrid, you’re not alone. In fact, work loneliness is so prevalent that the World Health Organization (WHO) and the U.S. Surgeon General’s Office have urged business leaders to systematically address social isolation at work, with WHO declaring loneliness itself a “pressing health threat.”

In the workplace, loneliness can manifest as high turnover rates, low attendance, and even a strain on healthcare costs. The good news: Facilities managers and workplace strategists play a key role in driving initiatives to combat workplace isolation. Through thoughtful workplace design and purposeful programming, you can help employees make better connections in a hybrid environment. 

Here’s what we get wrong about work loneliness, how FMs can make a difference, and how to measure the impact.

Loneliness affects everyone—not just remote employees 

While it’s easy to assume our remote cohorts experience a higher degree of work loneliness, the problem isn’t that simple. 

Earlier this year, Harvard Business Review launched a robust research program to identify the impacts of work loneliness and uncover potential solutions. They found that regardless of age, gender, job tenure, and levels of introversion and extroversion, anyone can feel socially isolated at work. 

Through their research, which surveyed 1,000 knowledge workers across 20 industries, they found that the group who reported the highest levels of loneliness spent nearly half of their time working on site. The study identified more nuanced reasons why loneliness persists even when employees are physically present, and why this is undeniably an organizational issue, not an individual problem. 

Some culprits include:

• A lack of company-facilitated social opportunities  
• Managers not doing enough to support employee relationships 
• Few opportunities for informal connection when workloads are at capacity

From our partners at OfficeSpace, we’ve learned how critical a positive workplace experience is for employee retention and engagement. With this in mind, facilities managers have an idea of where to focus their efforts to combat social isolation. Here’s where to start: 

Create purposeful programming 

Holiday parties are more than a way to encourage attendance—they can directly impact how isolated employees feel at work. Research from HBR’s study found that the least lonely groups have 31% more company-sponsored social programming than the loneliest group. 

Purposeful programming is one of the four key initiatives that thought leader Melissa Marsh and her team at Plastarc, a social-science based workplace consultancy, say companies should prioritize in 2025. Marsh encourages organizations to think outside of traditional social opportunities and design activities for both extroverts and introverts. “We do not all want meet and greets and happy hours. We might want training and deeper dives and 1:1s that really serve across who we are.” 

Social programming does not need to be lengthy and elaborate, either. Informal conversations before and after meetings, group lunches, and happy hours were the three most favored activities across HBR’s survey participants. 

Enable spontaneous collaboration

Not every social interaction at work needs to be a company event; unplanned interactions can also foster organic relationships and strengthen teams. 

At companies like Asana, spontaneous collaboration is built into the culture. Like 38% of U.S. companies, they adopted a structured hybrid model, ensuring employees are in the office on the same days. Asana employees are known to bump into colleagues and start collaborating, especially in their on-site cafes. 

Designated collaborative zones or office neighborhoods give employees a chance to interact with colleagues outside of their own department and feel connected to the company as a whole. These spaces aren’t limited to lounges or cafes either; meeting rooms can also serve as a space for impromptu brainstorming and teamwork.

FMs might consider implementing room booking software to track room availability in real time, manage capacity in flexible spaces, and make ad hoc meetings possible. 

Improve employee coordination

Employees want to see friends and colleagues when they come into the office. In a hybrid environment, though, it can be difficult to align schedules or know who’s in on a given day. 

FMs should consider implementing workplace experience tools to help bridge the gap. By connecting HRIS data with a workplace management platform, you can manage team coordination more easily. With platforms like OfficeSpace, employees can see which colleagues will be on site and when, and book desks near their favorite coworkers. Additionally, presence data insights can reveal where people are on the floor plan, so employees know where to find colleagues in real time. 

As a whole, workplace experience tools allow employees to actively participate in the work day, have control over planning, and feel more connected to their teams. 

Measuring the impact 

As Melissa Marsh explained during our webinar on hybrid success, “If people are happy and they’re excited about something, they’re going to be attracted to it. Literally, bees to honey. We can judge a space in its effectiveness if people are choosing to use it on their own.” Essentially, you’ll know that social programming initiatives and workplace design are effective when participation and utilization increase. 

A workplace management platform allows FMs to easily track these insights. They provide data on overall attendance, as well as the utilization of common areas and meeting rooms, and whether employees are using workplace experience tools like desk booking. 

Direct feedback is also important. To identify early signals of burnout and overall employee satisfaction, FMs can conduct engagement surveys or hold 1:1 meetings for more candid feedback. After all, the people behind structures and policies are the most critical element for combatting work loneliness.

Ready to build happier, healthier, more connected workplaces? Schedule a demo with a workplace expert.