Improving organisational outcomes by tackling loneliness at work

Nigel Cassidy: When staff lose commitment and risk being a drain on the business, have you considered it's because they feel lonely or isolated at work? If so, how do you turn things around? I'm Nigel Cassidy and this is the CIPD podcast.

Unnamed speaker: I'd go an entire day without anyone saying my name. People weren't actively unkind; they just talked around me. Meetings were the worst. I was physically there, yet it was just watching life happen through a pane of glass. I stopped eating lunch in the break room because I always sat alone while everyone else chatted. It made me feel like I was back in school - unwanted. I left work more drained from the silence than from the actual tasks.

NC: Yes, it can be lonely in an office full of people. A mix there of emotional fatigue, self-doubt, and a bit of a creeping sense of disconnection. Now some jobs, of course, have physical isolation baked in, delivering on the road all day, say, or sitting alone at home, staring at the screen. So, this episode is all about tackling workplace loneliness head on.

Now, you might say, loneliness is an unwelcome side effect of our modern work styles. Research suggests that as many as a third of working adults are sometimes or always lonely at work, missing out on those social connections that engage us. Loneliness reduces how well we perform tasks, and has been shown to limit reasoning, decision-making and creativity. It's a proven cause of stress, sickness, absenteeism and burnout. And it's lonely at the top too, with high proportions of leaders feeling isolated, maybe managing whole teams that they hardly know or maybe have never even met. But have you considered that it's your business culture or your job design which may be at fault?

So, what can people professionals do to foster stronger, healthier connections? With us are, People Leader, who's now the Director of HR for the health and social care charity, The King's Fund; praised, I noticed on LinkedIn for spearheading culture change without losing her sense of creativity and fun. It's Caroline Woolland. Hello.

Caroline Woolland: Hi, Nigel. Hi, everyone.

NC: Talking of fun, we're joined too by the self-styled Head of Happiness at her consultancy, Laugh ology, who specialise in boosting staff engagement. Festival of Work-goers may have seen her turn on the value of office banter. Even so, I won't risk any jokes just yet. Welcome Stephanie Davies.

Stephanie Davies: Hi, Nigel. Hi, everyone. Lovely to be here.

NC: And with noted life skills and resilience, specialist and author Liggy Webb, who says loneliness is often not about being physically alone but about disconnection and your emotional state of mind. Hi, Liggy.

Liggy Webb: Hi, Nigel. Hi, everyone. It's great to be here.

NC: So, we've got you all with different angles on this, so let's just stick with personal experiences for a moment. I'd like to ask each of you if you can remember a particular time when you yourself felt lonely or isolated and what was your lifeline? What helped you get through it? Liggy, do you want to start?

LW: Yeah, do you know, it kind of takes me back to the beginning of COVID, spending so much time working from home. I felt a real loneliness in the workspace, but a colleague of mine was feeling very much the same. And what we decided to do was actually set up walking meetings, and we found this really, really helpful. It was a wonderful way of connecting, we made sure that it was a regular thing and, obviously, it was very good for our well-being as well, and very energising and we've continued that.

NC: Brilliant. What about you, Stephanie Davies?

SD: As the Head of Happiness, I think I'm expected to be happy all the time, but I always talk about that, that's nonsense - we can't be happy all the time. Actually, part of being happiness is unhappiness. And a few years ago, there was lots going on in my life. My poor dad was coming to the end of his life, and I'd ended seven years of quite harsh IVF. And when you're going through stuff like that, even though I've got a team of 17, at the top it can be quite lonely because you're running a business, but also I've got all the other stuff going on. I'd become pregnant - a complete shock. I was delighted, managed to tell my dad just before he passed away. And then, four months in, I got some horrendous news that it wasn't a viable pregnancy. I remember being where I'm sitting now and just feeling completely isolated and alone and didn't know what to do, and I was almost frozen with loneliness. I didn't know what to do, and my EA, she lives locally, she rang at that moment to ask me some questions, and I picked up the phone. She heard my voice, and she just said, "I'm coming round". It just made everything so much better. I'm very grateful that I had somebody who really cared for me and helped me in that moment.

