Today’s office-based workplaces aren’t terribly social. Maybe everyone shows up for common office days, maybe they don’t. Post-work pub hangs don’t happen often. Water cooler-style conversations have moved to Slack — you don’t feel the same level of connection.

Hybrid set-ups are great for parents of young kids, amazing for employees with jobs far from home, and fantastic for those who love to tackle focus work without distraction. But remote work may also be contributing to loneliness.

“The pandemic fundamentally reshaped the way we’re interacting with others. It tore us all apart and made us disconnected; and not everybody has been able to re-establish those interpersonal bonds,” says Julie McCarthy, professor of organizational behaviour and HR management at the University of Toronto.

She studies anxiety, stress and resilience. Recently, she has turned her attention to the study of loneliness, and published “All the Lonely People: An Integrated Review and Research Agenda on Work and Loneliness” in the Journal of Management.

McCarthy and her team reviewed 233 previous studies on loneliness and work, outlining what we know, and what we don’t, and offering guidance to researchers and practitioners interested in the topic.

New questions

In 2023, the U.S. surgeon general declared loneliness an epidemic, which got McCarthy’s attention. A 2023 Gallup poll found one in four people worldwide feel lonely, making it an urgent issue that McCarthy and her team suspected would affect workplace performance and employee well-being.

“A core theme in my research is the role of interpersonal connection – and the consequences when that connection is absent,” she says. “This project grew naturally out of my earlier work, but explores a new and timely issue facing today’s workplaces.”

McCarthy and her colleagues scanned the literature for what had been done on loneliness as it intersects with work. The studies they found came from 40 different countries — suggesting that social disconnection at work has become a global problem.

Connections about connections

McCarthy and her team found that loneliness is complex and is not just about feeling glum and by yourself. Previous research has identified key features: It happens when there is a perceived deficiency in social relationships, it’s subjective, and it’s unpleasant and distressing.

“Loneliness is multifaceted and subjective,” says McCarthy. “It arises when there is a perceived gap between the quantity or quality of social connections that we desire and what we actually experience. And that gap can look different for different people -some may crave deep connection; others may be content with limited interaction.”

The researchers added more to the definition, saying it impacts people emotionally, cognitively and behaviourally, it can be transient or enduring, and it’s multidimensional with social and emotional components.

They found that having a higher income lowers your chances of being lonely. But as the cliché says, it’s lonely at the top, with those in leadership roles feeling more isolated. Not having a job at all is also bad for feelings of connectedness.

Certain personality traits put people at risk for loneliness, including introversion and neuroticism, with workaholics at risk, too. Not surprisingly, friends at work help with feelings of loneliness, while being bullied makes them spike.

All this matters in the workplace: lonely people perform worse. They might be more likely to leave a job, and people who feel isolated are less likely to follow workplace safety rules. They’re at higher risk for mental and physical illness.

“If you experience high levels of loneliness over time it becomes chronic, which is very depleting,” says McCarthy. That can impact productivity, disrupt team dynamics, and increase turnover. For those who stay lonely for a long time, their social skills can decline, and their lives can go into a negative spiral of alienating others and even losing their jobs.

Getting less lonely

Workplace interventions such as stress management and social skills training can help teams feel less lonely, as do volunteering and mindfulness. “Mindfulness is emerging as a particularly promising approach — it cultivates awareness and presence, which can in turn support more meaningful interpersonal engagement.”

McCarthy says companies that work to have a positive culture and invest in well-being in general via evidence-based programs can move the needle on loneliness. Programs and policies that help people at times when they are at the most risk — such as after a job relocation or a big life change such as a death or divorce — also help. 

“You need to tailor interventions to the specific needs of that workforce,” says McCarthy. “Different workforces face different social stressors, and one-size-fits-all solutions won’t suffice.”

McCarthy plans to do future research on the impact of teams and leadership on loneliness, to try to understand the mechanisms behind how such a state develops.

She hopes her work will also get the message out that loneliness matters. It’s an urgent organizational and societal concern,” says McCarthy. “People are suffering from a lack of meaningful connection at work, and the consequences spillover into their personal lives. We need to take it seriously.”

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