Polish researchers analysed the results of studies available worldwide on loneliness and the quality of social interactions in offices and workplaces.

The experts looked for explanations regarding how employees experience loneliness in the workplace, what shapes social relationships in the organisation, what signals a feeling of isolation, and how this problem changed during the pandemic. Bioinformatician Mateusz Jakiel from the Institute of Computer Science Foundations at the Polish Academy of Sciences was responsible for the technological analysis of the data in the project. Sociologist Dr Monika Sońta from the Kozminski University in Warsaw focused on substantive analysis.

The researchers used 10 scientific databases, tracking different dimensions of loneliness in the context of business organisations. They looked at globally available results in 400 articles, which were published on over a dozen major platforms such as ScienceDirect, Oxford University Press and Springer.

The Polish scientists noted that the coronavirus pandemic worsened relationships within companies and institutions. The prevalence of remote working has weakened the ties that translate into engagement and satisfaction within an organisation.

Only about 1/3 of people have someone they consider close to them at work. The authors of the report point out that this has a disruptive effect on employees and on organisations as a whole.

In 2019, 39 % of employees who had a close person at work assured that they would recommend their organisation as a very good place to work. The others responded in this way in only 26% of cases. In 2022, already 44 % of those with a friend are willing to recommend their company to others (among those without a close relationship – 21 %).

Adrian Andrzejewski