Loneliness at Work

And welcome back. Well, despite being surrounded by colleagues, many employees feel disconnected and isolated at work. In fact, it's estimated that loneliness at work affects up to 60% of employees. Is that you? Joining us to discuss this problem and a positive trend towards addressing that emotional health at work is leadership expert, It's Beth Ridley.

Welcome back, Beth.

Hi, good morning. Good morning. You're here on a good day. We got all this Caribbean food overseas.

Yes, exactly. Yes.

No loneliness for Monday. But this is a real thing. Is loneliness at work. Because oftentimes people would think, well, at work you're surrounded by people. How can you be lonely?

Yeah, it has nothing to do with being around people. It's more the disconnect between the quality of relationships you want to have and the quality of relationships that you do have. So you can be surrounded by people and feel lonely, or you could be remote and by yourself, but you still have those quality connections that make you not feel lonely.

So there's no blame here, but is this a personal, is this your own sort of problem? Does this come from your inability to be able to connect?

Well, I think everybody has like a different set point of the connections that they want to have. But, you know, I think it's really, you know, you're working with people and a lot of times we're just focused on the transactional relationship and you're not building those real connections. And we spend so much time at work. Loneliness can really seep in and really affect your mood and your morale and your engagement at work. 100%.

So how prevalent is it? What are we really looking at?

So interesting. It's actually really prevalent. Like 1 in 5 employees feel lonely every day. And it's something I think a lot of people think, well, because of the pandemic, you're working more remotely. Loneliness really started before the pandemic. I think it got exasperated. I think it was always there. But it's one of those things. We're talking about it more at work. We're focusing more on our emotional well being at work. And so I think it's just coming to the forefront a little bit more.

So who is really experiencing this? Because I do know we've talked before about generation gaps and different things like that. Are these things part of it or is it really its own thing?

Interesting enough. So younger employees who are maybe entering the workforce for the first time have the highest rate of loneliness.

That does not surprise me.

It doesn't surprise you because you just don't have those relationships yet. The older you are, the longer You've been working. The loneliness is less. But also, interestingly, men have a higher rate of loneliness than women.

I've heard this before in other areas of their lives.

Yes, yeah, exactly. And, you know, not to stereotype against men, but it might be you have a harder time, like making those connections or even speaking up and talking about your feelings.

Absolutely. So, okay, obviously we've heard so much about loneliness in general because of the pandemic.

So.

So loneliness at work, what are the effects? What are we looking at for the problems or what can happen because of it?

Yeah, I mean, it adds to your stress and anxiety and burnout that you already might be feeling. And so that, of course, affects your morale, low engagement. And so it does have a spiral effect. It could affect the individual, but it has repercussions to the whole team.

How do we mitigate it? How do we change this scenario so that we're not getting stuck in this cycle of feeling disconnected?

A lot of it starts with leaders and the tone that you're setting. So do you have an environment where people can speak up and talk honestly about how they're feeling at work? That's one thing. Also, I think, focusing on the quality of relationships. We have a lot of meetings, so we spend a lot of time together. It's not the quantity. I'm not suggesting more meetings because nobody wants more meetings. Nobody wants more meetings. But, you know, what, do we carve out a little bit of time before meetings or after meetings to check in with people? Simple icebreaker. So people feel that sense of social connection.

Well, I think too, in, like we've talked about here, like, just, you know, when things have changed for holiday parties or you don't get to do lunches together as a team because the days just get busy, you do feel like the connections are. Are less. You have to work harder. Yeah. And so making that genuine connection is one thing. And how do you support employees through doing these things? Because you also. People need to get their work done, too.

Yeah, they do. I think just having conversations about, you know, what's the appropriate balance between focus, time to get the work done. But, you know, there's always more time to just carve out, and it could be just 30 seconds of connection.

What about remote workers?

Yeah, so I think remote workers, actually. And I don't want to suggest that the solution is to come back to work. There's a lot of benefits to the flexibility of working remote. But again, just being really intentional. I have seen companies do a really good job of carving out time, even Virtually to make sure that you're making those social connections. And so I think remote working can work really well as well.

So before I let people go, because there's a lot of people who maybe resonated with that and felt like they got some good tips for them. But what if there is a manager or leader listening? What do they do? What's the action they take?

I think there's a lot of things that can be done. And one super solution, an easy solution, is work on those new hires. Because again, like we said, you're young employees, they're just starting out, they don't have those relationships. You know, are they coming in with a mentor or a buddy? I mean, I think that would be a really easy way to start and then make sure that those connections continue throughout the employee's career.

That's great. I mean, what, I mean, what an interesting thing. You know, we just think about all the loneliness that's happening and to know it can be even at your workplace, the one place maybe you have a social built in network.

Exactly. And you know, again, the more that we can talk about these things, the more we can talk about solutions. The solutions really are easy, but it first has to be something that we feel comfortable talking about.

Absolutely. You got to talk about it. Stop it. Good to see you.

Thank you.

Thanks, Beth. To watch this segment again, or to send it to one of your friends or co workers or boss, go to our website, themorningblend.com.