Bosses like to complain that it’s only at the top. Lately, they’ve been worrying about how lonely it looks everywhere.
The world is in “a disconnection crisiswhere loneliness, division and polarization have become all too common,” warned Laxman Narasimhan, new Starbucks chief executive, of the coffee chain earnings call this week.
Hours earlier, Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky was telling an FT reporter that loneliness could kill more people than Covid-19. As we get lost in our screens, this California tech founder worried: “I’m getting concerned about the trajectory we as a society are on.”
Executives’ public musings on loneliness peaked when their offices emptied in the early months of the pandemic, notes Nick Mazing, director of research at data provider AlphaSense. But the topic is on the minds of CEOs again after US surgeon general Vivek Murthy issued a 82 page notice on another public health crisis: America”epidemic of loneliness and isolation”.
Murthy grabbed the headlines for warning Americans that social disconnection is as likely to send them to an early grave as smoking 15 cigarettes a day. But he addressed part of his report to bosses like Narasimhan and Chesky.
Social isolation hurts employee job performance and satisfaction, he noted, while driving absenteeism that costs U.S. employers an estimated $154 billion annually.
On the flip side, “supportive and inclusive relationships at work” have been associated with higher job satisfaction and innovation, reported America’s Best Physician, while better communication could prevent workplace burnout.
So is this next on the list of social problems that CEOs feel they need to step in and fix? They might be tempted by Murthy’s business case. But corporate responses to date suggest an instinct to treat this malaise as a marketing opportunity, not a call to action.
Narasimhan shifted from his warning about loneliness to a tone that “Starbucks offers connection. . . any place, any time.” As candid as that sounds, Chesky similarly framed his fears as an explanation for why Airbnb encouraged travelers to stay in vacant rooms of hosts they could talk to rather than book empty second homes.
While we trade friends on social networks for followers on social media platforms, she said, she wanted Airbnb instead “to be about people and connection,” a physical social network.
But if an epidemic of loneliness prevails, that some academics competitiontherefore it raises serious questions about CEO organizations.
The first is how so many people feel left out at work even though their leaders advocate for diversity, equity, and inclusion. At companies like Starbucks, those workers who fight management for union representation don’t seem to feel the same connection their CEO does.
Employers still debating what combination of in-person work and remote work will give employees flexibility and meaningful connections with colleagues should consider Murthy’s question of whether they’re “respecting the lines between work and non-work time” which they help workers cultivate meaningful relationships.
They should also heed his warning about the negative effects of technology. Tech companies will surely face more heat as authorities focus more on this risk, even if some robotic pets or virtual worlds as solutions.
But many non-tech companies are sketching futures in which artificial intelligence and automation will take on more human tasks. CEOs concerned about a disconnected workforce should consider whether chatbots and co-bots will actually make things better.
Executives’ response to this newly declared epidemic must start with what it means for their own people. Perhaps because of their isolation, CEOs risk missing the point: that their priority is not to resolve a corporate failure, but to prevent a management failure.
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