Mental Health Awareness Week takes place in the UK from 9-15 May. This year’s theme is loneliness. In this briefing, Ryan Exley, OSH content developer at IOSH, looks at how to prevent loneliness in the workplace.

Loneliness plays a significant part in mental wellbeing. Feelings of isolation, anxiety and low self-esteem all are increased with loneliness. Workplace loneliness can also have major implications for organisations, such as higher staff turnover, lack of commitment and lower performance of workers, to name just a few. While loneliness at work is not a new issue, it is now a more prominent one, so here’s some top tips for tackling workplace loneliness.

Culture and infrastructure
Worker perception surveys are one way of identifying what really matters to workers. Organisations can use this information to align it with corporate values and embed loneliness into other wellbeing and welfare activities.

Management and training
Organisations can’t identify and support loneliness without the assistance of line management and other workers. Training managers is crucial as the right training will enable them to identify signs of loneliness within their team or workers in the organisations in general and provide the necessary support.

Good quality manager–worker relationships
If a manager is available for support, be that in the form of informal chats or a more formal one-to-one basis, workers will have the opportunity to allay how they are feeling and feel comfortable in doing so. Workers may also feel happier and more likely to talk about issues if managers have experience and understanding of their role and potential issues they face.

Communication
Ensuring workers are regularly communicated with can help them to feel connected, whether that be with other workers, line management or even the organisation as a whole. Having that feeling of connection can help to reduce feelings of loneliness within workers. Organisations that ensure that policies, procedures, information and guidance are accessible and actively communicated may also support workers with loneliness. Ensuring all levels of the organisation are involved in programmes of improvement may also help workers to feel included and reduce loneliness.

Collaboration
Encourage collaboration and for workers to get involved, not just with peers but in organisational issues and initiatives. By encouraging and rewarding collaboration, organisations are going to reduce feelings of loneliness as workers feel more involved, supported and a sense of belonging within an organisation. It will also enable strong peer groups and relationship support, as well as helping to embed a positive culture.

Reduce expectations
Some workers can feel isolated or lonely due to the amount of pressure placed on them, whether that is because a team is significantly reduced to the point they are now a lone worker, or just because they feel overworked and are afraid to speak up. Through open dialogue and line management awareness, expectations on workers who may feel isolated or lonely can be reduced and may help to ease the way they are feeling as they may feel considered and cared for by an organisation.

External/professional support
Having professional support on hand to support workers who may be feeling lonely or isolated or any other kind of negative emotion is incredibly valuable as workers may prefer to discuss issues with somebody external. Organisations should always endeavour to provide such support.

IOSH Managing Occupational Health and Wellbeing, brought to you by International Workplace, is designed to provide managers with the tools and techniques to improve health and wellbeing in their organisation.

The course suits:

• The busy HR director, implementing company-wide wellbeing initiatives.
• The line manager, covering absences in his team.
• The concerned team leader, worried about her colleagues’ mental health.
• The occupational health practitioner, seeing a spike in musculoskeletal disorders since employees started working from home.

The course covers:

• Ergonomics, demographics and types of working.
• Giving employees the knowledge and skills to identify wellbeing issues, and to act on them.
• Work-related health issues – such as how to deal with employees living with cancer, long-term diseases, mobility issues and poor mental health.
• Understanding that an employer’s duty of care extends beyond health and safety, to employee wellbeing.