workplace loneliness

Katja Alissa Mueller

The enforced social distancing brought in by the Covid-19 pandemic means that workplace loneliness is on the rise - and it can have a huge impact on our physical and mental health. What can we do to help alleviate these feelings of isolation?

Over the past year, the Covid-19 pandemic has transformed our working lives. We’ve swapped offices for home working, traded face-to-face meetings for sharing screens over Zoom and Teams, and now interact with most of our colleagues via Slack.

As a result, millions of employees worldwide have been plunged into working in a more isolated manner than ever before. Gone are the days of catching up on last night's TV over the water cooler, or popping by someone's desk for an improptu chat - now all our interactions with colleagues are virtual. And while there is little evidence to suggest that working from home in this way is detrimental to our mental health – in fact, research suggests it can actually boost creativity and productivity, alongside job satisfaction – the sudden shock of this isolated working, combined with strict social distancing measures brought in to tackle the spread of the virus, mean it's not just our work interactions that have diminished.

Research from the UK suggests that the average  (down 51%) since the country's first lockdown began in March. The research found that on a typical day in the office, we'd interact with about 17 people, whereas now we speak to around eight - and the conversations are all virtual.

Unsurprisingly, this lack of face-to-face interactions has had a knock-on effect on feelings of loneliness. The same research found that almost half (46%) of UK workers had felt lonely while working from home, with women (50%) more likely to experience loneliness than men (43%). In America, a survey from social-advice company SocialPro found that around a third of American adults reported 

Researchers have described the effect of loneliness on our health as the equivalent to smoking 15 cigarettes a day

Even before the pandemic, . A 2018 study found that almost half of Americans felt  at least some of the time, while in the same year, the UK government’s first ever  was implemented, with the aim of tackling the country's “loneliness epidemic”. 

Health experts across the globe have long warned about the worrying impact of loneliness on our physical and mental health. Researchers have even described feelings of loneliness as being as detrimental to our health as .

This existing backdrop of loneliness, combined with sudden working from home and enforced social distancing due to the pandemic, could be disastrous for our mental health. After all, human beings are social creatures – we’re not built to thrive in isolated spaces with limited outside contact. And some researchers have even argued that  could be similar to that of large-scale disasters, causing a trauma that could lead to depression and post-traumatic stress disorder.

“Before the past year, loneliness was an occasional feeling. But with lockdown it was a forced isolation that I would never willingly opt into”

AllBright Member Margaret Sherer, Founder Of Cittadina Marketing

A UK-wide study has warned that lockdowns during the pandemic could have a . Women were one of the groups of people reporting the worst mental health outcomes in the initial phase of the UK's first lockdown. And a recent worldwide survey from Ipsos, investigating job stress and disruptions over the past year, found that working women were "slightly more likely" than working men to have  thanks to changes in work routines and organisation, or family pressures, such as childcare or caring for elderly parents.

“This has been one of the hardest years of my life,” says AllBright member Margaret Sherer, the founder of . “Before the past year, loneliness was an occasional feeling. But with lockdown it was a forced isolation that I would never willingly opt into.”  

Almost a third of employees worldwide feel disengaged from their work

Due to the sudden nature of global lockdowns and stay at home orders, many of us were thrown into working from home without formal policies or training in place. Feelings of loneliness were also likely exacerbated by , and 38% of UK home workers also reported  "most or all of the time" as the death toll continued to rise during the first UK lockdown.

All of these factors highlight the need for companies to offer strong communication and plenty of support to their employees, especially since almost a third of employees worldwide now feel , according to the results of an Ipsos study held across 16 countries. Some businesses have found tentative ways to help alleviate isolation and anxiety, such as by organising social events like virtual work drinks and quizzes. But for Margaret, it was connecting with other members of AllBright’s sisterhood that acted as a “changing point” for her mental health during the pandemic.

“Early on I was having weekly calls with Jessica Pacey, Founder of , to simply check in on her lockdown life. But after a month, we turned our meetings into Accountability Buddy Sessions so we could support each other as solo-preneurs, helping each other break down big goals, and being accountable for what we both said we would do that week. This helped me reframe who my target audiences were and what kind of services I wanted to offer.”

"We are collectively going through a trauma we've never seen before. But things will be made easier if we are willing to reach out, check in, and occasionally say, ‘I'm not OK right now’"

AllBright Member Margaret Sherer, Founder Of Cittadina Marketing

Of course, the benefits of connecting to other women in a collective sisterhood such as AllBright’s aren’t simply about hitting work targets and goals. These connections are essential for our mental health, especially during the disconnection of the pandemic. A study in the US found that 82% of respondents had , and without being able to physically see work colleagues we feel close to, it's important to keep those connections alive.

“These sessions grew to other members like Victoria MacDonald, Co-Founder of , where we would meet once a week at the AllBright (when allowed) to have our sessions,” Margaret continues. “We’d also talk openly about the emotional toughness of the last year and laugh freely at silly jokes that lighten the mood.  

“It was so wonderful to have these friends around me. I'm fairly positive there was one day where I spoke non-stop for four hours about absolutely nothing and they both just dutifully nodded at the appropriate times, very much aware I just needed to have different ears to listen to my nonsense.”

Margaret also discusses a moment when she felt so low due to the pandemic that she pulled out of a meeting with other AllBright members at the last minute – only to receive a flood of supportive replies that turned her “down mood” into one of gratitude. It was moments like these, she said, that have truly helped her turn a corner when tackling lockdown loneliness and isolation at work. 

“The AllBright is a lovely community and a reminder that we are collectively going through a trauma we've never seen before,” she points out. “But things will be made easier if we are willing to reach out, check in and occasionally say, ‘I'm not OK right now’. Because saying it and then having the community say, ‘that's all right, I'm not OK right now either”, has made the whole experience far less lonely, as we come together to determine how to work through this bizarre time together.”

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