The Relationship between Social Climate and Loneliness in the Workplace and Effects on Employee Well-Being

Abstract

Although loneliness in the workplace has received relatively little attention in the literature, loneliness in the workplace has a negative impact on quality of both work and private life of employees. While some researchers stress on individual antecedents and ignore the organizational factors, studies in psychology and sociology literature found significant relationship between social relationships and loneliness, which is the start point for this study. Therefore, the overall aim of this study was to investigate the effect of social climate (as an organizational level factor) on loneliness of employees (as an individual level factor) and results for employee well-being. This point makes the study a multilevel research which is less studied in workplace psychology literature. In this article, first, existing literature is reviewed about the loneliness in the workplace, organizational climate and employee well-being. Then a research model questioning the relationships among social climate, workplace loneliness and employee well-being is structured and hypotheses related to the research model are developed in order to answer the research question 1 “Is there a relationship between loneliness of employees and social climate of the organizations?” and research question 2 “Does loneliness of employees and social climate of the organizations effect employee well-being?”. In the light of the research questions, hypotheses are tested on the data gathered by questionnaire method including 203 participants from various sectors and different sized companies. Findings support significant relationships among the variables.