Connection: Your competitive edge at the office

We're more digitally connected than ever before, yet so many of us still feel lonely. What happens when we feel isolated even when we’re not alone? These feelings don’t just disappear when we head to the office. So, what can we do about loneliness at work?

That's the trillion-dollar question discussed during a recent SXSW “Working to Solve our Loneliness Epidemic” session. Led by JLL's Christian Beaudoin, Global Head of Marketing, and organizational psychologist Dr. Constance Noonan Hadley, this fireside chat wasn't a corporate kumbaya – it was a wake-up call for business leaders stuck in a “traditional” workplace mentality when our ways of working have shifted dramatically, and for anyone who feels lonely at work.

At this point, most business leaders see that mandating everyone return to the office in a highly structured manner isn't the only solution for the future of work. Post-quarantine, the push for in-office days has been met with considerable resistance across all types of businesses.

Even as employees are getting accustomed to being back in the office more often, “top talent” values work-life balance, flexibility and workplace experience. When those values are reflected in an organization, many employees convert to “office advocates.”

A critical point for executives: loneliness isn't good for your bottom line, affecting productivity and talent retention. Dr. Hadley’s research found that lonely employees are 40% more likely to quit, leading to high turnover costs. Not only that, but loneliness can spread among people.

“Loneliness starts as an incident, becomes a pattern, and then becomes kind of a syndrome,” Hadley explained. “And one of the ways that it can spread in organizations is that if you are lonely, you start to have more withdrawal and defensive behaviors… that can make other people feel a bit lonely…. We know a lot about behavioral mimicry and emotional contagion and how that can spread.”

Staving off workplace loneliness is not as simple as just bringing everyone together, being in the same location at the same time.

“While time together is certainly critical, there’s no direct correlation between the number of days you've been in the office and how connected you feel,” Beaudoin revealed. “Before the pandemic, when most of us weren't spending as much time remote… some people were still lonely in the office.” In fact, three years before the COVID-19 pandemic hit, Vivek Murthy, former U.S. Surgeon General, wrote about “Work and the Loneliness Epidemic” in Harvard Business Review.

Forcing employees back to the office may even increase loneliness if done without consideration for their preferences, according to Hadley. “Loneliness is in part this feeling of not mattering. People don't care about you. They don't care what you think. They don't care who you are. They're not paying attention to you.”

So, what's a forward-thinking company to do? It's time to get strategic about social connection. This isn't about mandatory fun (we're looking at you, awkward office happy hours). It's about creating what Hadley calls “social infrastructure” – incorporating connection into the process of how work gets done.

“The frequency of connection is much more important than the volume of it,” she noted. “The bottom line of a social infrastructure strategy is that it matters a lot less what those opportunities are. You don’t need to overcomplicate it...What matters is that it is a regular routine, part of the way that work gets done.” The key is to show that each employee matters to the team, to the firm and to the work that gets done. Companies need to be creative and flexible in their approach to workplace and people strategy.

Dr. Hadley urged companies to start measuring employee satisfaction (including loneliness) and its impact on productivity metrics. “We all know data drives decisions, so start calculating what's going on in your organization,” she said. For employees from security guard to CEO, she advised you intentionally and genuinely connect with colleagues and try new things to grow your network.

As we navigate the future of work, addressing loneliness isn't just humanitarian – it's a business imperative. This SXSW session made it clear: companies that crack the code on meaningful workplace connection won't just have happier employees; they'll have a serious competitive edge.

Wish you had been at SXSW to see this fireside chat? You don’t have to miss out: a full video recording of this SXSW session is available below. Trust us, it's worth every minute – your team (and your bottom line) will thank you.