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The COVID-19 pandemic was a seismic event rippling through nearly every aspect of our lives, but some of the most dramatic and devastating effects occurred in the workplace. Once bustling offices were hollowed out by remote and hybrid work, impersonal messaging apps replaced face-to-face conversations, meetings and performance reviews were conducted virtually, and stress skyrocketed.
Along with these changes came a blossoming epidemic of workplace loneliness—one that still continues to this day. According to Gallup’s 2024 “Global Workplace Condition” report, more than one in five respondents reported feeling lonely “a lot” of the workday, with that number rising to one in four workers under the age of 35.
To get a more comprehensive view of loneliness in the workplace, management experts from Portland State University conducted a meta-review of 233 empirical studies on the subject. They published their findings in the Journal of Management.
The researchers stressed that loneliness is an emotion that’s distinct from isolation. Because loneliness is a subjective feeling about the quality of interpersonal relationships, researchers said, it’s possible to feel the gnawing distress of loneliness even in a crowded office.
Read more: “We’re Killing Ourselves with Work”
The researchers found that, much like hunger, loneliness is a biological signal from our bodies pushing us to seek out connection with our fellow human beings. Accordingly, just like hunger, problems can arise when we experience chronic loneliness. They also found that employment generally curbs loneliness, as retired people and the jobless tend to report feeling lonely more often. Still, there are risk factors that can cause people with jobs to feel more lonely, such as high stress, low autonomy, and a lack of support from managers.
“Work can be a sanctuary from loneliness, but it can also be the source,” the researchers wrote.
Speaking of managers, researchers also discovered that lonely leaders are less effective and can have detrimental effects on the well-being of the employees they supervise. In other words, loneliness can be contagious from the top down.
It’s a bleak set of circumstances, but there’s still a glimmer of hope. While only a sliver of the studies they analyzed touched on remedies to workplace loneliness, the researchers identified some practices that showed promise, including stress management, social skills training, volunteering, and mindfulness exercises.
“Given the connection between workplace characteristics and loneliness, organizations should consider that loneliness is not a personal issue, and instead is a business issue,” study author Berrin Erdogan explained in a statement. “Businesses have an opportunity to design jobs and organizations in a way that will prioritize employee relational well-being.”
Happy hour, anyone? 
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Lead image: Overearth / Shutterstock
