How to Build Trust in the Workplace to End Loneliness
10 June 2025
It’s Loneliness Awareness Week, and we’re supporting the campaign by exploring the state of workplace loneliness in the UK. Drawing on the role of culture and the importance of building workplace trust, we’ll present a strategy for creating meaningful connections and communities, boosting employee engagement, and reducing loneliness in life and work.
Summary:
What is Loneliness Awareness Week?
Negative Impact of Workplace Loneliness
What is Trust in the Workplace?
Why is it Important to Build Trust in the Workplace?
Reduce Loneliness in the Workplace Through Trust & Communities
How to Build Trust in the Workplace
Examples of Trust in the Workplace
Build Trust in the Workplace and Abolish Loneliness with Pluxee UK
Sometimes, the loneliest people in the world are those who are surrounded by the most people…
Why are we talking about workplace trust in the same breath as loneliness? Let’s answer a question with a question… How much time does a full-time employee spend at work each week? Longer than they spend not being at work, if we discount the time they're asleep.
The workplace plays a fundamental role in our lives; it defines elements of our identity, passions and future goals, and this is why trust in the workplace has a role to play in alleviating the impact of loneliness.
We’ve created a blog that focuses on the importance of workplace culture – ‘Transform Your Workplace Culture: A Practical Guide to Change’-- and we’re expanding on this concept in this article, with a particular emphasis on the role of workplace trust in creating the optimal employee experience.
What is Loneliness Awareness Week?
The Loneliness Awareness Week campaign aims to inform and reduce the stigma around loneliness, promoting the importance of building social connections.
You can make connections anywhere, online, in your community, at the gym and work, but making that step isn’t always easy. That’s why, during this blog, we’ll explore how employers can help their people and how their people can help themselves.
What is Workplace Loneliness?
It’s possible to be sitting in a busy office surrounded by colleagues hustling and bustling and still feel lonely.
In the workplace, loneliness comes from feeling disconnected from the culture, experience and people, causing employees to feel isolated. It’s a subjective experience, and one that many mask, silently pulling away and disengaging.
Negative Impact of Workplace Loneliness
People go to work to deliver and earn a living. It’s about the quality of their work, not whether they’re happy, right?
Wrong. Workplace loneliness can be a catalyst for further issues, and the overall employee experience is fundamental to sustainable growth.
Disengagement
When employees feel isolated, excluded, unseen, and unvalued, they may become disengaged. Disengaged employees are less productive and more likely to be absent, resulting in lost revenue opportunities for your business.
Resignation
A lonely employee is unlikely to be a happy one. If they don’t connect with your culture and values, and if they feel isolated and unwelcome – even if these feelings are self-perceived – they’re likely to seek a company that better meets their needs.
Absenteeism
We’ve mentioned that disengaged employees are more likely to be absent, but that’s not the only cause of an increase. Loneliness affects our emotional and mental wellbeing. Feeling low affects our ability to interpret situations, manage stress, handle conflict and generally sucks the joy out of the workplace.
Mental ill-health causes more long-term sickness absence than any physical illness.
If loneliness is a state of mind, it’s one that employers should address.
What is Trust in the Workplace?
Another way to pose this question would be, how can you identify if you’re in a high-trust organisation? You may also wonder why we’ve shifted from discussing loneliness to trust.
There is a strong connection between loneliness and a lack of trust. You need to trust your employer enough to let your guard down and feel connected, to be vulnerable, and bring your whole self to the workplace.
So, what is trust in the workplace?
If you’re seeing a lot of cases of siloed working, lack of collaboration, and high levels of conflict, you’re in need of a trust overhaul.
High-trust organisations benefit from collaboration, innovation, camaraderie, high levels of employee engagement, reduced stress, excellent employee retention levels, and a low absenteeism rate.
Why is it Important to Build Trust in the Workplace?
Employees in high-trust organisations are more productive, have more energy at work, collaborate better with their colleagues, and stay with their employers longer than people working at low-trust companies. They also suffer less chronic stress and are happier with their lives, and these factors fuel stronger performance. Harvard Business Review
Employees in a ‘high trust’ business report:
- 74% less stress
- 50% higher productivity
- 13% fewer sick days
- 76% more engagement
- 40% less burnout.
