There’s an old truism in work, backed up in the data, that we take a job for salary and we quit because of culture. Friendship plays a key part in this culture. Any leader wrestling with the conundrum of making their teams more engaged with their culture will find their attention draw to the stat that the biggest predictor of workplace engagement is whether you have a best friend at work.
The data from the Gallup Global Workplace Report says that employees who have a best friend at work are seven times more likely to be fully engaged in their jobs. I’ve presented this to hundreds of executives and the response is always the same: ‘Best friend? What am I, six?’ I should add a detail here, it’s always men who say this. So I’m here to tell you that yes, even big boys have best friends.
Critically, for the friendless executives who scoff that friendship at work is merely an opportunity to slack off, Gallup’s data suggests that having a best friend is strongly linked to business outcomes – such as increasing profitability and higher employee retention. Workers reporting that they have a best friend at work are twice as likely to recommend their employer to others, to get more done in their jobs and to enjoy their work.
The complication of this data point is that the level of people reporting a best friend at work is at the lowest level ever. The decline is especially harsh amongst young people – the 21% of under-35s who report having a workplace best friend is the lowest number ever recorded.
Why are we not making friends as much? It’s possible that the mechanics of modern life are conspiring to make us fear that our colleagues just aren’t into us. I’m going to let you know the problem: phubbing has killed your culture.
What the heck is phubbing? Phubbing is what psychologists have termed the phenomenon of ‘phone-based snubbing’. When we’re with someone and end up submitting to the magnetic lure of our devices. Conversation goes quiet. None of your colleagues had spent the weekend binging the same content as you. The little thing is sitting there plaintively pleading for a tiny crumb of attention.. ‘just have a little look – I got the good stuff for you. Just one little peek.’
A meta-analysis covering nearly 20,000 participants found that when people were phubbed by their romantic partners it significantly diminished their relationship happiness. Partner phubbing caused increases in conflict and jealousy. This also held for work. In our jobs even the mere presence of a smartphone during face-to-face interactions started reducing feelings of closeness. The worst of all was being phubbed by our bosses.
Studies found that boss phubbing eroded the foundations of workplace connection: wiping out employees’ sense of meaningfulness and safety at work. In other words, a manager’s wandering attention both feel rude and makes us feel like we don’t matter.
It’s maybe no surprise then that when our colleagues getting sucked in their phones we end up thinking they don’t like us much.
This belief that other people don’t like us as much as we like them is sometimes called the ‘liking gap’. I’ve got some good news for you. It turns out not to be true – our colleagues like us more than we realise. Dr Gillian Sandstrom is a researcher whose work explores her fascination with our conversations with other people – whether colleagues, friends or strangers. She’s just published a fabulous new book ‘Once Upon A Stranger’.
Sandstrom said that conversations are often initially intimidating because they pose risks of social rejection and uncertainty. As we don’t know what our conversation partner is thinking we often fear the worse. Now imagine the self doubt when someone pulls out their Nokia. ‘The result is people chronically underestimate how much others like them and enjoy their company,’ Sandstrom says. ‘This liking gap exists not because people fail to signal they like each other – in fact, the signals are right there for all to see – but because people are too focused on their own self-critical thoughts to notice.’
When it comes to the workplace, the news actually gets worse. What’s striking is that this liking gap doesn’t close once we know people. One of Gillian Sandstrom’s collaborators on the project, Erica Boothby, extended the research into workplaces and found the liking gap persisting inside teams. They found that colleagues who had worked alongside each other still systematicallyunderestimated how much the others liked them – even after six months of collaboration. The gap was widest in the earliest interactions, but it didn’t simply dissolve with familiarity. And the consequences were specific: people who doubted how their colleagues saw them were less likely to ask for help, less willing to speak openly.
Sandstrom gives a bit of advice that feels like an important rule to live by, ‘Conversations are a great source of happiness in our lives, but even more than we realise it seems, as others like us more than we know.’
What does it mean for us at work? Well it’s an important reminder that there’s a bit more love in the Zoom than we realise. It’s highly possible that the person sitting opposite you actually likes you more than you realise. The liking gap persists because we’re all awkward souls trying to find a way to connection, and those darn phones are promising a hit of delight.
The fix isn’t complicated, even if it isn’t easy. Talk about it with your teams. Put the phone away. Stay in the conversation a little longer than feels comfortable. The friendship data doesn’t ask you to invent closeness it just asks you to stop actively undermining it.
There’s an important lessons for us all. The best friend at work that drives all that engagement, retention and meaning started as a colleague who someone bothered to talk to.
Bruce Daisley writes about workplace culture and work on his weekly newsletter, Make Work Better.
© Bruce Daisley 2026
