The Best Co-Worker You Never Knew You Needed
Loneliness. It is a feeling many of us experience. That feeling of emptiness, lost connections, and sad solitude even when surrounded by others. Connection is a basic human need that is, for whatever reason, suffering. It does not matter how rich you are, how successful at work you are, or how many friends you may have, loneliness transcends all stereotypes. A plethora of recent surveys have found that nearly half of US adults report experiencing loneliness. This epidemic we are facing may end up having a significant influence on our relationship with technology. Whether the relationships we create with the tech to fill the void ends up having a positive impact or a negative impact on humanity as a whole is still up for debate which is why we must look to the future. By thinking through the possible futures we can better understand the potential implications of change. We can work to put together a plan now to help direct our paths toward a future that fulfills our needs and addresses any negative outcomes that may come along the way.
Society is certainly torn when it comes to establishing norms around the use of AI and other technologies to address loneliness. Apps and other systems are sprouting up every day with the promise to ease depression and provide support for those experiencing loneliness. No Wrong Door, Social Health Connector, and United Way have come together to invest in an assessment tool that anyone could use to find out if they are at risk of being socially isolated. The tool would then help connect that person with organizations and services that could help. Many people feel that the use of AI can help to strengthen human connection instead of diminishing it. On the flip side, others feel that the use of AI and other technologies to address a profoundly human problem will only exacerbate the issue. In a recent Berkley article, authors Michael Prinzing and Barbara Fredrickson label the pairing of AI and loneliness as a “potentially poisonous pair” followed with “We may not have much time before we find ourselves too far down the path to serious emotional and social harm”. It is fair to say that even the most practical or skeptical of us is tantalized by the idea of finding a friend in a chatbot or talking to a lost loved one via AI. It is easy, comes without judgment, and satisfies that feeling of emptiness if only for a brief moment.
Most of what has been discussed is purely personal and yet has a profound impact on how we work. An employee’s mental state makes a significant difference in an organization’s profitability. Research done by Pitt’s Mental Wellness Task Force found that three out of five workers in America is classified as lonely or disconnected from co-workers. One out of ten workers admitted their work quality is lower when they are feeling lonely. On top of that, research also suggests that lonely workers think about quitting twice as frequently as non-lonely workers. That means three out of every five employees may actively be seeking alternative employment opportunities simply because they feel lonely at work. Sixty percent turnover is a cost that companies simply cannot afford to maintain. It is crucial for organizations to start to consider how they will or will not utilize technology to help address loneliness at work.
In a quite poignant article published by Harvard Business Review, Slack CEO, Stewart Butterfield, talks about how technology can actually help strengthen workplace bonds. Transparency, he says, is one of the ways technology can help us address this epidemic. But he isn’t talking about transparency in the way most of us think of it. Instead, he says transparency means people can see across the entire organization. “The engineers can see the discussions that customer support is having and be proactive in helping the team, rather than waiting for something to get escalated. The marketing team can see when the sales team is frustrated with the marketing materials and is having trouble engaging with customers effectively. Having access to those conversations increases everyone’s ability to feel as though they are part of making things work”. While the idea sounds refreshing, endless scrolling also comes to mind. Duplicating efforts and the potential for misinformation could cause huge problems for traditionally hierarchical organizations. And is this really building a connection? Is transparency like this building meaningful relationships? Probably not.
The other option being explored is AI-powered chatbots. At work, they are meant to speed up production, ease the pain of administrative work, and support workers by answering a variety of questions within seconds. They are quickly turning into the best co-workers people never knew they needed. Asking a question is simple and so is continuing that conversation as if you were talking to a coworker in the breakroom about their summer holiday plans. At first, it starts out as just fun. Let’s see what the chatbot says back to me. It is silly almost. But then it starts to feel nice to have someone always there to respond to you. To listen to you. It is a distraction that someone could easily get lost in.
