When people don’t feel like they belong in an office, a certain kind of silence descends. Meetings that end abruptly, courteous hellos that never develop into conversations, and empty chairs at the Friday lunch table are all signs of it. The majority of managers are unaware of it. Those who do typically have no idea how to handle it.
Despite all the talk about culture over the past ten years, one of the most mismanaged concepts in business is still belonging. Businesses constructed whole departments around it, then dismantled them covertly when the political climate changed. The Supreme Court changed affirmative action, Google and Meta cut their diversity budgets, and many executives appeared relieved to stop discussing emotions at all. However, the fundamental issue remained unresolved. At work, people still want to be noticed. They simply stopped expecting their employers to be concerned.
A more subdued narrative is revealed by the numbers. Approximately 40% of employees report feeling alone at work. That number rises dramatically among employees under 26; almost half of them say they feel lonely at work. Watching this gives me the impression that something fundamental has slipped. Although it sped things up, working remotely didn’t cause it. The small points of friction that no one ever included in a job description, like the conversation at the water cooler, the unexpected encounter in the hallway, and the senior leader who happened to be in the kitchen at the same time as the new hire, turned out to be crucial.
Julia Duthie, an executive who co-founded a dot-com startup and has held two CEO positions, claims that her decisions to quit were rarely motivated by workload or compensation. It was always about the way she was made to feel. She felt unsafe and compromised her morals under incompetent leaders. The work felt purposeful under good ones. This kind of admission, which is uncommon in glossy leadership profiles, highlights a point that most surveys can only hint at: belonging isn’t a benefit. It influences whether people stick around, produce quality work, and present themselves.
The solution is rarely structural, which is frustrating for executives who adore a framework. David Blustein, a psychologist at Boston College, talks about creating space, whether it’s ten minutes prior to a meeting, a few hours on a Friday afternoon, or a virtual mentoring session that takes the place of a missed office encounter. little things. For managers who gauge productivity by the hour, these are frequently inconvenient things. An example from a professor whose unit hired an out-of-state colleague is circulating in workplace research. She recommended coffee. Next, lunches. The social fabric of an entire department had subtly rewoven itself in a matter of months. A few months later, she left for another job, but the get-togethers persisted for almost ten years.
That is the aspect that is disregarded. compounds that belong. It outlives the initiator. Whether they comprehend it or not, the next leader inherits the residue left by a leader who builds it well. Ignoring it results in turnover, silent animosity, and the gradual loss of institutional memory that no one notices until it’s gone.
It’s difficult to ignore the fact that businesses that continue to invest in this, even covertly, are typically the ones that continue to hire. It’s unclear if that is a cause or a correlation. However, people tend to leave workplaces that feel like nowhere in favor of those that feel like somewhere.