If you were still wondering if workplace trust matters, the numbers above from The Neuroscience of Trust will have swayed you because they all spell good news for your business. All these elements enhance employee wellbeing, engagement, and productivity, resulting in a measurable return on investment (ROI) for the company.
Reduce Loneliness in the Workplace Through Trust & Communities
The Loneliness Awareness Week campaign raises the importance of connection, and workplace communities are an effective way to bring employees together.
In our blog, ‘Workplace Mental Health: Employee Communities’, we walk you through the process involved in creating employee networks. It’s interesting to us, and it supports the position we’re taking in this blog, that both the 2025 Mental Health Awareness Week and the Loneliness Awareness Week campaign themes focus on creating communities and connections.
Humans are social beings, and only a few thrive in isolation. Help them create meaningful connections so they can find joy at work, at home, and beyond.
When employers establish workplace networks and communities, they create an environment where employees can be vulnerable. You must be in a trusting environment to have psychological safety, and this is where employees can form genuine connections and combat feelings of loneliness.
People-Led Strategies
It’s not just the employer's role to create connections; employees can also take steps to combat loneliness in the workplace.
- Be proactive: Explore what groups are active in your workplace. Is there a lunchtime walking group, morning meditation sessions, or lunchtime book clubs you could join?
- Lead the way: If there aren’t already groups that are of interest to you, then what’s stopping you from creating one? There are bound to be colleagues who feel the same or enjoy similar interests. Speak to HR or internal comms to get something up and running.
- Step out of your comfort zone: Try something new! It can be scary at first, but you may uncover a passion you never knew existed. We’re very lucky at Pluxee UK, as our HQ is based in The Park MK, and the venue regularly hosts challenges and events for all the businesses housed there. From candle making to fire walking, there’s an opportunity for everyone to get involved.
- Chat: It may seem obvious, but next time you pop into the kitchen to get your coffee, have a little chit-chat with the person also fixing their next caffeine hit. We can’t always wait for other people to make the first move.
These are just a few ways employees can overcome loneliness in the workplace.
How to Build Trust in the Workplace
Networks and communities are a fantastic way to build trust in the workplace and reduce loneliness, but there are a few things that you need to establish for them to feel authentic. Before implementing any trust-building strategy, it is essential to understand employee sentiment. An anonymised survey will reveal how your employees feel about your culture and whether they display feelings of trust.
Areas to explore include:
- How do your people rate your leadership?
- Can employees confidently raise concerns?
- Do employees discuss personal matters with their managers?
- Do your employees feel valued and recognised?
Trust and workplace culture connect at the authenticity level. If you’re trying to improve your culture and build trust, your leaders must be believable and practise what they preach.
Once you’ve established the level of workplace trust, follow the steps below to build trust in the workplace.
1. Manager Training
Managers can make or break the employee experience and are one of the main reasons employees leave. What’s that saying… ‘Employees quit managers, not businesses.’
Invest in manager training to ensure they’re empathetic, effective communicators, understand the role of reward and recognition, and possess strong communication skills.
2. Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI)
Ensure you embed and roll out a fair, robust DEI policy that outlines your company’s commitment to being a fair and inclusive employer. Policies cover hiring practices to ongoing pledges, and you should include plans to close the gender pay gap.
3. Whistleblowing
Publish a whistleblowing policy so that employees understand that you will hold people accountable for actions that go against company regulations. A clear policy ensures that employees have anonymity and can trust that their identity won’t be revealed if they do not wish it.
4. Regular Updates
Hold regular all-company meetings where you share business updates. Include end-of-quarter financial performance, people changes, wins and losses. Some business changes may need to remain confidential for a specific period, but be as transparent as possible to ensure employees trust their leaders.
5. Take Action
If you ask for employee feedback on a specific topic, be it trust, loneliness or something else entirely, you must take action. Follow up with employees to communicate your learnings and a clear timeline for implementing change.
