Workplace Loneliness and Employee Well-Being
Summary
Workplace loneliness is a subjective experience of social disconnection that arises when individuals perceive their work relationships to be insufficient in quality or quantity. This phenomenon has been linked to reduced job satisfaction, impaired performance and elevated burnout. It frustrates fundamental psychological needs for relatedness and undermines work engagement—a positive state of vigour, dedication and absorption. Loneliness at work can stem from remote or hybrid working arrangements, poor team cohesion or limited leadership support, and it carries implications not only for individual well-being but also for organisational commitment and staff retention. Emerging evidence highlights that fostering supportive cultures, clarifying role expectations and strengthening peer and supervisory networks can mitigate these effects. A nuanced understanding of the mechanisms by which loneliness influences well-being is vital to designing interventions that enhance belonging, resilience and sustainable productivity across diverse workplace settings.
Research from Nature Portfolio
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Workplace Loneliness and Employee Well-Being publication trend
The graph below shows the total number of articles in workplace loneliness and employee well-being across all publications each year (not limited to Nature Index journals).
Technical terms
Workplace loneliness: A subjective sense of social isolation experienced within the work environment.
Work engagement: A positive, fulfilling work-related state characterised by vigour, dedication and absorption.
Mediation: A process by which one variable transmits the effect of another onto an outcome.
Moderation: The alteration of the strength or direction of a relationship by a third variable.
References
- The Effects of Workplace Loneliness on Work Engagement and Organizational Commitment: Moderating Roles of Leader-Member Exchange and Coworker Exchange. Sustainability (2021).
- Remote Working for Sustainability of Organization during the COVID-19 Pandemic: The Mediator-Moderator Role of Social Support. Sustainability (2021).
- Loneliness in the workplace: a mixed-method systematic review and meta-analysis. Occupational Medicine (2023).
- How workplace loneliness harms employee well-being: A moderated mediational model. Frontiers in Psychology (2023).
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