NC: That's brilliant. I think the evidence is that not everybody has such a person. Caroline, what about you?

CW: Well, I think one occasion that really sticks in my mind was when I joined an organisation in a leadership role, and it was an organisation where the culture really wasn't based upon trust. And I felt very ashamed that I felt lonely. There's a lot of stigma around loneliness. We're all supposed to be very popular and have lots of friends, and everything's supposed to be great all the time. It was very difficult. I definitely slid into a depression there and then performance dips. And then you start getting questioned about your performance and you feel that you're not the person that you really are; you're not the person that they hired.

And I was fortunate that one person reached out to me, and they said, "How are you?" And from that I was able to link to them, to talk to them. And I think that's one of the things around workplace loneliness is; people don't put their hand up and say, "Hey, I need help. I'm lonely". It's not one of those things that you're really going to want to admit to very often.

NC: OK, we've all felt lonely, as you say. We all recognise what you're talking about, but when it comes to work, some of us, of course, are introverted. We might prefer to be left alone to get on with things. So, Liggy, can you just help us, and define a bit what loneliness means in a work context?

LW: Yeah, I think it's that isolation that we feel, isn't it? And it's interesting you talk about introversion, because I think sometimes, we make assumptions that people are either, you know, introverts or extroverts and we have to bear in mind as well that we have "ambiverts". So, people have got the ability to kind of be both. I think I would define myself as an "ambivert". I actually enjoy solitude, but solitude is very different to loneliness because loneliness is that feeling of disconnect, of feeling like you've got no-one to reach out to, no community. Fortunately, I've created a really good community and network of people who do work remotely, and I can connect with those, and I can kind of get that energy.

But I think that the key here is an appreciation of; we're all different and everybody will have different needs. And when it comes to loneliness, there's probably a continuum of what people will need and that's why I think it's really important that line managers understand each individual in their team. Who are the introverts, who are the extroverts and who are the ambiverts? And opening up that conversation and finding out what people require to help them.

NC: Well, you've mentioned line managers, which brings us very neatly to why this is a business issue as well as a personal one. Caroline, what is the impact of loneliness at work for organisations or the risks of ignoring it?

CW: Well, if people are feeling lonely, their productivity will dip. They won't be as creative; they won't be able to collaborate in ways that they would do normally. There's a reduction in discretionary effort. There's some interesting research by someone called Zeynep Ton from MIT recently, and she had been looking at productivity and organisations, and we cut so much back to make things very efficient. But her research had shown that productivity and profitability was in fact increased by engagement and culture, and avoiding having lonely members of staff is a key part of that.

Also, if you have regular, frequent and varied opportunities that accept difference, for people to be able to connect, it also frees up people to collaborate in different ways that you might actually not even anticipate. There's the unintended positive consequences of these things, but fundamentally you certainly lose productivity, you lose creativity and it's also the innovation that will dip when you have lonely members of staff.

NC: Well, certainly. And Stephanie, what would you say are the signs that people are feeling high and dry? How do we know that from their work?

SD: It's about knowing the individual, because every single person will have different signs. But what actually happens, from a neuroscience perspective, when we're lonely is the brain literally shuts down, it goes into survival mode. So, the amygdala kind of starts to heighten, which means people will draw back even more, and they start to protect themselves. So, you might, as a manager, think, well, that person needs to be left alone. But if you know them, if you truly know them, you'll start to see these little signs, like somebody's withdrawing more, or perhaps they're not connecting as much as they were. Or perhaps they're just asking to work from home more.

Now, it's not about "they are the signs", it's about, is that different to their normal behaviour? And that's the key point here, it's an indicator for you to have a conversation, and a really sensitive and gentle conversation because if you think their brains in survival mode, where they feel threatened, then you've got a manager that wants to talk to them about bringing them in more, they're going to feel threatened even more.

