MANAGEMENT

Loneliness on the Job: Why No Employee Is

an Island
Mar 09, 2018  North America  Business Radio, Podcasts, Research

The workplace can be a curious environment. Dozens or even hundreds of employees can labor
side by side for hours, spending more time with each other than with anyone else, yet they don’t
feel connected. New research shows that loneliness isn’t just damaging to mental health; it can
also lower job performance. Wharton management professor Sigal Barsade and Hakan Ozcelik,
management professor at California State University, Sacramento, joined the
Knowledge@Wharton show on SiriusXM channel 111 to talk about their study of loneliness in
the workplace and what managers can do to help. Their new paper, which was published in the
Academy of Management Journal, is titled, “No Employee an Island: Workplace Loneliness and
Job Performance.”

An edited transcript of the conversation follows.

Knowledge@Wharton: There has not been much research on loneliness in the workplace. Why?
Sigal Barsade: It’s really left us mysti ed because there has been a ton of research looking at
loneliness in other domains. That research has found really negative results on mental health,
cognitive functioning, physical health, even longevity. People tend to think that if you’re lonely,
you’re lonely everywhere. But that’s not true. What research has shown is that you can be lonely
in your private life, in your family life, in your romantic life — it depends on the place. Hakan
and I were shocked when we saw that all the research had been done in non-worklife; [despite]
how much time we spend at work, virtually none had been done at work. We said, “Let’s look
into that.”

Knowledge@Wharton: In the paper, you wrote that loneliness has been referred to by experts
as an epidemic. That’s interesting.

Hakan Ozcelik: Yes, I nd that interesting, too. I nd that a bit concerning as a human being,
but I’m also excited as a researcher. In the United Kingdom, Prime Minister Theresa May
recently announced the creation of a minister of loneliness. After doing extensive research, they
realized that a signi cant portion of the population feels lonely. Now they have a minister of
loneliness in the country, which I think is the rst in human history.

Knowledge@Wharton: Part of your research looks at how co-workers treat each other, correct?

Barsade: Loneliness is a very subjective feeling, and the word “subjective” is critical here,
meaning it’s how I feel about it — whether my emotional or social needs are being met, and
feeling badly when they’re not met. The reason “subjective” is so important is that you could
have the same two employees in exactly the same environment, but if they have di erent levels
of need for closeness, then one could be lonely and the other could not. A work team isn’t a
panacea for it. While it will help in the sense of giving more opportunity for contact, there are
many other factors that are going to depend on what people are looking for and what they’re
getting back.

“What research has shown is that you can be

lonely in your private life, in your family life, in
your romantic life — it depends on the place.”
–Sigal Barsade

Knowledge@Wharton: How do you de ne loneliness at work?

Barsade: People sometimes get confused about what is meant by loneliness. It’s things like: Do I
have somebody to turn to here? Do I feel like I’m in touch with the people around me? It’s not
solitude. A lot of times, people will think, “Does that mean if I’m alone or I’m a virtual worker,
I’m automatically lonely?” No, it’s about your desire on that front. Workplaces need to be
thinking about what their employees need and go accordingly from that. That’s why we started
to do the study, to see if [loneliness] really in uences anything. It certainly in uences how
people feel, and that’s important in its own right. But from a business perspective, from an
organizational perspective, is this just the employee’s problem, or is it also the organization’s
problem in the sense of performance and outcomes? We looked at it standardized over many
occupations and jobs across two types of organizations, so we used manager performance
ratings for that. What we found is that resoundingly, it did. Greater workplace loneliness on the
part of employees led to lower performance.

Knowledge@Wharton: Is this an issue to address at the individual level, or should the company
be concerned as well?

Ozcelik: I think both, but de nitely on the side of the manager because they are getting the
extra salary to take care of the work environment and to make sure that things are running
smoothly. Given that people can feel lonely at work but not in another domain indicates there
might be something happening in the workplace that makes that employee lonely. There are
many di erent factors at the managerial level that can be taken into account to prevent that. As
Sigal mentioned, you can have exactly the same working environment, yet two di erent
employees might respond in very di erent ways because they might have di erent levels for
loneliness. One of them might be far away from being lonely, and the other one might as well be
standing on the cli .

What we are also nding in our research is that there might be a loop that people get into. Once
you start getting that feeling of loneliness, it doesn’t stop there. Once employees start giving
signs that they might feel lonely, they also start behaving di erently. If managers spot it early
on and nd a way to bring the employee back in, then I think the problems will be [fewer] than
just leaving the employee on their own. It’s the manager’s job, in a way, to take care of them.
It’s not the employee’s private business.

Knowledge@Wharton: There is also the aspect of how other employees feel towards that lonely
person and whether that has an emotional impact on the work space.

