Locked into a digital landscape
Remote and removed — here’s why you’re lonely at work
SOME days, John spends 10 hours in the office without having a face-to-face conversation with anyone. “At this job, everyone’s wearing earbuds or noise-canceling headphones,” says the 34-year-old accountant from Woodbridge, NJ, who has asked that we omit his last name and that of his employer. “It sort of feels like no one likes me.”
However, he doesn’t see how that could be possible, given that he hasn’t shared any meaningful dialogue with anyone other than his boss and human resources in the two months he’s been employed at the Midtown company.
When someone needs something from John, they notify him via text, e-mail, or Slack, the digital-communication program his employer uses. “They message me even if they’re just a few feet away. It’s kind of lonely working here,” he says.
Feeling isolated or disconnected at the job isn’t uncommon, according to Dan Schawbel, author of the new book “Back to Human: How Great Leaders Create Connection in the Age of Isolation” (Da Capo Lifelong Books).
“There’s a loneliness epidemic in America,” he says. “Technology is supposed to make us feel like we are connected, but that’s an illusion. Instead, we feel isolated and disengaged.”
Those are sentiments echoed by Dr. Sanam Hafeez, Psy.D., a practicing neuropsychologist who teaches at Columbia University. But “loneliness is only part of the problem,” she says. Hafeez cites the example of one of her clients whose job may be in jeopardy because her interactions with her boss and co-workers are primarily digital and made up of only a few words. “That doesn’t provide room for context,” she says, explaining that comments such as “I don’t understand what you’re asking me for” or “I need eight weeks, not six weeks to get that done. Let me explain...” are better had face-to-face so you can hear inflections in voice and tone, and observe facial expressions and body language. With text, “it’s all up for grabs,” she says.
And while part of the workforce might convey sentiment with emojis and memes, there’s no guarantee that they mean the same thing to the person at the other end of the conversation. Not only that, but it’s questionable if digital allows you to fully express or experience your feelings. Hafeez fears that digital natives will suffer consequences as a result.
She argues that work is a huge part of our lives, and if you spend most of your time e-mailing and texting without breaking away, “it revs your brain up and locks it into one way of thinking, instead of disrupting the natural flow where stress levels go up and down,” she says. Our brains need a break.
Jon Salas, 30, of Long Island City, consciously works at building “flesh” conversations at work. He makes it a point to occasionally roll his chair up to a colleague’s desk to have a face-to-face, in-the-moment discussion about whatever they’re working on.
“The conversation usually spirals into small talk about their weekend, plans, interests and more. Those little pieces of personal information are vital in fostering a sense of camaraderie, which helps in doing our jobs,” he says.
Salas, a senior account executive at NoMadbased Hunter Public Relations, says that this kind of thing is welcomed where he now works. In a previous job, this wasn’t the case, and the digital technology led to isolated “little islands.” And while that necessitates a certain amount of self-sufficiency, “it makes it more difficult to rely on your colleagues when you need support,” he says.
And that has a negative impact on productivity, according to Schawbel. “The most successful workplaces operate like a family,” he says, pointing out that this isn’t happening today. “One-half of the workforce has fewer than five friends,” he says.
Relationships in the workplace — whether it’s forming them, growing them, keeping them flowing, or resolving conflicts — aren’t always easy, especially if they are expected to provide real support when things get difficult. Some employers offer their workers access to support via company-paid services such as Bravely, an app
that connects workers to conflict coaches and human-resources professionals. “We’ve talked to individuals who aren’t comfortable with face-to-face communication and are using text, e-mail and chat services to hide behind the computer,” says Sarah Sheehan, who founded the Flatiron-based service. But because Bravely is provided via a neutral third party, workers feel safer and more comfortable letting down their guard.
It’s worth noting, too, that management doesn’t know that their employees have engaged with Bravely, much the same way that they don’t know when you go for a medical visit or dentist appointment. Some of the issues that workers bring to Bravely are caused by digital conversations where people tend to answer instantly and don’t take time to collect their thoughts. “That makes it more difficult to course-correct [in text],” says Sheehan.
Yet, regardless of the problems digital communications might create, they’re also a huge help say the experts. Allison Hemming, CEO of The Hired Guns, a digital talent agency that is also based in MoMad, says that texts can be a great way to announce a new job opening to a select set of workers, schedule interviews, reserve meeting rooms, and so on. “The trick is to use text for transactional things,” like agreeing on a time to meet, make appointments or reserving meeting rooms, “assuming you have the other party’s permission.” These are things that some bots already do.
So perhaps the trick for workers is to consciously work at forming and navigating personal workplace relationships in a way that only humans can, and to use digital for the other stuff. After all, “if we’re not careful, we could become a bot,” says Salas.