Adam Bennett unpacks the loneliness your team perhaps isn’t telling you about
Let’s be honest: most leaders think their hybrid model is working. The meetings are booked in, the Slack channels are alive, and there’s always someone replying to emails at 9pm. It looks connected. But increasingly, what I’m seeing – and what our new research confirms – is that the reality underneath is very different.
We ran a survey at Digital ID ahead of the recent Loneliness Awareness Week, and the numbers hit harder than expected. A third of UK workers say they feel lonely at work. Not occasionally – regularly. And that’s not just those working from home full-time. Hybrid staff, shift workers, office floaters – all feeling it.
Worse still, almost one in four said they’ve gone more than three days without a meaningful conversation. Not “a message”. A conversation. Think about that in the context of your own team.
There’s something important here that’s being missed. We’ve built all these systems to make work easier – faster comms, digital collaboration, instant updates – but we’ve lost something human along the way. The “how are you really doing?” part gets stripped out. The stuff that doesn’t fit neatly into a sprint or KPI.
One stat that really stuck with me: 29 percent of people feel most lonely after a team meeting. That’s wild. You show up, camera on, tick the agenda – and leave feeling worse than when you joined. Why? Because if the interaction is shallow or rushed, it reminds you how little anyone actually sees you.
For leaders in food and beverage especially – where teams are spread across functions, locations, and shift patterns – this hits differently. A head office exec on daily Zooms and a factory worker on early starts might both be isolated, just in different ways. We can’t afford to assume that because communication is happening, connection is too.
What’s making this even trickier is the rise of what I call “performative productivity.” Nearly half the people we surveyed admitted they’re putting on a show – looking busy to hide the fact they’re not feeling part of things. That’s not laziness. It’s self-protection.
So what’s the fix?
It’s not more meetings, or another comms platform. It’s meaning. Leaders need to create cultures where people feel safe to show up as they are. That might sound fluffy, but it’s a commercial concern. Disconnection leads to disengagement. And disengagement spreads.
Start small. Ask yourself: when’s the last time someone in your team said something unexpected in a meeting? If you don’t know, it’s probably because the environment doesn’t invite it. Build in time for unstructured conversation. Take a proper interest in the people you manage. Not because it ticks a box – because it matters.
And remember – the most outwardly confident, reliable person on your team might be the loneliest. It’s not always the quiet ones.
At the end of the day, people don’t leave jobs. They leave cultures where they feel invisible.
Loneliness at work isn’t a side issue. It’s quietly shaping how people perform, collaborate, and ultimately, whether they stay.
We need to stop managing time, and start managing trust.
Because real connection isn’t something you schedule. It’s something you build.
Adam Bennett is a Workplace Culture Expert at Digital ID
