As a result, slightly more than half said they very often or always feel lonely. The study – published in the book Back to Human: How Great Leaders Create Connection in the Age of Isolation by Future Workplace Research Director Dan Schawbel – found that remote employees today spend half their day using technology to communicate, rather than relying on face-to-face or even telephone conversations. However, a study last year from human resource advisory firm Future Workplace and Virgin Pulse, a company that works with businesses to improve employees’ health, found that remote workers appear to be more likely to suffer from loneliness and disengagement. Generally, employees crave the option to telecommute – after all, it cuts out travel time and increases work/life flexibility. A separate study by the Global Leadership Summit found that thanks to collaboration software and the power of the internet, about a third of the global workforce will be remote in the next two years. As of 2019, 66% of companies allow for remote work, and 16% are fully remote, according to Talent Lms. Research has found that half of CEOs report feeling lonely – and 61% of them believe it hinders their performance.īut does technology make us more alone in the workplace, or is it something else? One thing’s for certain – advances in technology have given rise to the remote workforce. What’s more, the phenomenon extends right up the corporate ladder. This chimes with other research findings published in the Academy of Management Journal, which suggest that greater employee loneliness leads to poorer task, team role, and relational performance. Her research has uncovered that loneliness is associated with poorer cognitive performance, which can affect an individual’s ability to complete work tasks efficiently and effectively. Social connection is a primal human need, according to BYU Psychology Professor Julianne Holt-Lunstad, one of the world’s leading researchers on social connection. In these terms, the analysis concluded, loneliness may be considered comparable to smoking 15 cigarettes a day, and more dangerous than obesity. In other words, no matter the ailment a person may be suffering with, isolation makes it worse and renders it harder to recover from the condition. According to figures published in the Independent, an analysis of 300,000 people in 148 studies found that loneliness is associated with a 50% increase in mortality from any cause. There is also much evidence to suggest that loneliness causes biological problems as well as psychological ones, and can even lead to death. Linked with psychological problems such as alcohol and drug abuse, eating disorders and depression, the devastating effects of loneliness cannot be overstated. Loneliness can be severely life-altering – even life-threatening – for those who experience it. Across the whole of the EU, around 30 million adults frequently feel lonely, while in Japan, an estimated half a million people shut themselves off from society, often staying in their houses for months on end. Also last year, the UK’s BBC Radio 4 released the results of its “Loneliness Experiment,” in which it was found that a third of Britons often or very often feel lonely. The findings come off the back of a separate Cigna study, which reveals that nearly half of Americans always or sometimes feel alone (46%) or left out (47%). A similar story is playing out across the pond, too, with 23% of adults in the UK responding in the same way. Whether technology can be directly blamed or not, there’s no denying the fact that the world is currently in the throes of what’s being described as a “loneliness epidemic.” A 2018 survey from The Economist and the Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF) finds that over one fifth (22%) of US adults say they always or often feel lonely, lack companionship, or feel left out or isolated.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |