No One Sees Me – Understanding and Overcoming Feelings of Loneliness in the Workplace

Loneliness is a psychological condition resulting from a person’s unsatisfied need for social relationships, either on a qualitative or quantitative level. In this ar­ticle, we examine the prevalence of workplace loneliness in Slovenia. For this purpose, we adapted the Loneliness at Work Scale. The online survey included the results from 439 employees in Slovenian organizations. Both the reliability and validity of the questionnaire were found to be adequate. The results showed that demographic factors such as gender, age and marital status are not associated with workplace loneliness. Likewise, the nature of the work, such as the size of the organization, the individual’s position and the time spent working in the current organization, are not related to workplace loneliness. Workplace support (from colleagues and superiors) is more strongly associated with (lower) wor­kplace loneliness than support outside the workplace. Loneliness was reported by 23.69 % of participants, and 3.87 % of participants were very lonely. Recogni­zing and appropriately modifying the conditions in which people feel lonely in the workplace can help to prevent the more severe consequences of chronic loneli­ness. The research makes an important contribution both because of the Slovenian adaptation of the psychometrically appropriate questionnaire on loneliness at the workplace, and because of raising awareness about loneliness at the workplace and its impact on employees.