Loneliness an Emerging Scourge of Today’s Workplace

HIGH-PROFILE cases of sexual harassment, widespread bullying and an increasing incidence of mental ill-health have featured prominently across the Australian workplace landscape this year.  

And while we can reasonably expect those challenges to continue long in to new year, it is possible that 2019 will also herald in a somewhat new and potentially devastating workplace challenge: workplace loneliness.

According to the recently released Australian Loneliness Report by the Australian Psychological Society and Swinburne University,one in four Australians admitted they were experiencing loneliness – a state of mind that arises as result of being distressingly dissatisfied with one’s personal and social relationships.

Those findings align with a global trend affecting countries such as the United States, Japan and Britain and which has seen some governments flurrying to respond to the emergence of what has been described by some as a new public health epidemic.

In Britain, for example, a new ministerial portfolio for loneliness has been created with responsibility for developing a country-wide strategy to reduce loneliness and thereby truncate the impact on individuals, business and the broader community.  

That impact is severe, with many from the medical fraternity agreeing that loneliness is not only bad for our mental health but equally debilitating for our physical health.

Disturbingly, some experts suggest that chronic long-term loneliness can result in a reduced lifespan equivalent to that of a person smoking 15 cigarettes a day – an even greater threat than presented by obesity.   

But what’s this got to do with your workplace, you might reasonably ask? How is it possible to be surrounded by your co-workers on daily basis and still feel lonely? And has the workplace contributed to this issue?

Since Australians spend so much of their life at work, it follows that it is important they make friends with those they work with.  

Yet the modern workplace has been a key player in escalating levels of loneliness in our society through inadvertently creating impediments to the types of day-to-day interaction which might evolve into friendships – and defeat loneliness.

We email co-workers, sacrificing the opportunity to speak by phone or face-to-face. We wear headphones in modern open plan offices to reduce noise and at the same time signalling to others that we don’t want to be disturbed. And we increasingly work from home to save commute time, which strangles any direct human contact with our work tribe.  

Our workloads have increased so we don’t stop to enjoy the company of our co-workers during a coffee or lunch break as much as we used to, and the introduction of hot-desking means it is much harder to get to know anyone really well. The so-called watercooler chat has all been but replaced by texting and other forms of instant messaging.  

As bleak as all this sound, it is a fair reflection of what is happening in the workplace. We have started taking the human dimension out of the workplace without considering the consequences, and if technological advances continue at the current rate we are likely to see even more disengagement among employees.

Most workplace experts will agree that a well-bonded or socially cohesive workforce is key to effective and rewarding teamwork. 

Socially connected employees are thought to have better levels of self-esteem and feel more secure and respected.

And the greater an employee’s sense of psychological well-being, the more likely this is to translate into higher productivity and performance.

But what we are beginning to observe in many workplaces is that once fertile grounds for social interaction and friendships are being transformed into barren wastelands which breed nothing but loneliness.

There is only one solution. 

Employers and employees must recognise the emerging loneliness epidemic before it results in permanent damage to employee engagement and productivity.

And you do that by bringing back some of the human dimensions of yesteryear’s work culture that promoted friendship and engagement in the workplace.

Professor Gary Martin is Chief Executive Officer, the Australian Institute of Management WA.