Loneliness in the workplace is real. Even as many companies return to offices in 2026, employees still feel disconnected from their colleagues. In fact, our 2025 State of Remote Work survey found that 12% of hybrid workers, 14% of remote workers, and the biggest shocker, 15% of in-office workers, experience loneliness in the workplace.
For employers and team leaders, strengthening bonds and connections between remote and in-office team members can reduce turnover and improve collaboration. In this post, you’ll find 10 tips to combat loneliness in the workplace.
How to prevent + overcome remote work loneliness
While workplace loneliness affects all types of workers, remote workers tend to be the most susceptible.
Tips for remote workers
1. Work at least one day per week outside of your home
Whether it’s a co-working space, a coffee shop, or a local library, the first step to combating feelings of isolation is getting out of your everyday office and into the world. If you have a friend who also works remotely, bring them along so you can work together. Even if you aren’t speaking to many of the other people, you might find that the simple act of getting out of the house helps you feel like you’re a part of a bigger community.
2. Take advantage of your flexible schedule during the day
If you work alone – whether it’s from a home office or a co-working space – you should take advantage of the flexibility your schedule allows to build in time for extra socializing during your week. Whether that means grabbing breakfast or coffee with a neighbor, spending additional time with your children before dropping them off at school or daycare, or bringing your dog to the park, make time to socialize during the work week in ways you wouldn’t be able to do if you worked in an office.
3. Make plans after work when you’re feeling isolated
If you don’t get to spend much time working or socializing with your teammates as a remote worker, make plans with friends or family members during the week when you’re feeling lonelier than usual. These plans will help you feel more like part of a community and will help you stop working at the end of your workday so you don’t become overworked or burned out. When your office is in your home, it’s harder to draw lines between work and personal hours, and making plans for after-work dinner or drinks will get you out of the house and off the computer.
4. Join or form groups within your organization for regular social connections
Whether people at your company use a shared internal wiki or instant messaging for day-to-day communication, use that system to join or form groups where you can communicate socially with your team members, no matter where they’re located. Whether it’s a Slack group for sharing photos of your pets or a monthly Zoom meeting for working parents at the company, build ways to connect socially on top of your existing communication systems to keep in touch with your teammates in a low-effort way when you’re feeling less connected.
5. Use video conferencing tools to communicate with your team
For those times when you need to brainstorm, discuss ideas, or present your point of view on a subject with one of your colleagues, hop onto a video or audio call to communicate. Whether you’re trying to explain a complicated concept or are disagreeing with your teammate, you’ll quickly grow frustrated trying to communicate effectively via text. If you’re already feeling lonely as a remote worker, feelings of isolation can worsen if you regularly encounter miscommunication and misunderstanding.
Tips for employers
1. Offer remote workers a co-working space stipend
The same way you offer perks like free coffee, catered meals, or fitness classes to help retain your on-site employees, set up perks that benefit your remote workers, too. Consider offering remote workers a monthly stipend to cover or defray the cost of membership at a co-working space, or a monthly budget to work out of a coffee shop, to proactively help team members prevent feeling lonely.
Other perks for remote workers could include a budget to outfit their home offices so they feel fully set up and enjoy spending so much time there every week. If the bulk of your corporate perks are only beneficial to in-office employees, you’ll need to rethink ways to help retain your best remote workers to make them feel included and a part of the community, and addressing loneliness is a great place to start.
2. Schedule team-wide or company-wide virtual meetings that allow employees to connect
It likely isn’t feasible or convenient for remote employees to travel to meet with their teams on a weekly or monthly basis for in-person collaboration, but team leaders can use technology to host virtual hangouts so remote employees feel more connected with their in-office teammates. Tools like the Meeting Owl 4+ help remote attendees feel included in virtual socializing, such as sharing a coffee or an adult beverage, or in weekly lunch-and-learns.
3. Facilitate quarterly visits to headquarters or a common location
Depending on how many remote employees work on each team or across the company, leaders should budget to bring remote employees into the office on a semi-regular basis. This is important for remote employees to build relationships and networks, and to ensure teams are working together in sync on a day-to-day basis.
If you’re a fully remote company, or if remote employees are distributed worldwide, you could consider organizing regular travel to bring employees in the same country or continent together. Scheduling a mini-retreat for remote employees to spend time together and share productivity tips will help them build relationships with peers and feel more connected to the community at work.
9. Schedule all-company events at least once yearly
If you have a significant number of remote employees, or if you’re a fully-remote company, you should be scheduling an all-company retreat once per year at an absolute minimum.
Humans crave human connection, and organizing a week-long event with time for programming, collaboration, and fun and socializing will help your teams work better together and make remote workers feel more engaged in the company’s mission and culture.
10. Set up meetings to make remote workers feel included
Team managers and co-located team members in the office should make a significant effort to ensure remote employees feel included and part of the team, regardless of where they work. When scheduling meetings, co-located team members should always make sure to add a video conferencing link to the calendar event so remote attendees are prepared to join the meeting.
If the team needs to use their computers during the meeting, everyone attending should log into the video conference to prevent side conversations from happening in the physical meeting room. For a more robust and inclusive meeting setup, a smart 360-degree video conferencing camera like the Meeting Owl Pro helps remote attendees feel more included and engaged in the in-room conversation.
How Owl Labs can help with remote work loneliness
Remote work offers flexibility, but it can also lead to isolation when interactions feel flat, transactional, or disconnected. Owl Labs helps bridge that gap by bringing back the human elements of collaboration that remote teams miss most. With 360° video, meetings feel more natural, like face-to-face conversations rather than a grid of static boxes. Remote participants can see the entire room, read body language, and feel present in the discussion rather than watching from the sidelines.
Owl Labs’ AI-based speaker framing further enhances that sense of inclusion by dynamically highlighting whoever is speaking, making conversations feel fluid and human. This creates more organic hybrid meetings where dialogue flows naturally and everyone—whether in the room or joining remotely—feels equally seen and heard.
