Vivek Murthy, the former U.S. surgeon general, explains how loneliness is reshaping the workplace and what leaders can do about it.
Vivek Murthy
19th and 21st Surgeon General of the United States
What personal habits help you maintain your own sense of balance with such a demanding schedule?
I learned the hard way that waiting until work is done to care for ourselves is the sure path to burnout. I was also taught by the patients I cared for that what you remember at the end of your days is not your achievements and accolades but the people you loved and served. I do not always get it right, but I work hard to build my life around these lessons.
There are three things I do each day:
- I begin each day with a short meditation to ground myself before jumping into work and home responsibilities.
- I spend a minimum of five minutes each day reaching out to someone I love.
- I make dinner time with the family a technology-free zone where we focus fully on each other.
How is loneliness showing up in today’s workplaces, and what impact does it have on employee well-being?
Loneliness has quietly become one of the biggest hidden costs in the modern workplace. About 1 in 5 workers are lonely, and remote work, for all its benefits, has increased isolation according to a 2026 peer-reviewed study published in Science. Managers report even higher rates of loneliness — 10% higher, according to Gallup’s State of the Global Workplace study.
Loneliness in the workplace has organizational consequences. It is connected with decreased engagement, lower performance, reduced creativity, and increased burnout. When people do not feel a sense of belonging at work, they bring less of themselves to it. Building connection in the workplace is not a soft priority; it is an essential foundation for a healthy, functioning workplace.
What role do managers and leaders play in shaping the mental health of their teams?
Leaders play an enormous role in the well-being of their teams, far bigger than most of them may realize. Roughly 70% of the variance in team engagement traces back to the manager. In other words, more than company policy, benefits, or other workplace factors, it is your manager who has an outsized impact.
However, managers can only give what they have. They are more likely to be lonely and burnt out than the people they lead, and fewer than half have had any training for the relational part of their job. Leaders can strengthen well-being for their teams, but they need support.
Research has shown that cultures where care and compassion are openly expressed buffer people against the harmful effects of loneliness. The good news is this can be learned. Training leaders in how to create a culture of care and compassion is one of the highest-yield investments a workplace can make. When people feel seen and know they matter, they are not only healthier; they also do better work.
How can organizations move beyond reactive mental health support and create workplace cultures that proactively promote well-being?
Too many organizations treat mental health as a program rather than an element built into how work actually happens.
In my 2022 Framework for Workplace Mental Health and Well-Being, I laid out five essentials to improve employee well-being: protection from harm, connection and community, work-life harmony, mattering at work, and opportunity for growth. What makes them proactive is that they are design questions, not solely benefits questions. They ask us to think not only about how to offer support to people who struggle, but also about the root of the problem: whether our workload, meeting culture, communication practices, and work-life boundaries actually support people’s humanity.
The 2026 Science study on remote work makes this concrete. It found that isolation did not stop at the end of the workday; remote workers withdrew from social life generally. It turns out the decisions that most affect well-being are often ones we do not label as well-being decisions at all: where people work, how teams are structured, whether managers have time to lead, and what proactive steps we take to help people know each other and build relationships.
How can employers foster a greater sense of connection among employees in hybrid and remote work environments?
Connection used to be a byproduct of proximity. You ran into someone in the kitchen or the cafeteria, you overheard a colleague having a hard day, you chatted with people as you walked to or from a meeting. In hybrid and remote settings, much of this is lost. This means connection has to be designed into workplace culture and practice.
Three things matter most.
First, be deliberate about what happens when people gather. Simply putting people in the same space does not ensure they come to know one another. The practice we built in the Office of the Surgeon General used a little bit of structure and a little bit of time, usually just 10 minutes, to allow people to share their stories with each other each week. It was a simple but powerful practice that helped people see each other more clearly and connect more deeply.
Second, pay attention to who is most at risk. The research shows new employees in their first six months and people who live alone are the most isolated. This means these are the people worth reaching out to first and worth asking, specifically and more than once, how they are really doing.
Third, leaders should go first. When a manager shares something real, when they open up about their story and journey, when they take time to prioritize their family and their health, it gives everyone else permission to do the same. It helps us take off the masks of perfection and impenetrability and allows us to be human with each other.
