Gen Z is lonely. Going back to the office may be the cure for some.
Arantza Pena Popo/Insider
Ben Fitchett didn't realize how difficult it would be to work from the confines of his bedroom.
After graduating from college in 2020, the 23-year-old started working as an account executive at a public-relations firm in New Zealand. He went into the office four times a week — and enjoyed every second of it.
But at the beginning of 2021, Fitchett upended his work situation and moved to Los Angeles. When he got there, he was told his job would be fully remote. The account executive worked eight hours a day, five days a week from his apartment. It didn't take long for feelings of isolation to bubble to the surface.
Fitchett, a self-described extrovert, said he longed for over-the-desk chats and lunch with his coworkers. The lack of interaction left him feeling drained and like he was missing out on building meaningful connections with his coworkers.
"I just felt like I was almost trapped between these four walls," Fitchett, who has since returned to the office part-time, told Insider.
Courtesy of Ben Fitchett
Young professionals such as Fitchett are facing a loneliness epidemic that years of working from home have exacerbated. While loneliness can arise at home or in a crowded office, research shows that the onset of remote work has heightened the challenges of staying connected with coworkers.
A study of more than 60,000 Microsoft employees who transitioned from office work to remote work during the pandemic said that they felt "more siloed, less dynamic," and unable to form as many new relationships when they were working from home.
"There is a growing recognition that the workplace has become more socially isolating over the past few years with the pandemic," Aaron Terrazas, the chief economist at the job-review site Glassdoor, told Insider.
The solitude of remote work seemed to particularly hit Gen Z workers — who began their careers as workplaces went from in-person to virtual — hard. In a 2021 study commissioned by Cigna, 79% of surveyed young adults aged 18 to 24 reported feeling lonely, compared to 41% of surveyed seniors aged 66 and older.
"Humans are by nature social creatures, and in the past, we have naturally formed groups and bonds in-person via work and social activities," Hubert Palan, the 45-year-old CEO of the product-management company Productboard, told Insider over email. "Company leaders need to help Gen Z — as well as millennials, whose workplace experience was hugely disrupted by Covid — to build strong interpersonal workplace relationships." His company has more than 400 employees, many of whom are in remote roles, and Palan has observed younger remote workers can miss out on the emotional aspects of the in-person workplace.
Unaddressed loneliness can have serious consequences. In May, Vivek Murthy, the US surgeon general, declared "loneliness, isolation, and lack of connection" across the country as a public-health crisis, noting that loneliness is associated with cardiovascular disease, dementia, stroke, depression, anxiety, and premature death.
Insider spoke to more than a dozen Gen Z workers between the ages of 22 and 26 working in white-collar industries such as tech, public relations, and consulting about how remote work has shaped their feelings of loneliness.
Several said it's been harder to develop meaningful relationships with their colleagues — connections that experts have said could be beneficial to their mental health and careers down the line. These workers also said remote work has increased anxiety, lowered morale, and curtailed opportunities for career advancement.
Of course, not everyone wants to return to the office, or do so all the time. But when it comes to alleviating loneliness, in-person work may be the best medicine.
Working from home has professional and personal consequences
Gen Z workers said that solitary remote work has taken a toll on their professional development and sense of work-life balance.
In a study coming out later this year, Mansoor Soomro, a workplace researcher at Teesside University in the UK, surveyed 2,000 Gen Z workers across countries and industries to understand the most pressing challenges they face in their jobs.
Soomro found that many surveyed Gen Z workers with remote jobs felt a sense of "isolation" from their coworkers and, in turn, believed they missed out on networking opportunities. He expects these challenges could potentially lead to elevated feelings of stress and anxiety, inconsistent productivity levels, and an inability to merge well with company culture.
With companies asking — and in some cases mandating — their employees return to the office, Gen Z workers who are going in regularly have said they have a renewed sense of confidence in their jobs.
Juanita Garcia only realized how remote work impeded her professional development when she transitioned from a remote role to a hybrid role this past June.
The 23-year-old — who is based in New York and works for the government — said she struggled at first with workplace etiquette. She wasn't sure about what to bring for lunch or when to eat it, and wondered whether it was appropriate to go get a coffee or stop at a coworker's desk to ask questions.
But she also realized how lonely her job was when she was working from home.
"I was in constant communication, but I didn't actually have people around me who were willing and able to chat and talk and help," she told Insider.
