You spend a lot of time at work, so it’s natural to want to maintain different types of bonds with your colleagues, some of which may even turn into friendships.

A good friend in the office can make work a lot easier: you have someone to eat lunch with, complain about your days with and just be there for each other when things get tough. 

According to new research by Cadbury Heroes, we spend an average of 12 hours a week with our work friends compared to just six hours with our other friends. Not only that, but Brits in general are very on board with the concept of workplace friendships. For instance, one in four people think their work BFF knows them better than their siblings, while one in seven feel as if they know them better than their partners.

Maintaining workplace friendships isn’t just socially healthy, but also necessary to some degree. According to a Gallup report, people with a “best friend at work” are seven times more likely to be engaged with work: coming to work is less of a chore and more of something to look forward to.

Another Gallup report found that two-thirds of women felt that the social aspect of their job was a “major reason” why they work – women who strongly agree that they have a best friend at work are more than twice as likely to be engaged productively.

Finding true, strong and lasting friendships at work — and maintaining them — is something a lot of women have successfully done.

Dr Kerry McInerney, a 28-year-old research fellow at the Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence, first met her ‘work wife’, Eleanor Drage,31, when the pair were hired as postdocs for a research project at Cambridge. However, Covid-19 meant that their pair worked together virtually at first.

“We started the job in the pandemic so I barely saw her physical body for the first few months of the postdoc. When I finally met her in person it felt like When Harry Met Sally,” she tells Stylist.

For McInerney, if it wasn’t for Drage, she “couldn’t have gotten through” the last few years.

“When people ask for advice about succeeding in academic careers, I always recommend finding good collaborators and nurturing your relationships with them,” she says. “In a job like ours that involves a lot of writing and creativity, it’s also so helpful to be able to bounce work tasks between us.

“Whenever I get stuck writing something I can send it over to her to work on while I work on something else. I’m much more productive when I work with Eleanor than when I work on my own.”

The pair have shared some incredible memories over the years and are even planning a US book tour in 2024. 

McInerney was “apprehensive” about working in close quarters with someone, but that all changed once the two met. “Work environments can be really intense, and I think before I would’ve worried about bringing work stress into friendships,” she says.

However, according to Drage, having a workplace friendship requires important boundaries. “We met at work so the basis of our relationship is professional, which I think is really useful as I’m careful to be extra respectful,” she says. “It means that I’m her ally as well as her friend. Work can be tough, but we’ve got each other’s backs, so individually we don’t have to be as strong.”

McInerney agrees: “The past three years has really shown me the flip side of this — how rich and fulfilling your job can be when you work with people who love you, support you and trust you.”

When Kimberly McIntosh, a 32-year-old charity worker in London, started working, she didn’t realise that her workplace friends would be ever-lasting.

“Seven years ago I started one of my early career jobs at a charity. I was a trainee in the policy team and was there for a year and a half. A group of six of us became close friends,” she says. “It started with after-work drinks and having lunch together. Then we started organising pay day drinks and a cheese and wine club once a month, and we became closer the more time we spent together — we’re still friends seven years down the line, even though none of us works there anymore.”

In her initial role as a trainee, there wasn’t a lot of work to start with and the pay was terrible, but her friendships made it a lot more bearable.

“We would scrimp on lunch by getting free leftovers from the conference suite,” she says.

“An email would go out saying there were leftovers and we would sprint downstairs to the post room to get first dibs, stacking sandwiches in plastic containers. The sense of camaraderie made it more fun to be broke – we were in it together.”

In McIntosh’s view, her workplace friendships have developed over time.

“As we’ve gotten older, the friendships have grown with us. It’s gone from partying and drinking to supporting each other through difficult moments in life,” she shares.

McIntosh warns, though, that workplace friendships do come with a downside: “If you have a friendship drama, you have to face it at work as well as outside of work. Otherwise, it’s wonderful.”

Having a good friend in the workplace is a joyful experience, but it’s always important to maintain your boundaries and be respectful of each other’s space. By managing your friendships in a professional setting properly, you’ll have more fun at work, feel better about trekking to the office on a Monday and have someone with you every step of the way.

Images: Getty; courtesy of case studies