Ozcelik: I think that brings in the contagious aspect of loneliness. Although we didn’t look at it
in our study, we know from the social side and neuroscience research that loneliness can be
contagious. Other people’s loneliness can easily become our own because it’s relational. Once
the relational network gets infected, suddenly you’ve got these employees behaving strangely.
In that sense, it’s not an altruistic choice for a manager or a co-worker to help out a lonely
employee. It’s almost a managerial need that they need to take care of, a relational need. As a
colleague, they need to reach out to an employee who feels lonely.

“Loneliness is almost like a prison. Once you are

in there, the paradigm’s totally different.”
–Hakan Ozcelik

Barsade: As researchers, we want to understand why greater loneliness leads to lower work
performance. The psychology literature has shown this very powerful but very odd result, which
is that loneliness, in theory, should be there to signal to us that our needs aren’t being met. It’s
a motivational state, not a trait. You’re not dispositionally lonely. You can be chronically lonely,
but it’s not something you’re born with. We, as humans, have a need to connect. You would
think that if you’re lonely, that’s a signal to connect. In the beginning, it is. If you’re in a new
city or a new workplace, it gets you moving.

But what the psychology literature has shown is that once loneliness is an established
sentiment — you’ve decided you’re lonely — you actually become less approachable. You don’t
listen as well. You become more self-focused. All sorts of things happen that make you less of a
desirable interaction partner to other people. We found that was one of the things that
explained the lower performance. The co-workers of lonely people found them less
approachable. Because of that, they didn’t share things and didn’t get the resources they
needed. By the way, the literature showed it’s not that they have lower social skills. Loneliness
makes it happen.

Knowledge@Wharton: What sectors of employment did you research for this study?

Barsade: We looked at a public municipality, which was really interesting because we have
clerks and truck drivers and managers and engineers and police. We also looked at a private
company that was an outsourcer…. We had over 41 di erent positions there, and 44 in the other
one. One of the strengths of the study is that there was no signi cant di erence in the amount
of loneliness in the public municipality compared to the private company. There also was no
di erence in loneliness based on age, sex, education or tenure.

Knowledge@Wharton: There’s no pattern to loneliness?

Ozcelik: It’s an emotion, and emotions are functional. If you are early on the road, like you’re a
newcomer to a company, it’s great that you feel lonely because that way you take some of the
interpersonal risks to reach out to people, to make acquaintances, to make friends. But if you
stay lonely for some time and start getting into the psychological processes that are in uencing
your perception and thinking about how your social world is, then it becomes a cycle. It’s almost
like a prison. Once you are in there, the paradigm’s totally di erent. You are not yourself
anymore. It’s kind of a psychological prison that people create. Management should nd a way
to bail them out as soon as possible because anybody can get lonely at any time. It’s a very
powerful situation to be in. With the help of other people, those distorted perceptions can be
xed pretty easily with communication, with some relationship building. But if lonely
employees are left to their own devices for some time, things might get even worse.

Barsade:  My colleague Mandy O’Neill (management professor, George Mason University) and I
have done some work in emotional culture — the norms around what emotions you’re allowed
to express at work and what you’re better o suppressing. We looked at the emotional culture of
the teams and found that in emotional cultures of companionate love [that include] care,
compassion and tenderness, even lonely employees were more likely to be perceived as
approachable and committed to the organization — which was the other explanatory variable
about why performance went down.

We also looked at an emotional culture of anger. Not surprisingly, anger amped up the
relationship between loneliness and lack of approachability. If you think about, lonely people
are very sensitive to social rejection and social cues. Anything that a manager can do in terms of
creating a culture that sends out cues that are supportive is helpful.

“Greater workplace loneliness on the part of

employees led to lower performance.”
–Sigal Barsade

We also looked to see whether it’s better to be surrounded by other lonely people. If you’re
lonely and the people around you are lonely, then you can [all] get together. That was totally not
the case. The lonelier the co-workers were, the worse the approachability behavior. So, all these
lonely people are just bouncing o each other. We’re not the rst to nd that. There’s other
research showing that if you just put lonely people together and tell them to talk to each other,
it doesn’t work.
Knowledge@Wharton: You mentioned the role that the manager plays in mitigating workplace
loneliness. But the manager is one piece to the entire company. Should this e ort go all the way
up to the C-suite?

Barsade: I love your question because as a scholar who also studies culture in general, you’re
spot on. Clearly, you’re going to be in a much more powerful position if the company as a whole
is taking its emotional culture seriously, as well as some aspects of cognitive culture, like
having a culture of respect. But the reason emotional culture matters so much in this case is
because loneliness is an emotional state. Many companies are only starting now to realize that
this type of culture matters.

