Fighting an ‘epidemic of loneliness’
on the job. Their 2018 report concluded that aside from the personal pain it inflicted, loneliness was bad for business. Lonely employees, they found, were less committed to their organizations and less approachable.
Already separated from colleagues and shared workplace routines such as group lunches and water cooler conversations, these employees who had difficulty adjusting socially to life in a busy office must now learn to deal with isolation in the midst of a worldwide health emergency. A recent JAMA Psychiatry article predicted that the trend toward social distancing would lead to “a pandemic — of mental and behavioral illness.”
Some workers have responded to the new reality by moving in with similarly situated colleagues or turning frequently to services such as Zoom, the videoconferencing service that has experienced a boom during the outbreak. But others, experts fear, have withdrawn deeper.
“When you’re already lonely, you’re interpreting information in a way that’s more negative,” Barsade said. “Normally, when you go to work, you hang out with your work colleagues. You don’t have to make any special effort. They’re just kind of there around the proverbial water cooler.
“But now, if you haven’t heard from people in a few days, you’re going to feel ostracized. And once you hit a tipping point and decide you’re lonely, all sorts of things start to happen psychologically that get in the way of you reaching out.”
Feelings of isolation might be more pronounced among the young. Seventy-five percent of the surveyed millennials and Generation-Zers, according to Cigna, felt isolated at their workplaces.
Barsade said that as popular as Zoom has become, sharing a computer screen with several other faces might not be enough to ease a severe case of loneliness.
She suggested that to ease their at-home employees’ isolation, companies should make sure they conduct smaller group meetings and encourage workers to maintain social connections.
“Pick up the phone,” she said. “Email isn’t going to do it. This requires vigilance on all sides.
“People need to think about avoiding unintentionally ostracizing people. This is a time when it’s even more important to reach out to that person you think might be lonely.”