Workplace `most likely place to form close friendships`

London - Our closest friends are now our workmates because we are too busy to go out and meet new people, a study claims.

These days, we forge more friendships through work than through school, university, hobbies or family.

Research shows a third of adults make their “good friends” at work, a quarter at school and 17 per cent through other friends.

One in ten people said their friends are mainly people they met at university, while four per cent said they’d met their close pals through holidays.

“We are bound to make a large number of friends at work because we now spend a lot of our time there,” the Daily Mail quoted David Johnson, for the poll by mobile phones firm O2, as saying.

“It means we get to know our colleagues as well as – and in some cases better than – friends made in other parts of our lives.”

Experts say longer working hours, team building exercises and technology makes it easier to stay in touch with colleagues.

They say the boundaries between working and social lives have become blurred with workmates becoming real mates.