Both my parents are feds.
No, I don’t mean law enforcement, or members of the federal reserve.
They’re not cool enough or nerdy enough (sorry mom and dad).
I just mean they work for the federal government in the US.
If you weren’t aware, the US government has embraced remote work HARD.
Even before the pandemic, many employees, particularly from the CDC and FDA worked from home at least a few times per week. My parents definitely enjoyed this.
But since COVID started, I’ve watched them age visibly more in 2 years than they did in a decade.
The reason, I think: they’ve lost access to their work friendships, and my dad, especially, hasn’t managed to build a new one.
Work As A Source of Friends
Work has historically been a place where people build friendships. While that’s probably not as true in certain industries where intra-company competition is high (apparently real estate and law), in many industries it’s normal for people to report having at least 1 real friend at work. Source here.
I’m not saying it’s not possible to build friendships with remote colleagues. I’ve done it with the incredible human being that is Syed Ali Shah. But I would argue that some people are predisposed to making their friends at work better than outside of work. My father and I are two such people, and I’ve met many others in my travels.
Now, mix that with a sudden disruption in the routines and rituals that brought a person and their work friend together and helped them build new ones. What do you have?
A sense of loss.
Resilience is BS
A less mature me would say at this point “That’s why people need to be resilient. The only constant is change, and if you can’t adapt that’s your problem.”
I can’t stomach that thinking anymore. That’s not how a caring adult, who recognizes we are all interdependent, thinks.
Instead, I recognize that not everyone can bounce back quickly from the huge shift of losing contact with work friends. And if work has been the place where you make friends, how can you be expected to quickly and easily pivot to make friends from home?
The end result of this shift has been a sense of loneliness for many, and recent survey data shows it’s not my parents’ generation (boomers) who are most concerned:
It’s 81% of millennials and Gen Zrs who feel long term working from home “is negatively impacting their ability to build and develop relationships at work”. Source here.
The article I referenced goes on to talk about how younger people don’t have the work history to have confidence and affirmation that they are appreciated at work. That sounds like a condition for not building resilience to me.
On the other end of the spectrum, people in their 60s, my parents’ age, are working longer and experiencing significant life changes. Friends they’ve carried throughout their lives are fading away due to illness, death, or just life.
Thus their work friendships are even more precious. And trust me when I say they do not want to hear about the excitement of remote work. They miss their office friends.
So What?
So the remote work conversation could do with a bit more acknowledgement of the loss described above, and examples of how those in the space have struggled and overcome work friendship loss. Over the next week, I’m going to go fishing with my content to see what I can catch in terms of attention and engagement.
And that’s all for today. Tomorrow I’ll continue talking about what was lost to remote work, and sometime next week I’ll be making a whole post just about how to make content differently, based on what I learn from my own posting.
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