Knowledge@Wharton: Recognizing and addressing loneliness is one way companies can better
understand their employees. It’s an investment in their human capital.

Ozcelik:  I think employees have an increasing level of expectations from their organization
simply because our professions make up a huge component of our identity. We are not doing our
jobs just for a paycheck; we want to be a part of the group. We want to be respected. We want to
feel that we are having a good quality of life. I think this is getting more profound with the new
generation. They might be more relationship-oriented than we are, so it’s important for
companies to take that into account. They need to create that relational environment and
provide opportunities for employees to build relationships.

One thing that we need to be careful about, though, is if these attempts to help reduce loneliness
at organizations stay at the surface level or at an arti cial level. [Ideas like] “Let’s have more
social parties. Let’s bring people together so that they will bond,” would de nitely be a problem
for lonely people because they are not connected to begin with. You go to a Christmas party.
Everybody is having fun, and you are sitting there and feeling that you are not part of the group.
You might actually feel even lonelier. It’s important to focus on relationship-building rather
than increasing the interaction. If somebody is lonely, more interaction might create even more
pain, which is more challenging. Solutions should be a lot smarter than just having more socials
or company picnics on the weekends. They should be more relational, where two human beings
can get together and relate so they start bonding.

Knowledge@Wharton: Can we recognize loneliness in our co-workers and step up to help?

Barsade: In our study, we showed we could recognize it because we had co-workers rate the
loneliness of the people around them. It was statistically signi cant. It’s not perfect, but we can
absolutely see it.
The second part is, are they going to do anything about it? If we go back to the fact that the
lonely person is often behaving in a less approachable way, they’re not encouraging people to
go towards them. On the one hand, that’s kind of a pushing o . On the other hand, if you have
this culture of love that reaches out to people, that’s a pushing in. Again, that’s where
management has a little bit more control in this situation. I don’t think we should cede all this
to management by any means. Individually, we can have empathy and we can reach out.
Individuals can say, “Hey, I’m going to ask this person to go to lunch.” When you see somebody
who’s lonely at work, it is really painful. Separate from the fact that it’s going to in uence work
performance, it’s a painful state and something you want to help your co-workers with.

Knowledge@Wharton: Hakan, what are your thoughts?

“We are not doing our jobs just for a paycheck;

we want to be a part of the group.” –Hakan Ozcelik

Ozcelik: I think managers need to keep an eye on the critical incidents because sometimes
things change, and then employees might start changing their perceptions. If they are prone to
loneliness, they might start over-reading the situation. For instance, somebody doesn’t get a
promotion. One employee might see that as a performance problem or a matter of contingency,
whereas another employee who’s prone to loneliness might see that as “the whole organization
is turning on me.” The manager should make it clear to that employee that it is what it is, and
that they should not be really worrying and over-reading the situation.

Then there’s change in an organization, especially [regarding] the in-group and out-group.
Leaders in the in-group usually feel connected and supported. But what happens when the
leader leaves? Those employees will be expecting a new type of relationship. If they don’t nd
what they had in the past, they might start thinking, “No one likes me anymore. My
organization is against me.”

Whenever there are changes, it’s important to ne tune the perceptions of the employees in
case they have a tendency to feel lonely.

Knowledge@Wharton: How can companies apply your research?

Barsade: The message from an organizational perspective to managers and leaders is that
loneliness is not just an individual thing. It is something that impacts the bottom line in
organizations, and you need to pay attention to it. For individual employees, I think the
bottom-line message is if you nd yourself in a lonely situation, that is something really worth
trying to address and deal with. The thing about workplaces is that unlike social life or other
[contexts], we didn’t get to choose the people around us. Sometimes there’s just not going to be
a t, so you may nd that maybe you just don’t want to be there. Maybe another team would be
better. There are di erent ways to go about addressing it. Obviously, we don’t want people just
leaving their work because that wouldn’t be very e cient.

Ozcelik: Every little part we are doing in organizations is relational. Even with very speci c
tasks, we eventually talk with someone, we work with someone, we think with someone. Once
the relations get infected, it will start in uencing everything in the organization.

The new generation of organizations is creating new environments for employees, which might
be a good thing but at the same time might be challenging in that if you are working in a formal
organization where everybody is wearing suits and ties and roles are so clear, there’s not much
room to get close. People are just acting their roles, so expectations might be lower. But if
people are attempting work in environments where we expect them to genuinely connect and
they cannot, loneliness might really become a problem. It’s important to take that into account
by changing the cultures and structures of companies.

All materials copyright of the Wharton School (http://www.wharton.upenn.edu/) of the University of

Pennsylvania (http://www.upenn.edu/).