07/27/2020

Why Your Remote Office Needs a Few Friends

Office friendships are an underappreciated part of your culture

Every so often, I miss office hallways.

It’s not that hallways are so charming in themselves. They’re just blank, anonymous, in-between spaces. But that’s what makes them so powerful. Because they have no strict role, they can be used to have the kinds of conversations that you can’t in more official parts of an office. It’s a common enough concept that film and TV writer Aaron Sorkin has practically built a career around hallway conversations. (If you’re a fan of spy fiction, swap in “bridge” for “hallway.”) The hallway is where pecking orders outside the org-chart get established. At a convention center, it’s where the networking gets done. And at the office, it’s where friendships are made.

So, the hallway is not a small thing—your organization’s culture comes from everybody’s sense of belonging, and that culture is often established through the informal channels that the hallway provides. In the Atlantic, reporter Nicole Mo recently wrote about the impact that the lack of those informal channels is having on offices in the wake of COVID-19. 

Please select this link to read the complete article from Associations Now.