There are kind of some tools and techniques that we can use, around open questions or the lovely stuff that we know already, speaking to someone, connecting regularly with them, even buddying them up, putting them on a project together with somebody else and things like that. I talk very much about warm connections a lot, in workplaces as we've become really transactional. Especially after COVID, is we have Teams meeting after Teams meeting. So, it's not just about, "Oh, I've seen them on a Teams meeting. That's fine". You're, it's a transactional meeting, quite a lot of this. Where do you get that warmth, where you're speaking to them, where you're engaging with people about other stuff that's comfortable for the level of sharing that they want?

NC: Hmm, well, you mentioned COVID. We know that was a massive turning point for work styles, but I'm just interested to know how this loneliness thing has increased. I mean, we were quite good at nurturing each other during COVID. So, what's gone wrong?

LW: It's quite interesting, isn't it? I do quite a lot of work with the United Nations and I can remember having a conversation, this was pre-COVID, with somebody who worked in one of the agencies that did a lot of research around loneliness and there was a lot of discussion around how technology was impacting.

Obviously, we were moving more into this kind of like hybrid space of working. I think there's lots of different reasons. I think it's kind of sad that if you think about it, in the digital world, there is so much more opportunity now to have connection, and yet loneliness is increasing because, according to the World Health Organisation, you know, one in six people are affected. And according to the UN research, every hour there are 100 deaths which are associated to loneliness. It's very sobering, isn't it, when you think about the impact that it has on people, obviously outside the work environment, but inside the work environment too.

Certainly, the digital world has an impact, certainly hybrid working, working remotely I think can, but also a lack of community because community is so powerful in every way, in terms of bringing people together. But of course, even when we have community, there are times where you can be in a room full of people, but you can feel really lonely. I've certainly been there.

I actually get social anxiety. I think people have this perception, because I do a lot of speaking that I'm a really confident person, but actually in a big social environment, I can feel my heart pounding and I feel really shy, actually. So, I think making assumptions in terms of how people are.

But the other thing I do want to mention here is psychological safety, because I think it's really important that we create that environment where people feel safe to talk about it. Caroline made a very valuable point earlier, around stigma being attached to loneliness. The admission that you know, "I'm not so confident" or "I'm feeling shy", or perhaps "I don't feel that I'm very popular" or "I haven't got anything to bring to the party". So, we do need to help people to feel confident about being themselves, being their authentic selves, and if they are feeling lonely, then having the courage and the confidence to be able to share that with people.

NC: We talked about COVID, remote working, now we have hybrid working. We've talked about people being lonely in a crowd in an office. Is there any indication of really whether one can be worse than the other in terms of loneliness?

CW: There was a study recently around the impact of remote or hybrid working and it would be a really easy answer to say if we got everybody back in face-to-face, we took ourselves back to 2019 that everything would be solved, but their research suggested that loneliness could not be solved by in-person work - that wasn't the answer. And sadly, you do need to put a bit more effort in and you have to be more intentional. It's quite a lazy way of managing if you think you can just eyeball someone and just see how they're feeling inside. It doesn't work either way.

LW: Yeah, I mean, loneliness isn't necessarily situational, is it? Loneliness is dependent on people's life circumstances. There may be lots of things going on behind the scenes which really are going to impact on people's state of mind. It's a very complex area and I think it comes back to emphasising the point that line managers really need to understand what is going on for each individual within their team. There's no point blanket managing how we approach loneliness. That's not going to help at all.

NC: Caroline, the way people are managed must loom large, we've already heard mention of the sort of digital platforms on which we operate. I'm thinking about poor communication, people not being consulted or given feedback, maybe excluding some team members from certain projects, allowing cliques to form. I just wonder, what manager behaviours for you most signal exclusion to people? And how do you know it's that which needs fixing?