6. ESG & CSR
An Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) policy, combined with a credible Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) strategy, communicates to your employees that you’re part of something bigger than just seeking profits. They show ethical behaviours that demonstrate trust. Embed yourself in your community through volunteering and fundraising.
7. Autonomy
When you give autonomy over how employees can approach their work, you’re essentially telling them that you trust them to get the job done. Your people will reciprocate that trust in you, believing you’re a progressive employer against stifling micromanagement practices.
8. Flexibility
A flexible approach to when and where employees work is another brilliant way to build trust in the workplace, having a similar effect as when you nurture autonomy. Hybrid working allows employees to save the time they would have spent commuting, and they appreciate it. A flexible approach to working can also be a lifeline for working parents and carers, helping them feel seen and supported, building connections and alleviating loneliness.
9. Employee Wellbeing
A robust employee wellbeing strategy is essential when considering how to build trust. When you put employee wellbeing at the heart of all you do, your workforce will feel valued, creating a sense of community and helping them trust that you have their best interests in mind.
10. Employee Rewards
Embed your core values into your reward strategy to ensure your employees can trust that you practice what you preach. If camaraderie and collaboration are part of your values, reward employees who regularly demonstrate these behaviours. When your rewards strategy aligns with your corporate identity, employees will perceive you as authentic, which in turn enhances their trust in you.
11. Peer-to-Peer Recognition
Give employees the opportunity to recognise their peers through your recognition platform. It communicates that you trust their judgement and value their opinions – you listen to them. Peer-to-peer recognition creates better working relationships and, when it comes to tackling loneliness, helps employees feel seen and valued by their colleagues.
Examples of Trust in the Workplace
Let’s say you go through this process; how can you know if you’ve improved workplace trust?
Remember those numbers we mentioned before? If you’re engagement and productivity go up and absenteeism and turnover rates go down, you’re getting it right. It’s also beneficial to conduct follow-up surveys for updated insights into employee opinions.
Here are a few examples of trust in the workplace that will help:
1. No More Siloed Working
When different teams come together, start communicating better, share information and are no longer working in siloes, you can take this as a strong example that they trust each other.
2. Autonomous Working
Asking for forgiveness instead of permission, applying autonomous thought, and taking action without being told because you know your manager will support you is a true sign of autonomy and trust.
3. Conflict Resolution
Conflicts in the workplace will occur; sometimes, HR and managers may need to intervene, and other times, it’s just a blip on the radar. Conflicts aren’t necessarily harmful because they often indicate that employees are passionate about their work and committed to getting it right – which is a good thing.
When colleagues can settle disputes amicably without feeling the need to escalate or ‘cover their backs’, it shows that they have trust in each other and the workplace.
Build Trust in the Workplace and Abolish Loneliness with Pluxee UK
There’s a lot to take away from this blog: the dangers of workplace loneliness and the effect it has on people and businesses, why trust in the workplace is so important, and how to nurture it.
Trust isn’t nice to have. It’s a business-boosting essential. It can be tricky to establish and all too easy to destroy.
Make workplace loneliness a thing of the past to retain your talent. Help employees feel like your organisation isn’t just a place to work but a place they can belong, with people who bring out the best in them and help them thrive.
FAQs
What is workplace culture, and why is it so important?
In short, your culture is the heart and soul of your business. By defining who you are, you can attract the best people to help your business thrive.
I’m unsure of how to change workplace culture. Does it require financial investment?
For a workplace culture to change, people are more important than money. Adjusting attitudes and getting cross-company buy-in are what matter most. Without this, no amount of investment will improve workplace culture. The amount of investment depends on the changes you need to make, so it’s not something we can add a definitive figure to.
What are the consequences of not taking steps to build trust in the workplace?
More workplace conflict and lower levels of engagement combined with higher levels of employee turnover and absenteeism. All of these factors negatively impact your employee experience and productivity.
Is workplace loneliness really such a big risk?
Yes. It can be. Loneliness can lead to poor mental health and will also impact your productivity and turnover.
Sources: The Harvard Business Review and The Neuroscience of Trust.
