The Loneliness Epidemic: What Should HR & Learning Be Doing?

You would have thought that once the final restrictions of the pandemic were lifted, it would have been party time in both our work and social lives. Like my dog longing to visit the park to see his buddies, we just needed the perpetual rain to stop. Loneliness was the inevitable result of isolation, and once those measures were lifted, loneliness would dissipate, or so we thought. Such is not the case. Across the globe, loneliness has recently been called an epidemic by the U.S. Surgeon General.

In the post-pandemic workplace, just coming back to the office two to three times a week is not enough to cause people to feel a sense of belonging and community. In stress-related absenteeism costs only, loneliness cost employers an estimated $154 billion annually. If the role of HR & Learning includes convening people and creating community at work, shouldn't this be a higher topic of interest than it seems to be? In some interesting research by The Cigna Group, a few insights make it even more compelling for us to consider how we can create thriving environments.

1. Younger workers are lonelier than older ones. Loneliness is not the realm of only older adults. 42% of people aged 18-34 feel left out, compared to less than half of that for people over 55.
2. Underrepresented racial groups are more likely to be lonely. Hispanics and Black adults were at least 10 percentage points higher on the loneliness scale as compared to all others.
3. New employees are lonelier than tenured employees. Employees with less than a year of tenure are far more likely to report feeling alone, isolated, or left out as compared to seasoned ones.

Clearly these are employee segments that organizations care deeply about keeping engaged and part of a vital company culture. I'm convinced there's more we need to do create thriving workplaces in the post-pandemic world. For every event we bring people together, we should be looking for ways to build community and connection. Whether it's an off-site, live meeting, virtual happy hour, all-hands, or learning event, we need to look for ways to bring more depth to our human connections.

Jeanne C Meister and I reported long ago that e-Learning is the least preferred method of learning among all age groups. People want connection and attachment to experts and to each other. After having spent incredible amounts of money on leadership programs in my six times as a CLO, I was always a bit both deflated and elated to hear (repeatedly), "The best part was being able to connect with peers and learn from them." Learning events, done right, have the power to connect people with ideas, culture, leaders, experts and each other in ways that can lead to long-lasting bonds.

Learning can diminish loneliness, I am convinced, if we design for humans being together. Necessarily this calls for some level of synchronous learning, as well as meaningful cohorts. The barrier to the learning function has always been that meaningful synchronous learning tended to cap out at forty or so learners. Now, with AI platforms, it is possible to engage with thousands of learners per event and still create the buzz and excitement -- loneliness killers -- of live events.

I confess I buried the lede in this article, intentionally. 2024 is turning out to be a year where I'm crafting a collection of important and meaningful fractional roles across a small portfolio of brands, including my chief customer strategy role at GP Strategies Corporations. These companies have in common addressing big problems or new opportunities that are important to HR & Learning. I'm pleased to announce that I'm moving from an advisor role to CLO in Residence for Uplimit, because I can see the power of this AI-fueled platform to bring cohorts of learners together with experts and leaders in a way that brings joy and meaning back to learning at scale.

In collaboration with Uplimit, GP, and a few other leading firms to be announced, I'll be hosting a number of dinners across the US and possibly beyond in 2024 to discuss topics such as what AI means for learning, how we build outcome-based learning, how to craft community and belonging through learning, how to build high-fidelity learning to enable skills-based hiring, coaching at scale, and other topics as they emerge. Please let me know if you'd be interested in any of these topics and join me and a few of your smart peers for some great conversation, to learn together, and to build new friends.