By Lisa Matomola
One of the most common pieces of career advice I hear as an HR Consultant is: “Your colleagues are not your friends.
Go to work, do your job and go home.” Over the years, I have heard this repeated so often that many employees have accepted it as fact.
Some deliberately avoid building relationships at work, others decline social interactions with colleagues, and some even block coworkers on social media because they believe work and friendship should never mix.
I understand where this advice comes from. Throughout my career in Human Resources, I have worked with organisations facing bullying, favouritism, toxic leadership, breaches of trust and unhealthy workplace politics.
Not every workplace is psychologically safe, and not every colleague has good intentions. In those environments, maintaining professional boundaries is not only wise — it is necessary.
But I believe we have allowed these experiences to create a damaging misconception: that workplace friendships are always a bad idea.
The truth is that work is, first and foremost, a human experience. We spend almost a third of our adult lives at work. We collaborate on projects, navigate crises, celebrate milestones and, sometimes, support each other through life’s most difficult moments.
It is unrealistic to expect that people will spend so much time together without developing meaningful relationships. The question is not whether workplace friendships should exist, but whether they can exist while maintaining professionalism. From my experience, the answer is yes.
I say this not only as an HR Consultant but as someone who has personally benefited from workplace friendships. When I left corporate employment to establish HITO HR and Training Consultants, I did not start with a database full of potential clients.
Many of the organisations and professionals who trusted me in those early years were people who had worked with me before. They had seen my work ethic, observed how I handled challenges and experienced my professionalism long before I became a business owner.
Today, some of HITO HR’s clients are former colleagues, and many referrals continue to come from people I once worked alongside.
Opportunities to facilitate training, coach executives and speak at conferences have also come through relationships that began in the workplace years ago.
None of that was the result of calculated networking. It was the natural outcome of building trust over time. People remembered what it was like to work with me, and when opportunities arose, they thought of me.
That experience reinforced something I now share with young professionals regularly: your reputation starts long before you need it. The colleague sitting next to you today could become an executive tomorrow. Your supervisor could one day become your client.
The graduate you mentor today could eventually be the person recruiting for a senior leadership role. Many career opportunities never make it to a job advertisement because they are shared within trusted professional networks first.
This is also one of the reasons I believe physical workplaces continue to matter, despite the rise of remote work. During the COVID-19 pandemic, many predicted that offices would become obsolete. While remote and hybrid work have brought real benefits, particularly around flexibility and work-life balance, many organisations have gradually encouraged employees to return, at least part of the time. Productivity is often cited as the reason, but I believe human connection is equally important.
Some of the most valuable conversations in our careers never happen in scheduled virtual meetings. They happen before meetings begin, over a cup of coffee, walking between offices or working together through a difficult problem.
These informal interactions create opportunities for mentorship, collaboration and relationship building that are difficult to replicate on a screen. For graduates and young professionals especially, learning happens through observation and spontaneous conversations with more experienced colleagues. Technology enables us to work together, but relationships help us grow together.
Beyond career growth, workplace friendships also contribute to employee wellbeing. Everyone carries different responsibilities and challenges. Some employees are raising children, others are caring for ageing parents, while some are dealing with financial pressure, illness or personal loss.
During such moments, a supportive colleague can make an enormous difference. Sometimes the most meaningful form of wellness is not another policy or programme, iit is a colleague who notices you are struggling and asks, simply, “Are you okay?” That single conversation can remind someone they are not facing their challenges alone.
This does not mean everyone should become best friends with their colleagues. Professional boundaries remain essential, and healthy workplace friendships should never compromise fairness, confidentiality or accountability.
Friendships should not influence recruitment decisions, promotions, disciplinary processes or performance evaluations. Respecting boundaries is precisely what makes healthy workplace friendships work, they are built on mutual respect, not favouritism.
So how do we build these relationships? It starts with behaviours many people underestimate. Be approachable, greet people, learn their names and show genuine interest in them beyond their job titles.
Be reliable, honour your commitments and become someone others can depend on. Support colleagues without expecting anything in return, because some of the strongest professional relationships are forged while solving difficult problems together.
Celebrate other people’s achievements instead of competing with them, and avoid gossip, trust, once broken, is very hard to rebuild. And recognise that not everyone wants the same type of connection. Some colleagues prefer to keep their personal and professional lives separate, and that choice deserves respect.
Looking back on my own career, I have realised that qualifications opened the first door, experience helped me grow, but relationships opened many of the doors that followed. Some of my biggest opportunities came through people who had experienced me as a colleague long before they experienced me as a consultant or business owner. They trusted me because they had already seen my work, my character and my professionalism.
Perhaps, then, the advice we should be giving young professionals is not: “Your colleagues are not your friends.” Instead, encourage them to build relationships wisely, protect their professionalism and invest in their reputation.
Not every workplace will be conducive to friendships, and not every colleague will become a lifelong connection. But if you find yourself in a healthy environment, never underestimate the value of genuine workplace relationships. The colleague you ignore today could very well be the person who opens the next door in your career tomorrow.