CW: I think it's quite a difficult one to surface and that's part of the problem, and I think, often as an HR professional, you like to do things that have guaranteed success. There's a bit of "busy work" going on. Doing something like a loneliness audit, which is something that I think is quite valuable, where you actually think, do people have regular check-ins with their managers? Are there opportunities for people to give feedback? Have managers had training in having these conversations? Things like that, is something that's actually worth doing.

There's also some data that you can look at, attrition rates, exit interviews, also sickness, because I think both Stephanie and Liggy have talked about the impact that it has on us as humans, feeling lonely. And I think one of the critical things is around this stigma that it won't surface very often naturally, you have to ask some clever questions because it is so shameful. It's that feeling of failure, it can feel dreadful to say. And then often, the options that are offered to address loneliness in the workplace are things that many people won't want to join in, and also when you have people who are neurodivergent, some of these things may appear absolutely horrific for them to get involved with and are just absolutely not inclusive.

NC: Yes, I mean, forcing people to go out for drinks, that's not always going to work for everybody, is it, Stephanie?

SD: The whole point is about managers really getting to know their people and I think what we need to really think about is; workplaces are changing. We can't put things back to where they were. We are a connected world where you might have a manager on the other side of the world. But as human beings, we are social creatures and there's only so much that we can do on a video connection. We get our cues from the way people are interacting, and we actually connect better in a room - it does something completely different to the brain.

We really need to think differently about workplaces of the future. We already have a mental health crisis on our hands, but it's going to get worse. And what I mean by that is; we need to really think about workplaces and spaces, not just physical places, where you are thinking about that community like Liggy and Caroline were saying, that you have to create a community and that should be part of your strategy, that your people are helped and supported to connect. But we do have to think completely differently about how workplaces and spaces are set up.

During COVID we did this brilliant thing where we checked in on people and made sure they were OK. And we've forgotten that lovely stuff, we've forgotten that we put people first, because everything else went out the window. And so, even though COVID was a tough time, let's take the stuff that we learned from it. And also, let's really redesign and think differently about what is the purpose of workplaces. Is it just to make profit or is it a fundamental need in society for connection? And I think we need to rebalance.

NC: And I'd like to take up that idea of how you provide that support with you. Liggy, you mentioned right at the beginning, your story about how a particular colleague befriended you. You might say all lonely people need friends. Yet we've heard that phrase, haven't we? When fed-up workers speak of HR, they say, "Well, they're not my friend". Can we really expect any work colleagues or certainly bosses, in the light of what Stephanie said, to be our friends?

LW: I love the term "warmth", Stephanie, that you talked about. Because this is what human beings have got, isn't it? We have the ability to give warmth, and I think we should never underestimate the impact of that. We're living in a world of loneliness but we're also living in a world of so much volatility and uncertainty. There's a lot of fear out there and people are getting stressed about what goes on the world stage and so forth and just being able to open up those conversations, because you never know what impact that's going to have on somebody and having those warm conversations are so powerful.

Our ability to be able to empathise, I think that's the most powerful gift that any human being can give to another one. You know, willingness to want to know what's going on for them, a willingness to want to understand other people. Because when you think about it, loneliness is about isolation. And if we don't feel listened to and we don't feel understood, then we're going to feel lonely.

So, I think that connectivity that we can develop in the workplace is really important and of course, yeah, there are going to be times where managers for example, are going to have to have those tough conversations. But their ability to be able to empathise with each member of their team is so important.

SD: There's a key difference between friendship and just having empathy with somebody. You don't have to be best friends, but you can certainly show a human need and be kind to somebody. And so, it's OK to dislike someone at work. We're not all going to be best friends, but we can take a step back and go, "OK. Even though, perhaps, I've disagreed with this person, or perhaps there's a difficult conversation I've had to have with them over here, I can certainly share a level of empathy and kindness". And it doesn't mean that you have to be best friends. But like Liggy said, some people do find friendships. And of course, you're going to find friendships at work, it shouldn't be forced. But empathy is the biggest thing, and that connection. And just remembering, behind every single person and every single behaviour, there's a reason for that behaviour. A behaviour is an output of a feeling or a reason that we don't even understand sometimes. So, see beyond and past that and be curious, even professionally curious, to want to know somebody, to want to understand what else is going on.

