Melissa LaciOrg Psychologist
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Loneliness at work · The evidence

What the research actually says.

Every claim in the workshop traces back to a study. Here they are, with what each one supports and what it does not.

One in five employees worldwide felt lonely a lot of the previous day.

Fully remote employees reported higher daily loneliness than on-site employees. Under-35 employees reported the highest rates.

Gallup, State of the Global Workplace, 2024

Lonelier employees performed worse, and their colleagues could tell.

Across 672 employees and 114 supervisors in two organizations, greater workplace loneliness was associated with lower job performance. Approachability and affective commitment helped explain the link, which means loneliness shows up in behavior other people can observe.

Ozcelik and Barsade, Academy of Management Journal, 2018

Adding contact is the weakest intervention.

A meta-analysis compared interventions built around social skills, social support, social contact, and social cognition. Among the randomized studies, the ones addressing how people think about connection performed best.

Masi, Chen, Hawkley and Cacioppo, Personality and Social Psychology Review, 2011

Connection is defined by the gap, not the headcount.

Loneliness research describes the experience as the distance between the connection a person wants and the connection they have. This is why a full office and a full calendar can coexist with it.

Cacioppo and Hawkley, loneliness research

Volunteering and contribution track with lower loneliness.

Work that lets people be useful to someone else is associated with better connection outcomes, which is part of why contribution and mattering belong in this conversation.

Carr and colleagues, 2018

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