3 hidden benefits of small talk

One feature of working in a physical office is that you bump into colleagues all the time. If you find yourself with a coworker in the break room, on the elevator, or waiting for a meeting to start, it’s natural to have a brief conversation about a topic unrelated to work. You might chat about a recent vacation, your new puppy, the weather, or a movie you saw.



These natural opportunities to engage in conversation are often missing in remote work environments (although there are things you can do to intentionally build small talk into all-remote or hybrid settings ). When you work from home, you might not miss these casual conversations about unimportant topics. So you might think they’re a waste of time, that they have little impact on your work, and that they certainly don’t affect your overall workplace satisfaction. Here’s why you’re probably wrong:



Small talk can make your work easier



Most of the work you do requires other people doing their jobs too. You contribute a part of a project, and the specific things you need to do are influenced by progress that other people are making. Sometimes the results of other people’s efforts change what you need to do completely.



That means you need to be kept apprised of what others have accomplished.



Within a team, that communication happens naturally because you’re consistently in touch with people you work with closely. Plus, the project management tools teams use make sure that central players can access current information. But when the results of another team’s efforts affect what you do, you may find that you’re out of the loop.



That’s where small talk comes in handy. By being a present part of the work environment, people from other teams are more likely to remember to bring you up to speed on developments that affect your work. As a result, you’ll have the latest information. That makes you more efficient and less likely to waste your time on tasks that no longer need to be done.



Small talk can make you a better manager



In an era of emails and DMs, a lot of your communication with colleagues happens via text rather than face-to-face. When you’re a manager or leader, that means you’re likely to make a lot of requests of other people by writing to rather than having a verbal conversation.



Written communication is efficient, because you can send it when it’s convenient for you and someone else can read it when they have the time. You don’t have to coordinate your schedules to make every request. But writing is also often terse. Plus, lots of other information is missing in writing compared to conversation, like your tone of voice and your facial expression. Consequently, your requests sent as messages may come across as cold and demanding.



The more small talk you engage in as a leader, the more that the people who work for you will be able to fill in the missing information from your notes. They will hear your voice in what you have written. They will sense your tone and facial expression. Those conversations humanize you as a leader and make people feel better about what you have asked them to do.



Small talk can make you happier



Having friends at work is an important determinant of well-being and satisfaction. You develop those relationships with colleagues through the conversations you have that give you insight into who they are. That includes some sense of what they do outside of work, what they enjoy, and what they value. Small conversations that are not directly related to current tasks grease the wheels of your workplace social life in ways that feed back and make you more productive.



In some ways, the positive influence of small talk may seem obvious. Yet many leaders are obsessed with efficiency. Unfortunately, efficiency tends to be measured by the speed and ease of engaging in specific tasks, rather than looking at the effectiveness of people’s work over time. As a result, almost every study of workplace efficiency undervalues human relationships.



Once you recognize the importance of feeling connected to your colleagues on the quality of work people do and their likelihood of staying in their job, it’s clear that these short and seemingly unproductive conversations play a crucial role in helping a workplace run well (and efficiently) over the long run.