The tried… the true… the revolutionary. 6 Ways to Combat Loneliness at Work by Pamela Francis
As a workplace influencer, under my company name Admin On-the-Go, LinkedIn asked me to weigh in on the issue of workplace loneliness. I thought I’d share my contribution here on MLTS. I don’t think I knew that folks were experiencing this, since I erroneously believed everyone’s just out there having a ball collecting paychecks and shopping on Amazon from their desks. So here goes…
The Tried… the True… the Revolutionary. 6 ways to combat loneliness at work:
Nobody knew better than Silicon Valley just how much the twenty-first century worker 1) would be needed at the job… 2) would feel like they never leave the job… and 3) would learn to love it so long as their employers could intuit the perfect ways to make it all ok. With their pioneering work-from-home flexibility, their work campus playfulness by design, and their bring-your-baby-to-work magnanimity, companies like Apple and GOOGLE set the bar high for the rest of workdom by doing things that made people actually rather be at work than anywhere else. (For Pete’s sake my sister gets to do her laundry AND play Ms. PacMan at her San Francisco-based GOOGLE office that allows her to leave her car somewhere in Oakland or wherever and shuttles her the rest of the way in!!)
In fact, workplace satisfaction – not necessarily with the job itself, but with the skillfully designed environment that came with it – became the antidote for the loneliness so many of us struggle with whenever we find ourselves having to do anything other than WORK.
So now you tell me that folks are lonely again. But this time, they’re experiencing it AT work? Yeah, I can see that. As the creator of Admin On-the-Go, I thrived as a small business owner who consulted with creatives and executives to make their office hassles go bye-bye. It was exhilarating, empowering and FUN to show up at various and sundry workspaces, locales and meeting hubs to talk shop, exchange assignments at their various levels of completion, and just share a coffee and scone break at Peets while discussing what’s next. But when I tried my hand at returning to having to be somewhere every day from …9 to 5…, and I experienced the culture that had snuck in while I had been away entrepreneuring for the last eight years… yikes. No wonder people are lonely. Work is as clique-laden and political as ever it was. Who needs that? Ok we do. Because for better or worse, work is here to stay. If we should be so lucky. Here’s how to make it… WORK
- Remember photos on your desk? Keep doing this. Only now, every new employee should be gifted one of those sleek digital desktop frames that allow you to upload scads of photos and just let that puppy slideshow all day.
- And speaking of puppies… Remember dogs at work…? I do. I had a client in Beverly Hills, CA who was bringing Fido to work before it became en vogue. Let’s make it a given that when we hire you… we’ve hired your comfort animal, even if that means installing terrariums in your cubicle for Quentin Tarantula-tino and the gang.
- Move the kitchen to the center of the room. If HGTV had snagged the contract to design your workspace you can best believe the kitchen wouldn’t be down the hall and to the left. It would be SMACK in the middle of the room. So let’s follow suit and design office spaces where you can sidle up to the kitchen island, complete with counter stools and Keurigs just by getting up out of your chair and taking four steps towards the center of the room. The smells, the sounds… the office chatter… We all live for this stuff. Give it to us at close range and dare us to really mean it when we complain about it later.
- Bring your baby to work. In fact… eff it! Let’s have an on-site tutor and slime-maker in an enclosed patio overlooking a padded gymnasium!
- Don’t let the subscription lapse on the workplace DirecTV. We all know that when we do work from home, it’s KUWTK episodes that make it all so dang festive. Equip everyone’s workspace with cable-readiness and give them the option to pay for more premium channels if they so desire. But at minimum, let ‘em watch Kelly & Ryan.
- Let’s sanction Workplace Romance…! I know it sounds counter-intuitive and we’ ve all been told to stay faaaar away from this little venus flytrap, but how ‘bout we get playfully daring and actually promote workplace flirtation…?! Think Secret Santa goes Your Secret Admirer…! Hire an expert to come in and wreak heartbeat havoc by matching employees up and having them deliver things like flowers, love post-its and teddy bears to each other once a month.
Hey, if all else fails… call in sick of it! ?
Tags: AloneAtWork, workplace loneliness
