Most organizations invest heavily in collaboration tools, team-building events, and open office designs. Yet 1 in 5 employees globally report feeling lonely at work often (Gallup, 2024). Something isn’t connecting.

Workplace loneliness–“the psychological pain of perceived relational deficiencies in the workplace” (Wright and Silard, 2021, p.1064) — is not just a personal struggle. It’s an organizational issue that shapes how people show up, how they collaborate and whether talents stay or leave. People can feel lonely at work even when surrounded by others if they lack the quality of connection they need.

For this article, we spoke with senior people leaders, including a senior manager at a telecommunications company, a former chief people officer at an international law firm, and an organizational development practitioner. These conversations reveal that workplace loneliness shows up in the metrics you already track, why ignoring it becomes costly, and what these professionals are doing to build more connected workplaces. 

Loneliness is an organizational issue

Loneliness is often treated as something individuals need to manage on their own.  The leaders we spoke with see it differently. 

Ms Flo LaBrado, Senior Manager at a telecommunication company and Leadership Coach at Olive and Grace Leadership, frames it as a shared responsibility:

“An organization is a group of people coming together […]…collaborate and achieve something greater than they each might achieve on their own.  While the organization is not responsible for the entire life of the employee, there is some responsibility–[…]–the person is giving something…[…]…[to] a collective…[…]…with an understanding that the organization will also take care of the person.”

She stressed something many employees quietly expect. Not that their company will fix everything in their personal life, but that how work is structured—the norms, systems, and leadership behavior—will support rather than undermine their ability to connect and do their best work.

Disconnection shows up in the numbers you already track

Loneliness isn’t only about how people feel. It appears in the metrics leaders already bring to the boardroom.

Ms Amy Horn, who previously served as Chief People Officer at an international law firm, sees this clearly in post-COVID work environments where organic connection opportunities have diminished:

“Loneliness has ripple effects on disengagement, presenteeism, and turnover. Where connection is strong, teams show resilience and collaboration; where weak performance suffers. Retention and attrition trends confirm that connected personnel stay, while disconnected personnel leave.”

Mr Ross Villamil, an Organizational Development practitioner, observes the same pattern at the team level:

“When people feel connected, they communicate openly, share ideas, and follow through better. When loneliness sets in, participation drops and performance becomes less consistent.”

Ms LaBrado connects this directly to what many organizations already care about–innovation and high performance:  

“There’s tons of evidence that having a sense of belonging at work is related to psychological safety. [When] people feel connected and feel psychological safety, which is correlated with creativity and innovation, that of course is related to high performance.”

The message from these leaders is consistent: loneliness isn’t just about wellbeing. It’s about whether teams can collaborate, learn, innovate, and stay.

What the research shows

Industry reports back up what these leaders are seeing. The scale is not trivial: workplace loneliness costs UK employers an estimated £2.5 billion annually (Jeffrey et al., 2017). Globally, 1 in 5 employees report feeling lonely at work often (Gallup, 2024).

Research connects these feelings to business outcomes. A survey of over 5,900 US workers found that lonelier employees reported higher stress-related absenteeism and stronger turnover intentions (Bowers et al., 2022). Edmondson’s (1999) work positions psychological safety as a driver of performance through learning behavior: in psychologically safe teams, people engage in more learning behaviors, and these behaviors, in turn, link psychological safety to better team performance.

The pattern is clear: workplace loneliness is not only a wellbeing issue. It’s a core organizational issue that shapes performance, retention, and culture.

Practical Moves Leaders Are Making To Create Connected Workplaces

The leaders we spoke with agree on two things. First, workplace loneliness won’t shift without intentional effort. Second, every organization has its own mix of factors driving disconnection–the goal isn’t to copy someone else’s program, but to focus on what matters in your own context.

In their experience, activities like team-building or social events only work when they sit on stronger foundations: capable leadership, reasonable workloads, and clear ways of working. Without those, you risk treating symptoms rather than root causes.

Based on what has worked in their settings, they focus on: 

• Invest in leader capacity and skills: Train leaders to build connected teams, communicate clearly across levels, and hold regular check-ins that go beyond tasks to include how people are really doing.
• Use in-person training to build cohorts: Design in-person programs that do more than transfer knowledge–use them to build peer networks, shared identity, and trust that carry on beyond the session.
• Create everyday connection rituals: Embed simple, repeatable practices into the workday–brief check-in rounds, mentoring pairs, peer coaching circles, cross-team projects, so connection becomes a habit rather than event.
• Design structured opportunities to meet and reconnect: Plan regular spaces for people to reconnect as humans, not just roles: team lunches, volunteering activities, and social activities that make informal conversation easier.
• Support remote and hybrid teams intentionally: Build deliberate touchpoints for remote staff, including clear inclusion norms for meetings, social time across time zones, and ways to participate informally, not just in formal updates.                                                            
• Pair data with conversations: Use engagement surveys, participation rates, and other people metrics to spot patterns, then validate and explain them through manager check-ins, focus groups, and employee conversations. Numbers show where to look; conversations reveal what to change.
• Normalise conversations about wellbeing: Encourage leaders to name stress, loneliness, and mental health as legitimate topics in one-to-ones and team spaces. Position these as part of how the organization sustains performance, not as something separate from “real work.”

Final note

Workplace loneliness is easy to miss until you start looking for it. Once you do, you may realize it is more present in your organization than you thought. That is not a failure–it is useful information.

If you treat loneliness as a serious organizational issue, link it to the metrics you already care about, and respond with intentional, context-aware action, you’re already moving towards a more connected workplace.

Our research-backed questionnaire helps people leaders identify where disconnection shows up and what’s driving it. Access the workplace loneliness assessment here.

Key takeaways

• Workplace loneliness is an organizational issue, not just a personal one: It shapes how people show up, collaborate, and how long they stay. Structures, leadership behavior, and culture either support connection or quietly undermine it.
  
• You are probably already seeing its impact in your metrics: Loneliness appears in engagement, retention, performance, and psychological safety. Connected people tend to stay, contribute, and learn. Disconnected people tend to withdraw or leave.
  
• Intentional, context-specific action works better than generic activities: The leaders we spoke with focus on leader capacity, everyday connection rituals, and approaches tailored to their context–not on one-off events or off-the-shelf programs.

References

Bowers, A., Wu, J., Lustig, S., and Nemecek, D. (2022). Loneliness influences avoidable absenteeism and turnover intention reported by adult workers in the United States. Journal of Organizational Effectiveness: People and Performance, 9(2), 312-335.

Edmondson, A. (1999). Psychological safety and learning behavior in work teams. Administrative science quarterly, 44(2), 350-383.

Gallup. (2024). State of the Global Workplace 2024 Report. https://www.gallup.com/workplace/645566/employees-worldwide-feel-lonely.aspx

Jeffrey, K., Abdallah, S., and Michaelson, J. (2017). The cost of loneliness to UK employers, New Economics Foundation.

Wright, S., and Silard, A. (2021). Unravelling the antecedents of loneliness in the workplace. Human Relations, 74(7), 1060-1081.