Work colleagues are the new neighbours

Bernard Salt

Offices are replacing traditional neighbourhoods as people prefer to befriend co-workers instead of those living down the street and busy careers limit opportunities for socialising.

KPMG demographer Bernard Salt said many people opted to talk to their workmates across the office partition rather than chat to their neighbours over the fence.

“People say that it’s a bad thing, that there has been a sense of community lost, but really it’s just shifted from suburbia to the office,” Mr Salt said.

“Co-workers like the idea of sharing things, asking advice of one another, asking favours and also like the idea of the kids playing together ““ they like the notion of them playing with ‘approved’ friends instead of the kids down the street.

“You have town planners trying to recreate the old notion of the neighbourhood but that’s something that’s long gone.”

Work-life balance expert Michelle Hogan said many Australians were spending so much time in the office that opportunities to make new friends were limited.

“That’s really the only possibility of social contact ““ if you don’t hang out with the people at work, you haven’t got very many chances to meet people and make friends,” she said.

“But it’s not all negative. For a lot of people, this is what makes their job so enjoyable ““ the friends they make.

“It’s a bit of a double-edged sword, but employers should encourage the things they may see as time-wasting, such as bringing in the birthday cake, the Friday night get-together.”

A recent survey of 2100 Australian households for NRMA Insurance found nearly half the population never or rarely spoke to their neighbours.

A third of people said they were too busy to get to know the people over the fence and just one in five knew all of their neighbours’ names, the poll found.