Re:Fighting the “loneliness epidemic” at work
by danbolt on Wednesday November 28, 2018 @12:46PM
(#18553702)
My first full-time job out of school was exactly like that. At first I found it lonely as a lot of my peers were a decade or two older than me with kids, and mostly treated the job like a 9-5.
As investment into the company increased, more juniors were hired that had the similar life situations, liked to do similar activities, etc. My attachment to the company became much stronger after that.
Work can be a bit isolating when you have a very different background from a lot of your coworkers. Having a group that shares some aspect of your background that you can talk to about that shared perspective with can help a lot.
Companies should go a bit farther than making groups that are built race/religion/gender lines to bridge that gap. I've been at a lot of companies where there was some shared activity that "everybody does" after work - something that not literally everybody actually does. There should be other ways of including those people.
Often something like that can reflect a cultural background or gender (be it "everyone" is in a fantasy football league or "everyone" is competitive about a certain video game or "everyone" goes out drinking on Thursday).
If you're a member of a small group, be it because you're black, female, LGBT, have children (or don't), whatever it might be - it's easy to feel lonely and marginalized and like you don't have a community at the workplace; it helps if the organization promotes a way to feel like you do.
So that it's not just "oh everyone is talking about that thing I don't do again".