Some of my closest friendships were found during the earliest years of my career. During that time, I shared a lot with my fellow entry-level coworkers, from the joys of first promotions to the struggles of low salaries, restructures and redundancies.

Even back then, it didn’t take me long to realise that the difference between my friends in and outside of work was that while my ‘real life’ friends were empathetic to my professional struggles, they could never truly understand them as much as someone who was experiencing them alongside me.

The same logic applies to burnout. At work, a close friend can not only recognise and identify why your workload has become (like so many people’s) too big for one person. Sometimes, they can even be the person to help fix it.

In recent years, there’s been a culture-wide shift in the way many people – myself included – see their relationship to work. While I was once motivated by promotions and meaningless perks, like free lunch and team outings, I’m now more inspired by companies offering competitive leave policies and flexible working arrangements.

As many of us reassess what it means to be valued in a workplace, friends can be more than a social perk. As we navigate increasingly complex situations through the cost-of-living crisis, the rise of AI and downsizing of many industries, a friend at work can be a confidante, an ally and a solution to some of modern work’s most complex problems.

When I interviewed Shameless Media co-founders Zara McDonald and Michelle Andrews for my book, Just Friends, there was one observation they made, about both business and friendship, that stuck with me.

During our conversation, Zara shared that she believes one of the key factors of her and Michelle’s success is that they have similar values around money. And the discovery of this shared value came long before they founded their company, when they were coworkers at a women’s media company.

We learn a lot about our colleagues and sometimes, it can be that they share the same values and vision as us and are someone we know we can work well with.

Whether we want to blame increasing workloads, open plan offices, remote work or technologies that replace in-person interactions, like Slack, it’s no wonder many of us are reportedly feeling lonelier than ever at work. And this loneliness has been found, across industries, to leave us feeling emotionally exhausted, detached from our careers and more likely to consider quitting.

If you’re lucky enough to find someone you feel close to at work, even if that friendship never leaves the office, please know that it’s worthwhile. It can – and will – make a difference.