Remote Work and Isolation: How to Counter It

Just a few years ago, remote work looked like a dream come true for many people. No exhausting commutes, more flexibility, the ability to work from anywhere, working in your pajamas on the couch in the living room - it's a vision that can seem tempting. But it has a dark side. That dark side is the social isolation that comes with working alone.

Today, hybrid work reigns in many roles, and even the full home-office model - not to mention "workation," combining professional duties with a getaway somewhere scenic. Most employees accept, and even come to enjoy, this way of working. But that's not true for everyone, and social isolation can be an unpleasant consequence of the new pattern. 

The phenomenon is fairly new, because until recently it most often affected one social group: older people living alone and without loved ones nearby. Today, social isolation also applies to the professional sphere. The remote model encourages an ever-larger share of our lives to center on the home. Since we work at the kitchen table or a desk in the bedroom, it's easy to also order food, shop online, or handle most errands with a single click.

The comfort of our domestic micro-world becomes tempting, but it comes at a price: gradually we start going out less, spontaneous social contact fades, and the space that once served rest and relationships becomes, at the same time, a place of work, life, and... isolation. As a result, even people who value the comfort of the home office can feel a growing sense of being cut off from people and the everyday interactions that once simply happened "in passing."

A sense of social isolation. Remote work isn't for everyone

The growing popularity of remote work has revealed not only its advantages but also its limits. Research conducted by Dr. Anna Dolot at the Krakow University of Economics shows that only 5% of people would want to work fully remotely 100% of the time. While many people appreciate the time saved by skipping the commute, the greater flexibility, and the ability to better combine work with private life, long-term work in isolation has its cost. As many as 67.9% of respondents point to the lack of social contact as the biggest challenge of remote work, and 26.3% experience difficulty concentrating stemming from the anxiety and uncertainty that accompany working in an isolated environment. Working from home - convenient as it is - doesn't always support employees' wellbeing and relational needs.

The negative social effects of remote work

To understand the real impact of remote work on feelings of loneliness, though, you have to place it in a broader context. During the pandemic, forced home office was just one element of social isolation experienced at an unprecedented scale. The number of interactions and human contacts was cut to a minimum, and that touched every aspect of life. Add to that the mounting stress and tension caused by an uncertain health and economic situation. Employers therefore faced a major challenge in minimizing the effects of working at a distance.

A great deal has changed since that study was published. The pandemic is behind us, yet in many companies hybrid work, like the home-office model, has been retained. Employers noticed that their teams can be just as motivated - even more so - while doing their jobs remotely. The rules of social life have returned to normal, so the vast majority of people can nurture valuable social habits outside of work. Still, there's no hiding that this doesn't apply to everyone. Some employees have fallen into a pattern of social isolation.

The virtual team - how to break the pattern of social isolation at work

Collaboration is one of the psychological mechanisms that shape human nature. The effects of loneliness at work can be genuinely painful. In extreme cases, some people feel not only social isolation but even emotional disturbance. Quite a lot has already been written in the scientific literature about how much interaction with other people gives us during work, even when the work itself doesn't require it.

Technology in the service of fighting loneliness

An interesting perspective on working in isolation came from Olivia Judson, an evolutionary biologist and writer. In The New York Times, she described how she copes with the lack of company while working. In her case, the cure for loneliness turned out to be new technology and a group of people in a similar situation. Judson joined a virtual group of freelancers.

Although they've never met in person and work in different industries, at set working hours they connect through their chosen online messenger. They answer a few questions (for example: What's distracting you today, and how can you overcome it? What mindset are you starting work with today?), then mute their microphones and, for the next two hours, work on their projects while seeing each other on screen. After the "session," they recap together what they managed to get done over those few hours. 

At first glance it looks like a scene out of an episode of "Black Mirror," but this seemingly impersonal process touches very human needs. "Working alone has a bad effect on satisfaction, productivity, and creativity. Collaboration, in turn, sparks greater motivation," says Megan Taylor Morrison, a business coach and the originator of the virtual co-working group. This isn't about watching other people - it's about a sense of collegial support and belonging to a team.

Thanks to new technology and an understanding of today's social barriers, the social isolation that a given work model forces on us doesn't have to be a given.

Breaking the pattern of social isolation - how do you ensure good day-to-day communication for employees?

Everyone feels the need for interaction at work, regardless of personality. Whether someone is an introvert or the life of the party doesn't matter much here. In the book "Connected: The Surprising Power of Our Social Networks and How They Shape Our Lives", Nicholas A. Christakis and James H. Fowler presented research on the importance of social connections, which have an enormous influence on how we feel, think, and act. The conclusion? When we're deprived of these important, if often inconspicuous, social interactions at work, we have to find other ways to meet those needs. How do you do that?

