Socialising

Do you have friends at work?

People say don't mix business with pleasure.

Yeah, I definitely think it's possible to have good friends at work. I don't think just because they're your colleague means that you shouldn't become friends with them.

I guess it can become complicated if you get too close to someone or fall out with them, and then have to work with them.

Today on Office English, we're talking about socialising at work.

Hello and welcome to Office English, your podcast guide to the world of work. I'm Pippa.

And I'm Phil. Visit our website to find the transcript and subtitles for this episode

So Phil, we just heard from our Learning English colleagues about having friends at work. What do we need to consider when we want to make friends at work?

Lots of this is down to the culture in your company or in your office. Um, it might also be about how you feel. Do you feel comfortable sharing lots of things with your work colleagues, or do you think your work and your personal life are things that are best kept separate?

Um, yeah. It can be really helpful to be friends with people at work because if you get on well with people, you're probably more likely to work well with them. But of course, there could be a disagreement. There could be a falling out between you and a friend, and that would make things more difficult. So you might want to think about how things might change over time as you become friends with someone.

Today we're going to talk about some language for making friends at work and keeping things professional.

So, Phil, let's start with making friends. So imagine you've been working at a new job for a couple of months, and you like some of your colleagues, and you'd like to get to know them better and become friends. Is there any language that can help with this?

I mean, a good thing is to make friendly offers. So, like, 'would you like to grab lunch together?' It just means would you like to come and have lunch together? Um. And yeah, it's nice. It creates a space outside the office and you can talk about things maybe that are different to what you talk about in the office.

Mhm. Yeah. Another offer could be to say 'it would be great to meet for a coffee'. Um, it doesn't have to be a coffee but something like that. And you can do that kind of near your workplace or around work. People often find that's the easiest way to start a relationship outside of your direct work with someone.

Yeah. And sometimes you might even offer, 'Should we do something after work?' Um, and maybe you just want to find somewhere to get something to eat or have a chat with someone once you finish working.

Mhm. Yeah. And these questions are really helpful because asking a question about a kind of small social thing outside of work, such as lunch, you'll then get an idea of whether that person is interested in kind of socialising more at work, or whether they like to keep work and and friends separate.

OK, let's think about another scenario. You have lots of friends at work, but you've just been promoted, and now you'll have to make decisions which affect your friends. You want to make sure you stay professional at work. What language would be useful here?

Well, it might be useful to talk to your friends kind of from the start about this. So you could say something like, 'I need to make sure I don't show any favouritism'. And favouritism is this idea that because you're friends with somebody, you might treat them better than other people or give them opportunities that other people don't have. And as a boss, that's not something you want to be accused of.

You also might want to talk to everyone and just, you know, say that it's kind of complicated. That relationships have changed. You could say something like, 'this is a new dynamic'. That means kind of it's a new way that people relate to each other. You might say something like, 'bear with me while I get used to the change', which is like, have patience with me while I work this out.

And I think that's useful because it's showing that you're human, you're just a normal person, and you're adapting to a new situation. Another thing we can do is talk about boundaries. And boundaries are kind of like a separation between one thing and another. So you could say, 'let's try to keep a clear boundary between work stuff and life outside work'. That might be useful when you're talking to friends that you have at work. OK, Phil, let's talk about one more scenario. So imagine that you have a friend at work and you have an argument with them about something not related to work, but then you have to come into work and you have to work with them. How do you make sure that you stay professional?

Oh, this is a really difficult one because, um, obviously, you know, you might be, both of you might be quite angry or annoyed about certain things. And, you know, you will feel these personal feelings quite strongly. But to be professional, really what you should do is talk to that person that you've had an argument with and say, 'look, I know we've had a disagreement, but can we park our feelings or can we put our feelings aside?' And that means let's not let these feelings that we have affect us doing our job every day.

Or you could just kind of, um, speak to them in terms of trying to patch things up. And that means kind of fix the relationship or at least make it slightly better. So you could ask, 'how can we resolve this so that we can be civil at work?' And being civil is not like being friends. It's more about being polite and professional, being able to talk to each other and work with each other, um, without getting into an argument or being upset.

And one of the things that you should think about, and obviously this will depend on the culture in your workplace, the relationship you have with your manager and things like that. But you might want to tell them, you might want to let your manager know so they can do things to help you keep these this personal disagreement outside of the office and not let it stop you doing your work.

That's it for this episode of Office English. Do you have lots of friends at work, or do you prefer to keep things professional? Let us know! Our email address is learningenglish@bbc.co.uk. We'd love to hear from you.

And we'll be back next week to talk about describing your job. In the meantime, find more programmes to improve your business English at

Bye for now.

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