Mental health: reducing loneliness

Mental Health Awareness Week was this year held from 9 to 13 May 2022. The aim of the week was to provide an opportunity to focus on achieving good mental health.

Each year has a theme – last year it was back to nature; this year it was loneliness.

The Mental Health Foundation, which hosts Mental Health Awareness Week, had chosen loneliness as this year’s theme because “loneliness is affecting more and more of us in the UK, and has had a huge impact on our physical and mental health during the pandemic”, and “reducing loneliness is a major step towards a mentally healthy society”.

Some studies, including material from the mental health charity Mind, have found that loneliness increases the risk of certain mental health conditions, such as depression and anxiety. While some may choose to be alone and live happily without much contact with other people, others may find this a lonely experience. Mind says that feeling lonely isn’t in itself a mental health problem, but the two are strongly linked. Having a mental health problem can increase someone’s chances of feeling lonely.

Mind also states that some research has suggested that loneliness is associated with an increased risk of certain mental health problems, including depression, anxiety, low self-esteem, sleep problems and increased stress.

Impact on working life

A large part of many employment lawyers’ practices involves advising clients who are experiencing mental ill health and the corresponding impact that has on their working life. Therefore, it’s important to recognise that loneliness is not just something that is experienced by people in their home life – many people often feel lonely at work. This is not confined to people who are alone (for example, working from home) – it also includes those experiencing workplace issues. For example, anyone struggling with their workload or relationships with colleagues can feel incredibly lonely and unsupported.

Survey

In advance of Mental Health Awareness Week, Mind published the key findings of a survey it conducted into how the pandemic had affected people at work. A total of 42,000 staff from 114 organisations across the UK were surveyed as part of the Workplace Wellbeing Index 2020-21, including people who had been furloughed, worked from home or continued to work on site.

Two of these findings are particularly important when considering loneliness in the workplace:

• A total of 41% of people reported that their mental health got worse during the pandemic, but those who worked on site and felt supported by their employer were least likely to report a worsening in their mental health.
• Similarly, 41% of people found it difficult to remain motivated at work during the pandemic, with remote workers finding it more difficult than those who continued to work on site.

By the very nature of their work, office workers were the biggest group of people who worked from home during the pandemic. They were also the last group of people to be permitted to return to the workplace.

You might assume that workplace loneliness will evaporate now that many of us have returned to the office for at least some of the working week. However, that is not necessarily the case – particularly in workforces where some people work in the office and some work from home.

Employers are under a specific duty to make reasonable adjustments for people with disabilities, but loneliness can affect all of us. Employers need to take care to ensure that loneliness among the workforce is not created, or exacerbated, while they adjust to the post-pandemic way of working.

Initiatives

Employers effectively need to adjust workplaces for employees and the new way of working, and a number of initiatives can be put in place to help reduce any loneliness experienced in a workplace. These include:

• Having a flexible approach to working in the office that allows staff to choose the days on which they come in, and that means a regular rotation of who is in the office and who works from home exists.
• Circulating a chart throughout the week alongside a colour-coded diary system so all can easily see who will be in the office on which days.
• Setting up a group WhatsApp where staff discuss non-work-related matters.
• Having birthday cards and gifts sent to employees’ homes on their birthday day off.

But there’s more – employers could:

• run weekly team meetings where every member of the firm updates the group on how busy they are and what they are working on, and can raise any issues with their workload
• hold monthly supervision meetings with managers to discuss the current workload
• set up an open door/phone line policy where team members can speak to each other in person or on a video call/telephone call at any time during the working day
• hold weekly communal lunches in the kitchen area for those working in the office, giving the team a chance to socialise during the day
• run regular hybrid “know how” meetings and training sessions where people are able to contribute remotely and in person
• organise quarterly whole-team social events

Of course, these are just some of the things employers can do as part of an initiative to promote good mental health. But no matter the approach, it’s important to remember that while Mental Health Awareness Week runs just once a year, the subject is something that should be borne in mind all year around. Employers should find that a little time spent reducing loneliness within their workforce will pay dividends for all.