Mitch coaches, trains & leads retreats for exec teams at pharmaceutical, technology, RE & manufacturing companies. Simon Leadership Alliance
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In 2023, U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy declared loneliness an epidemic, one that causes mental and physical harm. According to Cigna, 61% of Americans feel lonely, with 79% of Gen-Zers and 71% of Millennials reporting being lonely. Lonely workers are "five times as likely to miss a day of work due to stress," and they "report that they think about quitting their job more than twice as often as non-lonely workers."
What is loneliness at work? According to researchers Constance Hadley and Sarah Wright, workplace loneliness is the "gap between the level and quality of social interaction that you get while working and what you’re hoping for." Looking at the numbers, today’s employees expect more from the work environment. In other words, when employees’ expectations for social interaction aren’t being met, it is the work environment itself that creates loneliness.
And it gets even worse when we look at younger generations, as I touched on briefly above. Among people aged 18-34, 42% report always feeling left out, while only 16% of people aged 55 or older report always feeling left out.
What are companies and their leaders to do? First, they must admit that they are creating the problem. Whereas the expectation for work 50 years ago was a job, a salary and competitive health benefits, today’s workers expect purpose and connection. In fact, in the wake of Covid-19, many are desperate for it.
Many companies jump to the conclusion that we must bring workers back into the office. Unfortunately, the high statistics on loneliness existed many years before Covid-19. Companies must reduce workplace loneliness, or workplaces will never achieve the type of camaraderie that allows teams to stick together through adversity, reduce burnout and turnover and trust each other to take risks and innovate.
Many companies turn to human resources and leadership to solve the problem of loneliness. Ending loneliness is not building a relationship with human resources or even building your relationship with your leader, even though that might help. Loneliness is about an expectation for social interaction, which means companies must find ways to teach employees to build relationships across their teams and the company.
Much of the younger workforce was at home during high school, college and during their first years on the job. Some weren’t trained on how to have the conversations that spark and maintain deep relationships. As Susan Scott stated in her book Fierce Conversations, “The conversation is the relationship.” Without an understanding of what to talk about, and how to talk about it, deep relationships will never be formed, and loneliness will only grow.
There are three steps to ending workplace loneliness.
1. Bring loneliness to the surface.
The majority of people in your workplace are lonely—painfully lonely. Gen-Zers and Millennials report having received therapy from a mental health professional at rates of 35% and 37%, respectively. While that's a good place to start, it needs to be a conversation happening within the workplace, too.
You probably suffer from loneliness yourself from time to time, but for some reason, hardly any of us talk about it. Companies must begin having conversations about loneliness. The truth is that conversations about loneliness decrease loneliness.
2. Teach your employees how to have deep, meaningful conversations.
All of your employees expect social interaction in most aspects of their lives, including in the workplace. Unfortunately, they may have never been guided in how to have conversations about their expectations. If conversations around loneliness haven’t been encouraged, people in your company sense that these conversations are “forbidden.”
Loneliness is a subjective experience. One person may be thrilled to be invited to a company picnic surrounded by 1,000 of their coworkers. The next person may find attending a company picnic lonelier than sitting at home. To achieve greater connection and end loneliness, each person must be able to share what they need.
The kind of social interaction that best decreases loneliness is authentic, personal conversations. At the very least, team members must be taught how to share what they see and how it makes them feel when it comes to frustration, separation and loneliness.
“Dangerous” conversations, such as the level of transparency that is required and the level of transparency that exists, must be encouraged. Loneliness is certainly a private matter, but it is the fear of stating your sense of loneliness that often prevents the connection that most people truly need. Companies must make it easy to discuss something so hard.
Teams must be encouraged to talk about what makes them unique, their passions, their purpose, their individual need for connection and how they like to connect. They must be encouraged to talk about their personal views on risk, accountability and what they need to feel like they belong.
3. Practice!
One of the ways to end loneliness is to tackle loneliness as a company. Once team members have been introduced to conversations that fight loneliness, team leaders must encourage team members to practice as a team. Team leaders can also encourage team members to create triads so that small teams of three people can begin making the types of connections that build relationships, camaraderie and trust.
Teams themselves must then take ownership of how they are doing in reducing loneliness. They must measure their sense of connection. Loneliness is much more than not having a best friend at work. Loneliness is about feeling like when you start your workday, whether it is in the office or behind your video call screen, you know that people understand you, support you and have your best interests at stake.
More than this, we can crush loneliness by having conversations where people feel that they are known, that they are appreciated and that there is always someone there to listen and to ask for help. Today’s workforce wants a connection to a place that has purpose and meaning. To get there, companies must recognize that it is their responsibility to teach their employees how to have conversations that create deep, meaningful and caring connections.
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