Companies that chose to keep a hybrid or remote model after the pandemic have a lot of work to do here. Teamwork requires contact with other people, even when tasks are divided up individually. Otherwise, more and more people become socially isolated, even if at first they may not realize it. Fighting social isolation among employees is therefore the organization's job. Here are a few good practices that will certainly help in the battle against this unpleasant phenomenon.

Well-planned communication

Video calls, email exchanges, and conversations over online messengers are the unavoidable everyday reality of remote work. But to keep this form of communication from becoming a burdensome necessity, you should give it some structure. "You need to have clearly defined expectations for communication. It's worth checking with your manager whether they'd mind a 10-minute phone call at the start and end of the workday. Managers often don't think of solutions like this," said Barbara Larson, a professor of management at Northeastern University in Boston and a remote-work expert, in an interview with the BBC. Well-planned online meetings or calls, with a clearly mapped-out agenda, can become a ritual that helps maintain good contact with the rest of the team. 

Webinars and training

In a difficult and demanding time, it's important not to leave employees on their own and to look after their wellbeing on many levels. Webinars on nutrition or at-home physical activity give them practical knowledge and help them stay in good shape. Online training that lets them develop new competencies provides a sense of continuous growth.

Training and webinars created internally, by employees themselves and distributed to the rest of the workforce, work brilliantly. The chance to share their knowledge with colleagues gives them a sense of purpose and - despite the name - connects rather than divides them.

It's important to tailor such efforts to the specifics of the times we're in. Remote work, on the one hand, offers greater flexibility, and that makes it harder to gather the whole team for a live meeting. A microlearning approach - breaking knowledge into smaller pieces you can return to at any time - works much better. Gamifying this process and adding an element of verifying acquired knowledge will engage employees even more.

Remote company activities 

Under sanitary restrictions, team-building events can't take place, but that doesn't close off the path to engaging employees in shared activity. Many things can be done separately while still doing teamwork. A good example is the remote edition of the Everest Foundation's Company Run. Five-person relay teams couldn't start together, but thanks to a mobile app, the times of competitors covering a 5 km distance anywhere could be summed up. The remote format turned out to be very engaging, because it emboldened competitors who might have been wary of a public start and direct rivalry.

Although the pandemic is behind us, working alone still affects a wide group of employees. New patterns adopted by organizations mean companies recruit employees from the other end of the country. Geographic isolation from people employed at the same company thus becomes something natural, and face-to-face meetings a rarity. For this reason, the remote activities mentioned above still make a lot of sense.

Informal interest groups

When many activities are off the table, we're left mainly with the interests and passions we can pursue at home. It's worth creating space for employees to do this together by forming informal interest groups. It may turn out that the person you used to only pass in the elevator is passionate about similar books or could be a fascinating conversation partner on the subject of film. The tool and the way you create this space are secondary; what matters far more is a clear message to employees: "yes, this is a work environment, but we're creating space here for you as people." 

A substitute for spontaneous encounters

In remote work, most interactions with coworkers are planned in advance or stem from the scope of the tasks at hand. You reach out to others because you need to take care of something, settle a point, or make a joint decision. Many people miss the spontaneous, chance encounters and small talk we experience in the office reality, even just heading out for a coffee.

It's worth anticipating this need too, and supplementing the remote reality with a recurring ritual that encourages chance encounters among employees. The Donut app, which can be integrated with Slack, connects two or three random people each week and encourages them to set up a short, half-hour "coffee and a donut" meeting. To make the process more effective, Donut immediately designates the person who should propose a time and drop the video call onto everyone's calendars.

Take care of this ritual even if you don't have Slack. You can, for example, set a specific time slot for meetings (every Tuesday at 3:00 p.m.) and each week draw the people who'll meet. An added motivator is rewarding participants for meetings that actually happened (which you can confirm with, say, a screenshot from the video call). I experience the wonderful effects of weekly donuts myself, and recommend them all the more. 

Psychological support

In difficult and uncertain times, anyone can have rough moments. It's important to create a sense of comfort for employees to talk about it. Support from coworkers and team leaders is one thing, but it's also incredibly valuable to give employees access to professional help. Many companies have organized workshops to help employees cope with the emotions and challenges of isolation. Employees can also often use psychological support through a helpline or an email inbox.

This is a genuinely good path that modern companies should follow. Some employees feel the effects of social isolation more acutely than others. In extreme cases, it has a very negative impact on health. Physical problems triggered by isolation are by no means rare, and sometimes even more serious consequences come into play, including suicidal thoughts. Finding psychological help through an employer is worth its weight in gold in such situations.

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Remember the famous "Project Aristotle" run by Google, which led to defining the traits of standout teams? The data brought researchers to the conclusion that what's crucial isn't the competencies of team members at all, but the relationships between the people who make up the team. The fundamental condition for successful relationships (and successful teams) was defined as "psychological safety" - something all of us are especially short of today. And it's what employers, managers, and HR leaders should take care of first if they want to carry their organizations into the post-COVID era unscathed.