On Tippie College of Business at the University of Iowa Week: How do we fix the loneliness epidemic?
Emily Campion, assistant professor of management and entrepreneurship, discusses one place you can foster closeness.
Emily Campion is an assistant professor of management and entrepreneurship in the Tippie College of Business at the University of Iowa. Her research focuses largely on staffing procedures, how to leverage machine learning and natural language processing to improve these systems, and ways to mitigate employment discrimination. She also consults with companies and government agencies on assessing and improving personnel selection systems, evaluating and reducing employment discrimination, conducting job analyses, and assessing pay equity. She earned her B.A. in Journalism from Indiana University and her Ph.D. in Organization and Human Resources from the University at Buffalo, The State University of New York.
How a Workplace Activity Can Help Fight the Loneliness Epidemic
Loneliness isn’t just a personal problem—it’s a workplace problem, too. Nearly one in four adults around the world experience it, and with the rise of remote work and digital communication, loneliness is becoming a quiet epidemic in many organizations.
I worked with colleagues on a study that reviewed more than 200 studies across psychology, sociology, medicine, and management. We found that loneliness at work is more than just being alone—it’s a perceived mismatch between the social connection we crave and what we actually get.
So what causes this disconnect? It turns out, both who we are and where we work matter. Personality traits like high neuroticism or low extraversion can increase loneliness. But so can structural changes—like job loss, remote work, and even promotion into leadership roles, especially for women.
And this has real consequences. Loneliness impacts how we feel, think, and behave. It can lead to emotional exhaustion, reduced focus, and even withdrawal from teams. Left unchecked, it becomes self-perpetuating: lonely workers expect rejection, behave defensively, and deepen their own disconnection. Lonely people show decreased engagement with their jobs, reduced creativity, and loss of motivation, leading to overall diminished performance. Lonely people can be more hostile, creating a toxic workplace and hindering trust-based relationships with co-workers.
But there’s hope. Investing time in building a culture of belonging through activities that bring employees together and foster social connection will help employees create meaningful relationships with their colleagues.
Those friendship-building skills can have a larger impact, too, by helping us to broaden our social networks outside of work. At a time when loneliness has been declared an epidemic, those skills can be especially important. When work becomes a source of belonging rather than isolation, everyone benefits.
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