NC: Do you want to add anything there, Caroline?

CW: One thought that's come to me, hearing this conversation is around the inclusion of minority groups. If you're the only Muslim member of staff in a department, the only autistic person, it is very possible that you might feel lonely because there may be a lack of understanding around things. The role around inclusion is really important in avoiding workplace loneliness. If it's during Ramadan, you're getting up very early in the morning and people are asking you to go out for a drink on Friday night and things like that. You're likely not to feel very included with things.

So, I think not letting up on your EDI activity as well and getting understanding, because loneliness and being alone and solitude are going to look very different for different people as well. We know that, you know, shared goals, organisational purpose, all of those things contribute to having a better culture, and therefore a better place to work and a better bottom line.

NC: Definitely. Before we finish, I just want to look at the issue of job design and just take a moment out to consider what can be done for people who are on their own, by definition, all day. I noticed on the CIPD website, there's a section called "Working Life", and there's a fascinating case study featuring a heavy goods and plant driver. People like him may work solo, mightn't they, for 12 to 13 hours a day. This guy, Fraser, says he works five or six days a week and what he says is most upsetting is not being physically isolated, but how successive employers failed to see that he studied the working, all the processes around him. He has knowledge and skills to do the job better, but he has no voice. He says, "The job I'm doing now is boring. There's nothing to it. Driving has changed in the last 20 years, but nobody's coming out and asking us drivers what's going on, why they're upset and why there's a driver shortage? I want to be a bit more in control of my own destiny rather than looking for jobs somebody else is picking and they're reaping the benefits of, not me".

So, I think we're saying here, I mean, Fraser's actual job can't change, he's obviously got to be sitting in that cab or on building sites. But maybe the design could be tweaked in some way, Liggy?

LW: Yeah, definitely. We talk a lot about inclusivity, but inclusivity is about really listening to everybody in the organisation and really valuing people's opinions and I think that's got a lot to do with the culture of organisations. If you've got a listening culture and you've got a culture of appreciation and appreciating everything that everybody does in your organisation, and creating opportunities for people to voice their opinions, that's really powerful. I think it's very sad when you have an organisation where people aren't listened to, because if you're not listened to, you don't feel valued, do you? And that can make you feel very lonely as well.

NC: It's kind of ironic really, with micro-management that managers are interacting with you all the time, but it might actually make you feel more lonely. Stephanie?

SD: Yeah, and this is where it's got to be done in a very true and human way. You see people who do all the right things because it's almost a tick-box exercise rather than, you know, you can sit there and listen to somebody and look like they're listening. But if there's no actions done on the back of it, you know, if then nothing changes, when that listening is about helping somebody to feel like they belong or change something for the better. Then they're not going to feel listened to.

Sometimes we have very technical managers and that's OK. Some of us are very technical people and some of us are very people-people. And it doesn't mean that we can't learn both sides, but there are some people who are going to be better at a certain role. And so, do we really think about workplaces where we can have specific people who are specifically around people development, people managers rather than the technical side. And so, you've got these both managers who can support people. They don't realise, but it just takes someone to look beyond what everybody else is doing and to listen to that one voice and to help someone. That is a special skill sometimes.

NC: Absolutely. And Caroline, how much of this can HR do and how much is it really down to supporting line managers?

CW: I think HR can play a really important role and I think, as a leader, as an HR leader, as well as a business leader, modelling these behaviours, ensuring that your line managers are well trained, that they feel confident in having regular check-ins. I think it can be quite scary for a line manager or indeed for HR to sometimes ask these questions, because goodness knows what answer you're going to get back, but there are so many opportunities to get ideas. It, again, it's competitive advantage, it helps your bottom line. You can incorporate this in your working life when you're doing perhaps a rapid process improvement workshop, looking at improving process, things like, think of your stakeholder group. If I were working in logistics, I'd be getting some of the drivers involved.

