Loneliness is what we feel when our social connections fall wanting meeting our needs. At its core, it reflects a basic human need: to feel close and connected to others. But it's also often an invisible experience.
Loneliness will not be just a private problem. It can be a workplace. Gallup's 2025 Global Workplace Report It showed that 22% of employees felt lonely on their previous work day. Managers were no exception: 23% of them reported feeling lonely.
Workplace loneliness can affect anyone and may silently harm engagement, well-being and performance. For leaders, the stakes are high. When they face isolation, it will possibly completely shape how they interact with their teams. They may communicate less openly, avoid or withdraw feedback. A single leader affects the whole environment of their workplace, shaping team dynamics, morale and performance.
Together with our colleagues, Michelle Hammond (University of Auckland) and Keming Yang (Durham University), we've studied Loneliness in the workplace And found that managers can feel lonely due to the demands of their role and the things they experience in the course of the workday. These things may vary from everyday.
As managers move up the hierarchy, their status and responsibilities increase, which may create distance from each their team members and peers. Building communications depend upon having the ability to exhibit risk. But every day pressures, tough decisions and privacy barriers often make it difficult for managers to open up. As a result, their need for social contact could also be unusual on some days, while on other days they might feel engaged and well-connected.
Our research checked out the implications of short-term isolation amongst leaders. In two independent studies with UK managers, we found that fluctuations of their levels of isolation have implications for a way they approach leadership.
On days or situations when managers felt lonely, they became less engaged of their work (this may very well be spending time on work-related matters or letting others do their tasks) and had lower levels of engagement with their team members (eg avoiding their employees).
The consequences of short-term isolation for managers didn't stop at the top of the workday. After a day by which they felt lonely, the managers took the evening away from the others. This created a loop that perpetuated loneliness into the subsequent workday, and helps explain why managers sometimes feel lonely for prolonged periods.
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But our research revealed a very important resource outside of labor that helped managers reduce the implications of loneliness and forestall it from affecting them in the long term. It focuses on how necessary their relationships with family and friends were of their lives.
Managers who placed more value on their family and social connections were capable of get away from work within the evening, and the loneliness from their workday didn't spill over into their home life. Loneliness still affected his leadership at work, however it didn't make him socially withdrawn at home. As a result, they were capable of start the subsequent workday with a clean slate.
This “family identity rescue” encourages managers to create protective boundaries between their every day work and residential domains. It helps to get out of labor mode after work and connect with family and friends – especially necessary on difficult days.
Not only a manager
Although managers' loneliness has the best implications for overall workplace health, anyone can feel lonely at work sometimes, whether they seem to be a manager or not.
It may be helpful for staff to find what experiences and situations make them feel lonely. They may also consider situations when their manager may feel lonely. On the opposite hand, some situations could make them feel near others, including managers. Talking to colleagues and sharing experiences might help raise awareness of the problem.
To prevent occasional isolation, staff can expose themselves (and others) to networks and groups that supply connections. These may be immediate team members, colleagues, (senior) managers, colleagues in other departments or external partners. They should take into consideration what connects them with each group and steps they'll take to strengthen their connections with them.
In addition to the workplace network, employees should put money into their relationships outside of labor. They remind themselves why these relationships matter, and why these relationships are valued to be able to reinforce a way of identity beyond work, and make family and community goals visible. The energy and support resources people gain from time spent with family and friends outside of labor may also unlock advantages within the skilled realm.
Workers may also take steps to take care of and enhance their relationships outside of labor. For example, they could be the ones who arrange dates, phone calls, and joint activities with people they value.
The best way for people to guard themselves from workplace loneliness is to not put all their eggs of their “work basket.” Building resilience by nurturing and investing in interests and connections to places and other people is a very good option to have a good time all features of what makes us human.