Connection Culture

People are suffering an epidemic of isolation, which COVID-19 exacerbates.

The coronavirus pandemic increases the challenges of maintaining workplace connectivity and belonging. Employee stress and isolation now affect more than two-thirds of workers in the United States.

Leaders must take deliberate steps to build a “connection culture” for the sake of their organizations and the health of their workers.

Connections among people improve their health, happiness and resilience.

Socially connected people more effectively fend off illness and stress, worry less, stay more alert and suffer fewer heart problems. At work, sound relationships lead to higher engagement and productivity. Organizations that forge a connection culture enjoy significantly greater productivity and profitability than those with control cultures that emphasize hierarchy, or even laissez-faire cultures that grant wide autonomy while focusing on outcomes.

Employees have seven specific and immutable needs at work. Each one derives from research spanning more than a century, including discoveries by A.H. Maslow, Edward...