The Epidemic At Our Desks

More and more people are coming back to the office—and yet more and more people report that they are experiencing loneliness at work. In fact, one study says that 62% of employed adults consider themselves lonely, with an astonishing 79% of Gen Z’ers entering the workforce saying they’re lonely at work, too.

Management & Entrepreneurship Professor Bari Bendell has co-authored a paper titled “Help! Lonely at Work: Managerial Interventions to Combat Employee Loneliness” in Business Horizons. The paper outlines how work loneliness occurs, why managers need to pay attention to the epidemic, and how they can ensure employees feel connected to their co-workers and office culture. This past August the paper won the Outstanding Practitioner-Oriented Publication in Organizational Behavior Award at the Academy of Management Conference.

“Unlike general or ‘individual’ loneliness, workplace loneliness reflects a shared responsibility for relationship-building among employees, their managers, and the organization overall,” says Bendell.

While some may believe that focusing on employee loneliness is just coddling workers who should feel lucky to have a job, evidence suggests loneliness can hurt the work force and impact the bottom line. Decades of research have concluded that loneliness contributes to anxiety, depression, emotional distress, heart failure, and suicide. Even more striking, Cigna estimates that the condition costs employers more than $154 billion a year in lost productivity due to loneliness-prompted absenteeism alone.

The reasons people feel lonely at work are many: Workplace culture. Deadlines and productivity demands. Remote work policies. Organizational norms. The paper points out that organizations that encourage a climate of competition and personal success over collective goals “rarely fulfill the human need for community, engagement, and interdependence” that characterize lower levels of loneliness.

New hires and employees in underrepresented groups—such as people with disabilities, people of color, women, and those who identify as LGBTQ—may be particularly impacted. One example the paper cites is the decrease in female participation in the US labor force since 2000, which may lead to greater workplace loneliness among women as fewer start out and stay in their workplace.

What managers can do

The paper outlines three evidence-based recommendations for managers to explore:

• Foster relationship-building. Leaders can help generate supportive relationships with employees by providing feedback, rewards, and recognition. They can also encourage employees to rebuild their social networks and encourage them to seek support through their employee assistance program.
• Increase support around evolving work contexts. With remote work, the meaning of “back in the office” has evolved dramatically since the pandemic. As a result, it’s even more important for managers to maintain regular communications with employees.
• Fortify a people-focused organizational structure. Failure is an option. When members of organizations can learn to view errors as opportunities for growth, not as shameful and/or a reason for self-exclusion, the organization can foster an overall healthier environment that should curb loneliness and improve organizational performance.

Leaders themselves are not immune to loneliness. In fact, says Bendell, “it may be even more likely—or more complicated—as the number of potential ‘peers’ to socialize with in an organization narrows with each rung up the ladder.” In the paper, Bendell quotes Apple CEO Tim Cook’s interview with The Washington Post in which he says, “Running Apple ‘is sort of a lonely job.’”

“The goal of our paper was to give managers tools they can use to combat what really is an epidemic,” Bendell says. “It’s one that threatens both individual well-being and organizational success.”

Read the full paper, which has no paywall until January 2025.