Plus, some well-tested tips on how to cope.
You’ve likely heard that the U.S. is currently in the midst of an epidemic of loneliness. Many of us are becoming increasingly socially disconnected, and this phenomenon is a legitimate cause for concern. Chronic loneliness can have negative effects on your mental and physical health — isolation actually increases your risk of type 2 diabetes, heart disease, and depression.
Luckily, from nonprofit projects to helpful robots, there are many determined efforts to weave face-to-face interactions into daily life. But what about the workplace? Katie’s friend, workplace strategist Erica Keswin, has some suggestions. Here, she lays out innovative ideas to foster social connections while working remote — yes, even on a Zoom call.
Over the last few years, the role of the office in the lives of many workers has changed dramatically. Some companies are back to business as usual, but most are hybrid, with a small percentage being fully remote. According to research from Stanford scholar Dr. Nicholas Bloom, “Before the pandemic, only around 5% of the typical U.S. workforce worked from home; at the pandemic’s onset, it skyrocketed to 61.5%. Currently, about 30% of employees work from home.”
While plenty of workers were thrilled to have a newly nonexistent commute, working from home caused a new potential issue: loneliness. In fact, just recently, the U.S. Surgeon General, Dr. Vivek Murthy, issued a powerful report on Our Epidemic of Loneliness and Isolation.
You might think that simply going back into an office full-time (as many CEOs say they want) would make us less lonely. If only it were that simple.
Here’s a scenario I hear all too often: A manager announces that a team is coming back into the office 2-3 days a week. But because the employee can choose whatever days work best, the employee shows up to find that no one from their team is actually there. Plus, the employee’s doing the exact same work that they could be doing from home — aka Zooming into meetings.
This not only leads to what I call a “Recipe for Resentment,” but causes employees to feel even more disconnected and lonely. Instead, we need to be intentional about how people connect when they come together.
Here are three ways businesses are attempting to banish the likelihood of WFH blues:
Curating Connection
Camaraderie doesn’t always happen spontaneously: It’s important for companies to make sure that when employees come together IRL, they’re engaging with each other and feel a sense of belonging.
At Meetup, a platform for hosting and organizing in-person and virtual activities, CEO David Siegel hired a People Coordinator to curate opportunities for employees to connect both in the office and in locations around NYC at what they call “hangouts.” When a group of remote team members recently met up in Queens for a picnic, Siegel even joined in. Two employees soon realized their kids attend the same school, others got to know people on different teams, and everyone enjoyed chatting with the CEO up close and personal.
In 2022, Airbnb announced a “Live and Work Anywhere” policy. The key to this policy is that even though there’s tremendous flexibility in where people live and (yes) work, the company is very intentional in how employees gather. To ensure that connection happens, Airbnb formed a team called Ground Control, whose job is to “ensure the right people are in the right place at the right time for these large gatherings.”
Rethinking Meetings
When it comes to meetings, I think we’d all agree that more isn’t necessarily better. All meetings (IRL and remote) should have a clear purpose and require both employees’ physical and psychological presence.
But not all meetings have to be about achieving business goals. In fact, meetings can be a space to “not work” on purpose, and instead focus on deepening relationships. And that’s actually very important work, too.
Jellyvision, a Chicago-based software company, had a strong in-person culture before the pandemic. They even had a room where Jellyvision employees came together and rocked out to the company band (called, wait for it — The Jellyvision Band). But over the last few years, Jellyvision moved to a remote-first model and had to rethink the role of in-person meetings.
Now, Jellyvision’s monthly gatherings are either fully remote or fully in person. And those in-person meetings are designed to build intimacy, trust, productivity, and fun. According to CEO Amanda Lannert, “The most important thing Jellyvision’s doing right now is getting coworkers together to not work — to just be human, because that’s where trust and loyalty come in. People aren’t loyal to companies, people are loyal to people. Similarly, people aren’t inspired by companies, largely they’re inspired by people.”
At a time when loneliness is a major health hazard, finding ways to bring people together solely to connect and build trust and loyalty can and does make all the difference.
Giving Back
Some companies are finding ways to combine in-office days with the opportunity to give back to the community. Working in the Schools (WITS) is a Chicago-based organization that connects companies and their employees to students in neighborhood schools, for mentoring and building literacy skills.
A VP at Hyatt — a participating organization — described to me the shift before and after a WITS visit: “The bus is silent on the drive there, because people are heads-down, sending out last-minute emails. But once we arrive at school, our moods and focus change and we spend the next 45 minutes talking, drawing, laughing, and reading with our students. After we say our goodbyes, we load back on the yellow bus for the journey back to work. The conversation on the bus on the way back to the office is 180 degrees different, and it continues on the walk back to the office, to the lunchroom, and on throughout the day. Everyone in the whole office feels the energy and understands the value of the program and their impact. It’s contagious.”
When we focus on something bigger than ourselves, we feel less lonely. According to The New York Times, in a study of 10,000 volunteers, two thirds of the group felt less socially isolated because of their volunteer work.
Hybrid work is here to stay, and that’s a good thing. Who can argue with the ease of getting our work done and having time to walk the dog on a break? With that flexibility, we’re all better off. But facilitating strong interpersonal ties at the office is important, too. In fact, office relationships are not only good for a company’s bottom line, they’re good for employees’ overall productivity and happiness. In his report, Dr. Murthy found that “Supportive and inclusive relationships at work are associated with employee job satisfaction, creativity, competence, and better job performance.”
In other words, coming back to the office can be a cure for loneliness and even make the world a better place. That is, if we approach it the right way.
Erica Keswin is a 2x Wall Street Journal bestselling author, speaker, workplace strategist and professional dot connector. Her new book, The Retention Revolution: 7 Surprising (Yet Very Human) Ways to Keep Your Employees Connected to Your Company (McGraw Hill), comes out Sept 26, 2023.