Now that Garcia has settled into her new job, she said being in the office has given her an opportunity to observe her higher-ups and has increased her own sense of ambition.
"I'm around people who've done great things and who are now my mentors," she said. "I can talk to them all the time, and I can see them working hard."
The same rings true for Fitchett.
When working from home, Fitchett said he felt like he missed out on professional-development opportunities. Since Fitchett's employer started mandating employees go to the office, Fitchett said he finally feels a sense of ease at his job.
He said he "loves" the interactions he has in the office — whether that's asking a coworker sitting next to him a question or participating in a group brainstorming session — and that they boost both his productivity and morale. He now goes into the office up to four times a week, even though his company only requires employees to come in two days.
"When I'm in the office, it's easier for me to kind of just stay on track," Fitchett said.
Remote workers crave connection and are doing creative things to find it
Many Gen Zers who still work remote roles are seeking connections outside the office, choosing to work from coffee shops, coworking spaces, or libraries.
Anita Pan — who works remotely as a developer at a "no-code" app agency — moved from New York to Washington, DC in 2021, just a year out of college. The 25-year-old struggled with working remotely, especially in a new city. Remote work exacerbated her social anxiety, she said, and she found herself overanalyzing interactions she wouldn't have thought twice about in college.
Courtesy of Anita Pan
She tried working from Starbucks, joining a climbing gym, and renting a room at a WeWork location, but the new settings didn't ease her loneliness. She now works an additional 10 hours a week — outside of her full-time job — as a receptionist at the Pilates studio Solidcore. The experience is helping her overcome her anxiety and foster new connections.
"My job is to make the studio a very welcoming place where people make conversations with clients, build community with clients," Pan said. "You're forced to get out of your shell and start relating to people."
Others are turning to a handful of startups dedicated to helping remote workers stave off loneliness through virtual-coworking spaces.
Ricky Yean is the founder Flow Club, a Y Combinator-backed virtual-coworking space that aims to help remote workers stay on task. He said that Gen Zers — especially those without offices — make up the majority of the platform's users.
Staying motivated and productive, Yean argues, are not problems that stem from a lack of willpower or discipline — they come from loneliness.
"The fact that they're showing up and sitting next to you doing something you don't know much about creates this feeling that we're in this together," Yean told Insider.
Don't expect a full-scale return to the office quite yet
There's more that goes into a worker's preferences than loneliness, and Gen Z workers are mixed about returning to the office full time.
A report from Dell released last December that surveyed 15,105 people between the ages of 18 and 26 across 15 countries found that 29% of respondents look for the ability to work remotely when they apply for jobs, while another 29% said they prefer nine-to-five office-based roles.
Working from the office can be expensive. A recent study found that the typical hybrid worker spends an average of $51 per day — $36 more than they spend on a day they work from home — when they go into the office on things such as commuting, parking, and food. Remote workers can also spend less on housing by moving to more affordable locations farther away from big cities.
There are other reasons some prefer remote work. Studies have shown that some people of color prefer working from home to escape workplace racism. Workers with disabilities may be able to better accommodate their needs from home, and LGBTQ+ employees are more likely to leave a job if there's no remote option. The ability to work from home has also led to a record number of women in the workforce.
Plus, some workers say they're more productive when working from home.
Courtesy of Bianca Wu
Bianca Wu, a 23-year-old tax consultant at PwC based in the Bay Area, was required to work in the office once a week as of last December.
Even though Wu, who felt "super lonely" working from home, found making connections with people in an office "so much more personable," she prefers to work remotely when she can. As someone with ADHD, Wu said she focuses better at home because the office environment can be distracting.
On days when she did go into the office, she found it pointless when nobody on her team — including her boss — was there.
"Even though there's a mandate to come into the office, still a lot of people wouldn't go," Wu, who now works from home full-time after switching teams, said. "So then it's like, why are we here if the important people that need to come into the office aren't coming in?"
For her — and many other Gen Z workers — the solution may come in some form of flexibility.
Even though Fitchett enjoys being in the office, he said he likes having the option to change his scenery occasionally.
"At the age that I'm at now, I want that flexibility to be able to jump between an office and home and switching it up a little bit," he said.
To that point, Soomro said that Gen Z workers would like to continue having the flexibility to work remotely — and are willing to quit their jobs to keep that perk: "This is the generation that will come out first saying, 'If you're not offering remote work or hybrid work, I'm ready to move.'"
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