Durham University research has found measurable differences in how men and women develop workplace friendships, raising questions about how informal networks influence collaboration, support, and access to professional opportunities.
The longitudinal study followed 139 employees during their first ten months inside a national service organisation and tracked changing friendship networks at four points in time.
Researchers Inga Carboni, Andrew Parker, and Alessandro Lomi found that women were more likely to develop cohesive, reciprocal, same-gender workplace friendships through existing social connections.
In network terms, women were more likely to form a relationship with a colleague who was already a friend of a friend, producing denser friendship groups and a stronger tendency towards same-gender clustering.
Men were less likely to form the same triangular friendship structures. Their workplace relationships were more frequently concentrated in individual ties rather than larger cohesive groups.
The findings are published in the peer-reviewed journal Social Networks in a paper titled Gender differences in workplace friendship development: Insights from network dynamics.
Professor Andrew Parker, Professor in Leadership at Durham University Business School, said: “However, our research shows that the impact of friendships at work differs when it comes to men and women.”
The study differs from a one-off opinion survey because it observes how a network develops over time. The researchers used longitudinal friendship data and a stochastic actor-oriented model, allowing them to analyse the creation and changing structure of relationships rather than relying solely on employees’ retrospective descriptions.
The research setting also matters. The authors selected an organisation where formal hierarchy and long-established network structures had less influence than they might in a mature company, giving them a clearer view of friendship formation during the early months of employment.
The results do not mean every man or woman forms relationships in the same way, nor do they establish that workplace friendship alone causes differences in pay or career outcomes. They identify statistically observable tendencies within the study population and connect those patterns with a wider body of research on professional networks.
That distinction is particularly important around the researchers’ discussion of the gender pay gap. The Durham release argues that women’s more cohesive friendship networks may provide less access to influence, resources, or strategically useful contacts than more individually targeted relationships.
That is an interpretation of potential career consequences rather than evidence that the friendship patterns measured in the study directly caused differences in earnings.
Much of an organisation’s information flow takes place outside formal reporting structures. Employees learn how decisions are made, identify opportunities, obtain advice, find sponsors, and understand internal politics through relationships that do not appear on an organisation chart.
Dense friendship groups can create trust, mutual support, and resilience. They can also concentrate information within a relatively closed network if relationships do not extend across functions, seniority levels, or other groups.
More selective one-to-one relationships can provide access to different resources and decision-makers, but may offer less of the wider social stability associated with cohesive networks.
Professor Parker said in the supplied release that female friendships were often contributing to organisational stability, while male friendships appeared more focused on individual benefits.
The findings strengthen the case for treating networking opportunities as part of organisational design rather than assuming useful professional relationships will form evenly without intervention.
Hybrid and remote work have made that issue more complicated. Informal encounters that once happened through shared offices, meetings, travel, and social interaction are less predictable where employees spend less time in the same physical location.
Structured cross-functional projects, mentoring, professional communities, rotational programmes, and mixed networking opportunities can widen access to colleagues beyond an employee’s immediate friendship group without attempting to manage personal relationships directly.
That can be particularly important for employees entering an organisation without an established internal network. Early access to colleagues across different functions and levels can influence how quickly someone learns, finds support, and understands where expertise or decision-making authority sits.
The research also adds nuance to discussions about workplace culture. Friendship at work is often treated as either a wellbeing issue or an incidental benefit of office attendance. Network research suggests it can also shape the movement of knowledge, cooperation, trust, and opportunity.
Those effects are not necessarily positive or negative. A strong friendship group can improve collaboration and retention while simultaneously limiting exposure to colleagues outside it. A strategically useful network can accelerate career progression while providing less collective cohesion.
The study does not provide a simple intervention and its sample comes from one organisation. Its value lies in showing that workplace networks develop through identifiable social patterns rather than randomly.
As organisations reconsider hybrid work, management layers, mentoring, and collaboration, those informal networks sit alongside formal reporting lines as part of the organisational structure. Who employees know, how those connections form, and how widely information travels can influence performance even when none of those relationships appears in a job description.
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