The EconomistJanuary 30th 2021 Business 552
Bartleby You’ll often walk alone
T
here has been a quiet pandemic
developing while most people’s
attention has been on covid-19. The
lockdown has exacerbated a problem
that has been spreading in many devel-
oped nations for decades: loneliness.
It is a complex issue which covers not
only social lives, but the way you work
and the way you vote. Noreena Hertz, an
academic, tackles the subject in an im-
portant new book, “The Lonely Century”.
Loneliness increases the risk of heart
disease, strokes and dementia. Those
who say they are lonely are likelier to be
depressed five years later. In addition,
lonely people can become more hostile
towards others and more attracted to
extremist politics.
Part of the problem stems from con-
temporary employment. Globally, two in
five office workers feel lonely at work.
This rises to three in five in Britain.
Gig-economy jobs can leave people with
insecure incomes and without the com-
panionship of colleagues. The pandemic
has made it more difficult to make, and
maintain, friendships, particularly for
new employees.
Even before the crisis, the hope that
open-plan offices would encourage
greater camaraderie proved to be false.
Many people find the chatter distracting
and retreat with noise-cancelling head-
phones; they then email colleagues who
are sitting only a few desks away.
Co-working spaces, where young
professionals can take advantage of
communal facilities, have not been the
answer either. Workers are not there long
enough to invest in relationships. As Ms
Hertz puts it: “Hot deskers are the work-
place equivalent of the renters who’ve
never met their neighbours.”
It may seem odd that loneliness can
grow when people are surrounded by somany others. But this paradox was best
expressed by the band Roxy Music, when
they sang “Loneliness is a crowded room”.
Most people will be perfectly content, for a
while at least, eating on their own at home,
perhaps with a good book or the telly.
Sitting all alone in a restaurant or a bar,
surrounded by other people chatting, is a
much more isolating affair.
By the same token, big cities can be very
isolating. In a survey from 2016, 55% of
Londoners and 52% of New Yorkers said
they sometimes felt lonely. In many cities,
around half of all residents live on their
own, and the average tenancy of a London
renter lasts 20 months. City-dwellers are
less likely to be polite, because they are
unlikely to meet a passer-by again.
Perhaps this relates to human history.
Mass urbanisation is a relatively recent
development; if the history of human
existence was squeezed into a single day,
the Industrial Revolution did not occur
until almost midnight. For much of that
time, humans lived in small groups of
hunter-gatherers; cities may just over-
whelm the senses.Ms Hertz points her finger at two
more recent developments. The first is
social media. The internet has led to
much cyber-bullying (although it has
also been a source of companionship
during the lockdown). And people glued
to their smartphones spend less time
interacting socially. But Robert Putnam
noticed a tendency towards solitary
activity in his book “Bowling Alone”,
published in 2000, well before the cre-
ation of Facebook, Twitter and other
distractions.
The second culprit cited by Ms Hertz
is “neoliberalism”, which she defines as a
“minimum state, maximum markets”
approach. But it is hard to believe that
state retreat is as decisive a factor in the
loneliness pandemic as she suggests;
after all, in 1990 the government of the
average advanced economy spent 42% of
gdp, and the proportion is the same
today, according to the imf.
Some changes in behaviour are down
to individual choice. Before the pandem-
ic no one was stopping people going to
church or taking part in sports. They
simply preferred to do other things.
Indeed, one reason for the decline in
communal activities is that men choose
to be with their families rather than head
to the bar; American fathers spend three
times as much time with their children
as they did in the 1960s. That is surely a
welcome development.
So recreating a communal society
may be difficult. When the pandemic
ends, people may relish the chance to be
with their neighbours and colleagues for
a while. But the trend is clear. Technology
means that people can get their enter-
tainment at home, and work there, too. It
is convenient but it also leads to loneli-
ness. Society will be grappling with this
trade-off for decades to come.Loneliness is a widespread problem with complex rootstherefore mean making oneself redun-
dant. Mr Lee thinks this role will eventually
disappear, especially at smaller companies
(though it may hang around at bigger ones
with more complicated and dispersed
workforces). As Bhushan Sethi of pwc, a
consultancy, points out, something simi-
lar happened to chief digital officers,
whom firms have recruited with gusto over
the past decades. Digital honchos’ ranks
are beginning to thin now that digital tech-
nology has become part of most compa-
nies’ bread and butter.
Indeed, recruitment trends show that itis bread and butter that continues to preoc-
cupy bosses. Hiring of “chief revenue offi-
cers” and “chief growth officers”, charged
with co-ordinating firms’ sales-generating
activities, has accelerated as pandemic
lockdowns simultaneously restrict econo-
mies’ supply and demand sides, according
to a survey by LinkedIn, a professional so-
cial network (see chart on previous page).
Their share of c-suite hires is now, respec-
tively, twice and nearly three times what it
was in 2017.
However, last year’s hottest executive
recruits had nothing to do with covid-19. Asprotests against racial injustice rocked
America last summer, companies rushed
to enlist chief diversity officers, who en-
sure their workforce is representative of
society at large.
One risk to diversity chiefs’ future job
security is that most of them have not been
invited to sit at the corporate top table.
Most lack a direct line to the ceo. At worst,
the post becomes “a ceremonial role”, with
no authority, resources or structure, warns
Michael Hyter of Korn Ferry, a consultancy.
At best, like other modish corporate roles,
it may eventually become redundant. 7