Workplace loneliness

Loneliness is considered one of the most dangerous sicknesses of the XXI century. It is considered as toxic as 15 cigarettes. The workplace loneliness is also growing and although you spend all day surrounded by your colleagues you can still feel alone.

Technology replaced most of the human interaction and the trend of ”working from home” decreased the socialization between people. Even if we work from the same place, we can choose to put some headphones to focus more on our tasks or we can skip the lunch with the team because of a meeting.

Because of this, companies can and they have to combat this loneliness in some ways:

• Have collaborative and supportive teams
• Encourage work-life integration (not balance)
• Encourage the contribution of each member of the team
• Organize networking events with the team with a certain periodicity
• Organize an effective onboarding process
• Show appreciation in a way that is relevant for the employee
• Ask each employee with a certain periodicity of how he/she feels

Beside what companies do, we can take some initiatives to know well our colleagues. For this, we can try to open discussions with some colleagues we don’t know so well, but we are really interest to know them better. On this way, we can find people with similar values or similar hobbies. We can realise that we are neighbours with some of our colleagues and it might help us to make new friends.

In the end, I don't think that it is important how many colleagues you have. It matters how well you know them.

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