There was a case study, I think, of bin men in the States where they developed a new way of collecting bins much more efficiently because they were consulted, they came up with ideas, they were included. So, I think sometimes it can take a bit of courage, I think referencing your point there, Stephanie, about these connections not just being transactional, actually being genuinely interested. It can be very, very enriching as a line manager, once you start having that deeper level of conversation with people.

NC: OK, so then let's have a final thought or two from each of you on what you can do to see some results on this.

LW: Well, every time I hear this word, I get a little tingle, actually. And that word is around "curiosity", because I think if we can really kind of cultivate curiosity about other people, then it's exciting because everybody you meet knows something you don't know. And we can learn so much from each other.

And I think there is a danger, if we're not careful, that we can almost lose the art of conversation because, as I'm sure we've all experienced, there are conversations that we've had that have made us feel better. Perhaps they've energised us, or they've made us feel valued and the list goes on because it all starts with a great conversation and you never know where that's going to lead. But that's a great way to connect people. So, I think wherever there is an opportunity in organisations, to encourage healthy curiosity and to really encourage that power of conversations. However you do that, I think that's something that can really help people to feel more connected. 

And I guess there's three words that really come to mind, just based on this conversation that we've been having and that is about "curiosity". It's also about really harnessing "empathy" and "understanding". You know, what empathy is, because it's not about fixing people, it's just being there for someone, being there and having that desire to want to understand how another person is feeling and seeing their perspective. But also, appreciation, really engaging and really encouraging people to appreciate each other, to look for the best in each other. I think that's something that can be very helpful and feedback that appreciation as well because that really helps to connect teams too.

NC: Great. And, Stephanie Davies, what would you suggest, other than bringing back banter?

SD: First of all, I'd do a day of completely no Teams or Zoom meetings, so people can connect non-transactionally, they can get together either physically, but if that's not possible, in a way where it's not about work. Drop the agenda, just for a day, and help people to get to know the individual in front of them because that is the most important thing, we forget that there's a human behind every single challenge or workplace or. So, let's have less Teams meetings back-to-back and connect people in a really different way and create those warm connections.

I'm the Head of Happiness and my company is called Laugh ology. I am a big believer in laughter, look it's not enforced fun, it's not about making people do anything, but I tell you what, laughter is the best gift that you can give people and you cannot help, even if you're that person in the room who's feeling a little bit awkward. And it should always be inclusive laughter, and I could go on about that for hours. You can't help but suck up that laughter and be part of it. Let's just make time for playfulness, for some fun, not enforced fun, but just some enjoyable times because work's got really dull and complex, so we need to undo some of that.

NC: Absolutely. Caroline, unenviably, you're last here.

CW: Well, I absolutely echo everything that Liggy and Stephanie have said and about having the inclusive laughter, of which there was much when I tried to demonstrate my line dancing skills in the office last week. I'm sure they were laughing with me, not at me, but I think I'd give three top tips.

Number 1: model connection as a leader. 

Secondly, when you are stuck in online meeting day of hell, give a bit of time to chitchat in meetings. A bit of that chitchat, a bit of slack. 

And finally, I'd accept that there is difference in people's social batteries. Their social batteries may vary hugely. How much social interaction you can cope with successfully and being open about that. I had a colleague who had a lovely battery badge that he would wear, and there were times where you knew that he just had to be quiet because his social battery, his interactions would have been full for the day. I think I'm possibly an ambivert myself, so my social battery, I think it's a lot bigger than it really is.

NC: Wonderful. Well, a fine discussion this month, so many insights and useful ideas there to reconnect and re-engage people. So, our grateful thanks to Caroline Woolland, Stephanie Davies, and Liggy Webb. You'll find content on loneliness and related CIPD well-being and mental health at work resources on the CIPD website. Meanwhile, don't forget to subscribe so you don't miss any of these podcasts. But for now, from me, Nigel Cassidy and the whole team, it's goodbye.