6 Ways Companies Can Combat Loneliness in the Workplace

Black employees,  Employee Well-being,  ERGs,  Remote & Hybrid Culture

New research shows that culture plays a crucial role in whether employees feel lonely at work, and how those feelings impact bottom line business results.

One in five employees worldwide is lonely at work, per Gallup. And you might not know who those employees are in your organization.

“One of the things that people are getting wrong is they think it’s rare to be lonely at work,” says Constance Noonan Hadley, associate professor at Boston University Questrom School of Business and the founder of the Institute for Life at Work. “People don’t talk openly about their loneliness due to stigma, and they also don’t show up in a way that signals to others, ‘I'm lonely.’”

Because there are clearly established norms around workplace behavior, it’s more likely for employees to hide their true feelings to conform to their company’s expectations. 

Hadley’s latest research, co-authored with Sarah Wright at the University of Canterbury in New Zealand, suggests that not only is loneliness a common issue in the workplace — it’s something that companies can address through changes to jobs and work environments.  

It’s clear that companies should be invested in tackling this problem. “There’s lots of building evidence about just how damaging it can be for the bottom line of the company,” Hadley says.

"It shouldn’t be assumed that if you’re in the office you’re not lonely, and if you’re working remotely, you are lonely. It's much more complicated than that."

Leaders can expect higher healthcare costs due to loneliness. “Medical research shows high rates of illness and early mortality associated with loneliness, everything from cancer to dementia,” she says. “If you’re an employer paying healthcare costs, then you’re going to be spending more to cover all the medical bills.”

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Loneliness also poses risks to productivity, performance, and employee turnover. Great Place To Work® research shows the importance of meaningful connections with colleagues for employee well-being, and highlights the impact of these experiences with employee retention, agility, and more.  

What is loneliness in the workplace?

The scholarly study of loneliness in the workplace is only a few decades old.

Most of the previous research has been into general loneliness, such as among older people, and not people’s experience in the workplace. In their latest study, Hadley and Wright examined 1,000 knowledge workers who were either low, moderate, or high in loneliness to understand the personal and job features that set apart the highly lonely employees.

Which employees are most likely to be lonely?

“Some have said this is a young person’s problem, they grew up on social media or they’re just new in their career and they’re working remotely, so of course they don’t feel connected. That’s not what we’re seeing in our data.”

While personality traits like introversion increased the likelihood that employees were lonely, there are high numbers of lonely employees for every personality type. 

Hadley and Wright’s research found that role level and work style both had an impact on loneliness. More junior employees were more likely to say they were lonely and fully remote workers were also more likely to be lonely.

Age was not a factor, Hadley says. “Some have said this is a young person’s problem, they grew up on social media or they’re just new in their career and they’re working remotely, so of course they don’t feel connected. That’s not what we’re seeing in our data.”

Gender also didn’t make a difference, but there was evidence than non-white employees were a bit lonelier than white employees.

Even though full-time remote workers were at higher risk for loneliness, a return to the office won’t solve the problem. “It shouldn’t be assumed that if you’re in the office you’re not lonely, and if you’re working remotely, you are lonely,” Hadley says. “It’s much more complex than that.”

There are large numbers of employees from all work styles and demographics who report being lonely.

For companies, this requires a similarly universal approach to the issue with remedial programs that connect with every employee.

What companies can do to fight loneliness

"If there’s no slack in the system, you are really asking a lot for people to figure out how to bond when every second of their day is supposed to be productive."

As part of their research, Hadley and Wright have six suggestions for companies to reduce loneliness in their workforce:

1. Start with a baseline of measurement. Before taking action, make an effort to measure how your workforce is doing. Employee surveys with a validated tool or model are crucial.

“You have to take care to make sure you use good practices, such as making sure confidentiality is assured, clarifying what you’re going to do with the data, etc.,” Hadley says. Hadley and Wright created the Work Loneliness Scale to help companies measure loneliness effectively.

2. Identify the drivers of loneliness in your workforce data. The exact population of workers that struggle the most with loneliness will be different for every company, Hadley says. However, leaders should expect to find core elements of their workplace culture to play a prominent role.

One common example is when workers don’t have downtime or space for activities like a virtual coffee with a colleague. “We say if there’s no slack in the system, you are really asking a lot for people to figure out how to bond when every second of their day is supposed to be productive,” Hadley says.

3. Make building bridges part of performance reviews. Time spent connecting with co-workers is often considered “non-promotable” and therefore is not prioritized. This comes down to what leaders say is valuable to the company and how those behaviors are tracked and rewarded in annual reviews.

Hadley recommends adding a simple question to performance reviews: “Did you build bridges and foster relationships this year?”

4. Invest in your social calendar. While there is no one kind of social event that dramatically tips the scales, a regular calendar of events does reduce loneliness. Hadley says, “You need to build organization-sponsored social activities into the rhythm of work. People that were lonely worked in jobs where there were occasional social opportunities, but not at the same scale or frequency as those who were not lonely.”

5. Offer more than one kind of employee group or program. While Hadley and Wright didn’t ask specifically about employee resource groups (ERGs), Hadley warns that companies should not rely on only one group to provide belonging for employees.

ERGs can have immense value for underrepresented groups and provide quick integration for employees joining an organization, but the goal over time is to achieve a broad base of relationships in the organization. “I don't think you can drive up belonging-based productivity and job satisfaction if your social group is very delimited by one particular factor,” she says.

6. Define leadership participation. How leaders participate in programs to build community in your organization makes a big difference, Hadley says.

“Leaders have responsibility not only to show up at these events and help host them, but also to actually be humble enough to say, ‘Maybe I need more networks, too,’” she says. The best leaders won’t expect to show up and dispense wisdom but will see value in building new relationships, even for themselves.  

Ted Kitterman