What happens, however, when that chatbot becomes obsolete? Maybe the company decides to work with another system or the provider runs an upgrade that completely changes the chatbot. It would be like losing a co-worker forever. For some, it could feel as if someone has died. Does this solve our loneliness issue? Does this help organizations increase productivity and decrease turnover?
These aren’t bad applications. There are many benefits to digital transparency and AI-powered chatbots. The question is: can the benefits outweigh the potential pitfalls? We can’t know for sure, but we can explore what that might look like. Take for example chatbots. In the next ten to fifteen years we will certainly all be accustomed to working with chatbots whether that means sending a text or calling a bot to come fix your internet or having a digital twin at work to do all of your administrative tasks. Just as asking Alexa what time it is or what the weather looks like for the day seems to be a normal behavior to us all now, so will asking your digital twin to run a headcount report and update the turnover data for the month. But imagine some rails your employer has put in place to keep you from continuing your conversation with your digital twin. You start to ask it about places to go for dinner and the system reminds you that it is only here to assist with work-related tasks. At noon the system goes into “lunch” mode and switches off, only to turn back on at one. Then towards the end of the day, your digital twin reminds you that it is almost time to go home and says goodbye for the day, switching off for the remainder of the evening. You flip to your social Slack channel to see where everyone is headed for happy hour. And out you go.
It isn’t mind-boggling to think about putting controls around technology, especially for work. But just like how you implement new technology makes all the difference in an employee’s life at work, so does changing the rules around technology. It would be wise to start to think about restrictions now and how you, as an organization, might place boundaries to help support social interaction at work.
It would be remiss of me to not talk about remote work when discussing loneliness and the relationship we have with the technology we use to help fill that gap. The benefits of flexible work or remote work for so many people are worth the lack of social interaction throughout the day. The extra time remote work has afforded so many of us has been tremendous. We have time to exercise, cook nice dinners, spend more time with kids, get done with laundry before the weekend, and so much more. We also spend significantly more time scrolling social media, sitting on Zoom calls, and simply being alone. This is not an article about whether or not remote work is effective or healthy. We each have our own opinion and just like the effects of the use of technology to address loneliness will only become apparent much further down the road, so will the impact of remote work. No, the conversation is around what technology may do to help or hinder loneliness and how we can start to plan now for what this future may look like. Will we begin to pull back from remote work to increase social interaction? Is there technology out there that would better support connection from afar? Will the Metaverse be the answer? These are all questions worth exploring.
The message is simply this, now is the time for organizations to begin to think about how they will manage the technology they implement to support connection, increase productivity, and build strong functional systems. As with everything else that has come before and after this, the human should come first.
References:
Amico, Laura. “Loneliness and the Digital Workplace.” Harvard Business Review, 29 Sept. 2017, hbr.org/2017/09/loneliness-and-the-digital-workplace.
Dava, Stewart. “Is Technology the Answer to the Social Isolation Crisis? - Social Work Today Magazine.” Www.socialworktoday.com, www.socialworktoday.com/archive/Fall21p26.shtml.
Prinzing, Michael, and Barbara Fredrickson. “Can Artificial Intelligence Help Us Become Less Lonely?” Greater Good, 29 Nov. 2023, greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/can_artificial_intelligence_help_us_become_less_lonely.
US Surgeon General Advisory. “Our Epidemic of Loneliness and Isolation.” US Public Health Service, US Public Health Service, 2023, www.hhs.gov/sites/default/files/surgeon-general-social-connection-advisory.pdf. Accessed 2 June 2024.
Wallace, Vonna s. “Workplace Loneliness Is Real. In-Person Work Alone Will Not Cure It, Questrom Researcher Says.” Boston University, 22 Oct. 2023, www.bu.edu/articles/2023/how-to-deal-with-workplace-loneliness/.
Wells, Shannon. “Request Rejected.” Www.utimes.pitt.edu, 19 Jan. 2023, www.utimes.pitt.edu/news/creating-connections.