"An organization is a group of people coming together to collaborate and achieve something greater than they each might achieve on their own," explains Flo LaBrado, a senior manager at a telecommunications company. "The person is giving something to a collective with an understanding that the organization will also take care of the person."

It's a compact that most organizations claim to honor. Yet despite investments in collaboration tools, team-building retreats, and carefully designed office spaces, something fundamental isn't working. According to Gallup's 2024 State of the Global Workplace report, one in five employees worldwide report feeling lonely at work often—a rate that hasn't budged despite all the interventions.

For this article, we spoke with senior people leaders, including a senior manager at a telecommunications company, a former chief people officer at an international law firm, and an organizational development practitioner. These conversations reveal that workplace loneliness shows up in the metrics leaders already track, why ignoring it becomes costly, and what these professionals are doing to build more connected workplaces.

Workplace loneliness isn't about being physically alone. It's what researchers Wright and Silard define as "the psychological pain of perceived relational deficiencies in the workplace." You can feel profoundly lonely in an open-plan office surrounded by colleagues if you lack the quality........

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