Costa Rica to Canada: Pura Vida Opens the Meeting, Small Talk Closes the Friendship

🇨🇷 Costa Rica · 🇨🇦 Canada

By Priya Mehta, The Global Office

A Randstad Global Workmonitor survey found that roughly two-thirds of Canadian employees say they have close friendships with colleagues, and 53 percent spend time with coworkers outside working hours — numbers that sound, on paper, like a famously sociable workplace culture. Meanwhile, in Costa Rica, posters on an expat forum warn newcomers that launching straight into business before a proper round of greetings "is considered rude." Both countries, by their own telling, value connection at work. What differs sharply is how far that connection is actually expected to travel once the workday ends.

Do's & Don'ts

🇨🇷 Costa Rica

🇨🇦 Canada

Costa Rica

Costa Rican workplace bonding runs almost entirely through ritual courtesy and unhurried relationship-building before any actual business happens. Two expat forum posters, writing under the handles packagecr and samramon, both describe social conversation as the expected opener to any meeting, with packagecr noting plainly that it "is considered rude to launch right into business." That same courtesy extends to arrivals and departures — acknowledging everyone in a room when you enter, saying a proper goodbye to each person when you leave, even mid-meeting — and to physical warmth that would read as unusually familiar in many other business cultures, including a light cheek-kiss greeting between men and women that both posters describe as normal rather than exceptional. Punctuality bends accordingly: being a few minutes late carries little social cost, and arriving exactly on time might just mean waiting alone for everyone else.

Corporate accounts, while naturally more polished, describe the same underlying texture. At SentinelOne's Costa Rica office, Andrea Mesen, who joined roughly six months before being quoted, recalled that "people just introduced themselves without anyone asking them to," attributing it to a team "known for being warm people." VP Alex Hanlon described a culture with "no separation between functions, just a shared commitment to doing what's right," where people "step in without hesitation," while Johan Tijerino, who helped open the office, remembered its early spirit as built on "collaboration, friendship, and a willingness to jump in and make something great together." The company frames this explicitly through "Pura Vida" and "Tico Hospitality" — concepts genuinely rooted in Costa Rican national identity rather than invented for the careers page, even if a corporate blog is, naturally, going to present them in their best light. Hofstede's data scores Costa Rica at a notably low 15 on individualism against Canada's 80, alongside a strikingly high 86 on uncertainty avoidance — numbers consistent with a workplace culture where group warmth and established ritual matter more than individual achievement or improvisation.

Canada

Canadian workplace bonding looks, by the numbers, remarkably healthy — and then turns out to have a ceiling that several long-term residents describe running into directly. Randstad's Global Workmonitor data puts close workplace friendships at roughly two-thirds of employees, with 53 percent socialising with colleagues outside work hours and only 21 percent believing those friendships interfere with work, below the 26 percent global average. Randstad Canada's Stacy Parker summed up the cultural logic plainly: "Canadians associate a good working environment with having good relationships with their colleagues." A more recent ADP Canada survey adds texture on format: only half of employers hold lighthearted social events even quarterly, most commonly simple team lunches (29 percent) or seasonal gatherings (22 percent), yet workers who do get them report real benefits — 48 percent cite stronger colleague relationships, 40 percent a greater sense of belonging, 37 percent higher morale. ADP Canada's Heather Haslam frames the stakes directly: "Creating opportunities for employees to connect in meaningful ways can have a lasting impact on the workplace."

The friction shows up once you look past the aggregate numbers and toward individual accounts of actually trying to turn a colleague into a friend. A Victoria-based poster on an expat forum described Canadians as "generally very nice, polite and friendly," but said that warmth is often tied tightly to a specific setting — work, school, a shared gym — and rarely travels beyond it. A newer Vancouver arrival found people "very friendly" yet struggled to move relationships past the acquaintance stage, while a Kelowna-based poster described being invited to a colleague's home for Thanksgiving but still feeling she'd hit a "glass ceiling" in building anything closer. Tellingly, a Canadian-born poster on the same thread said they'd found it hard to make close friends in British Columbia for decades, attributing a kind of passive, "cocooning" social default to the province's own history rather than to any newcomer-specific barrier. Hofstede's Canadian individualism score of 80 — one of the higher figures the index records globally — tracks with exactly this pattern: plenty of pleasant, voluntary interaction, but little cultural expectation that it owes anyone deeper obligation once the workday or the shared context ends.

The Reckoning

The real contrast here isn't warm-versus-cold; both countries report genuinely friendly workplace cultures by their own data and their own residents' accounts. It's ritual-versus-optional. In Costa Rica, bonding behaviour — greetings, farewells, unhurried small talk before business — functions as close to a social obligation, woven into ordinary professional etiquette rather than treated as a discretionary extra. In Canada, bonding is real but structurally optional on both ends: only half of employers even bother organising it regularly, and multiple accounts suggest colleagues themselves won't necessarily push a relationship past pleasant proximity unless someone actively does the pushing.

For a newcomer, the practical implication cuts in opposite directions. In Costa Rica, skipping the ritual is the risk — launch into business too fast, skip a goodbye, and you've already done something that reads as mildly rude, however unintentionally. In Canada, the risk is closer to the reverse: assuming that broad, genuine friendliness is an invitation to real personal closeness, when several long-time residents, Canadian-born and newly arrived alike, report that the deeper tier simply requires more visible, sustained initiative than the easy early warmth suggests it should.

The Part the Brochure Left Out

expat.com (Costa Rica forum) — A poster writing as packagecr warned that launching straight into business before social conversation "is considered rude," and advised acknowledging everyone in the room on arrival and saying goodbye individually to each person on leaving, even when departing a meeting early.

expat.com (British Columbia forum) — A Victoria-based poster described Canadians as "generally very nice, polite and friendly," but said that warmth is usually tied to a specific shared setting like work or a gym and rarely extends naturally beyond it.

expat.com (British Columbia forum) — A Canadian-born poster said they had found it difficult to build close friendships in British Columbia for decades, describing a passive, "cocooning" social pattern they linked to the region's own history rather than to any newcomer-specific barrier.

Blind — A newer employee at an unnamed company praised a "friendly and welcoming" team culture "from the CEO to new hires," while a commenter on the same thread dryly cautioned, "Give it time," before the honeymoon period wears off.

Conclusion

If you're choosing where the office party actually means something, the honest answer is: it depends what you're hoping it means. In Costa Rica, the courtesy is the connection — show up, greet properly, and you're already most of the way toward belonging. In Canada, the courtesy is just the opening move, and the real friendship, if you want one, is a project you'll likely have to run yourself.