Loneliness and the workplace - an epidemic impacting our youngest colleagues

Written By Isar Bhattacharjee

TLDR: There is a rising epidemic of loneliness among young people, which impacts public health and employee wellbeing. Work has a huge impact on loneliness and companies can take some actions to help address the challenges of loneliness.

Recently I carried out some secondary research looking into how young people in London experienced loneliness in the workplace. It was pretty eye opening; the interviews were honest and vulnerable, and the challenges faced by the participants (aged 18-25) could make the world of work feel cold and isolating. 

Loneliness is an increasing problem in modern society and it carries a real public health risk. Loneliness increases your risk of early death by more than smoking 15 cigarettes a day does. The US Surgeon General recently designated loneliness an epidemic and the recent report shows a stark reduction in social connection over the last 20 years. Here is some of their data which showed the impact prior to the pandemic:

Unfortunately it appears to have only gotten worse after the pandemic and it isn’t only a US problem. In the UK, rates of loneliness and isolation have also been on the rise. A 2022 survey by YouGov found that 26% of UK 18-24 year olds felt lonely often or all of the time. Worse still, across all age groups when asked if they talked to anyone about feeling lonely, 64% of people said they didn’t tell anyone how they felt.

Loneliness also has an economic cost. “Relatedness” (connection with others and connection to the purpose of your company) is one of the big three factors which influence motivation at work. For a wide array of reasons lonely people often struggle to relate to others in the workplace and to be their best selves at work. In fact, evidence suggests that lonely employees struggle to connect with others and can be perceived as distant, which amplifies their challenges around engaging effectively at work (and worsens their feelings of isolation). 

This recent research project involved interviews with young people where they were explicitly asked about their experiences of loneliness, and were prompted to write and draw their thoughts. The original paper captures some of the broadest themes about loneliness from these interviews. My work involved a secondary analysis where we specifically looked into the relationships between work and their experiences of loneliness. 

4 main themes emerged from these interviews:

  1. How issues of workplace identity and loneliness can reinforce each other

  2. The importance of work for young people in signaling a transition period between the “end of childhood/start of adulthood” 

  3. The ways that employees may use work to escape from wider feelings of loneliness

  4. The ways that work could trigger new or exaggerated feelings of loneliness

1: How issues of workplace identity and loneliness can reinforce each other

Work is a significant share of all our waking hours and inevitably our sense of identity starts to become entwined with our work selves. The interviewees quite frequently spoke about the two-way interaction between their work identity and their sense of self outside of work. Feeling lonely and isolated outside of work inevitably impacted their ability to perform in the workplace, but this was especially acute for those who worked in mission-focused jobs (where their purpose in work was linked with their identity outside of work). Moreover, several participants spoke about how low status jobs or poor performance in the workplace could impact their self-esteem and self-perception outside of work, which exacerbated feelings of loneliness and isolation.

2: The importance of work for young people in signaling a transition period between the “end of childhood/start of adulthood” 

These linkages between identity and work were especially prevalent amongst those who had just joined the workforce. After a period of schooling and university, entering your first job is one of the most stark changes in your day-to-day life, with the next biggest change for many being either parenthood or retirement. Some participants had left the areas they grew up in to move to London and find work, which was often associated with a smaller social network (or distance making connection harder with their home friends), known by psychologists as social thinning. Social thinning in and of itself is a big risk factor for adverse mental health outcomes in addition to the participants’ feelings of loneliness. For some participants the transition to work also highlighted the fact that as children or university students it’s easy to have friends. You are living near a large group of people of a similar age with similar interests and similar backgrounds. Crucially you also spend a lot of time with these people so it’s a fertile ground for friendships to develop. However, as participants left these settings many realized that some of their friends were only really friends with them because of the convenience of spending so much time together. This generated quite a visceral emotional response, especially in some of our male participants, who felt betrayed by the fact that these people weren’t “real friends”. This was often raised at the same time as complaints that many of their friends were too busy with work to regularly meet up. 

3: The ways that employees may use work to escape from wider feelings of loneliness

While many of these interviews involved difficult-to-read descriptions of isolation, many of the participants were more positive about the impact that work had had on their loneliness. More than half of participants (and 70% of female participants) raised work as a place for them to meet new people and build relationships. The participants who were in their first job saw building new friendships as a core part of the value of work, and explicitly mentioned the value of “kind”, “positive” and “friendly” work environments more frequently than those who had worked in a few different organisations. For some other participants, work also allowed them to escape the isolation of their life outside of work. Being lonely can lower perceptions of self-worth, and being a productive employee and contributing value to others appeared to act as an antidote to some of these negative feelings. 

4: The ways that work could trigger new or exaggerated feelings of loneliness

However, work could also make feelings of loneliness worse. Participants spoke about how isolation and stress seemed to have a self-reinforcing effect on each other. Isolated participants said they found it hard to ask for help at work when they struggled which resulted in more stress and worse performance. Other participants spoke about how complex, confidential or niche jobs could be difficult to explain to their loved ones which make it hard to connect deeply with people outside of work. A small group of participants discussed how repetitive work, or lack of professional development, contributed to feeling that they were “stuck in a rut” in both their work life and their personal life. Finally, participants would also raise practical considerations of how work impacted their ability to socialise either through time pressures or financial pressures. 

So, what can companies do about this?

Beyond just getting an understanding of young peoples’ experiences of loneliness, this work also served to highlight the importance of a few key actions from companies. First it’s crucial for organisations to understand how an employee’s life outside of work can impact their performance within the workplace - many of our participants did not have any outward signs that they were acutely isolated, so if you were their employees you might struggle to pick up on this if they did not choose to open up. Second, for many younger employees finding friends and building relationships at work is part of the value proposition. So creating a kind, welcoming and psychologically safe environment is a retention tool, especially for your younger staff. Thirdly, when participants were struggling to make progress outside of work, they often looked to growth and learning in the workplace to create a sense of momentum and meaning. Building an effective set of learning processes can be the most effective way of generating this momentum and meaning. 

Across all these interviews, while some discussions were difficult, the participants sounded relieved after they had taken place. The discussions were important to normalising and validating the feelings that many of these interviewees had expressed. So a final bit of advice is to think through opportunities to trigger discussions about loneliness. This can feel difficult - loneliness is not a nice topic of conversation and people can feel judged for feeling isolated. But after a period of lockdowns and remote working, feeling lonely is an experience more of us have felt than ever before. So try having a conversation, share an article (ideally this one), or share some resources which might help others. 

If you struggle with loneliness, you may find some of the following resources to be helpful:

Isar Bhattacharjee
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