Community First Yorkshire
How does feeling lonely at work affect you and your organisation?
Loneliness in the workplace is a hidden enemy to both businesses and employees.
It can affect employee mental health and productivity, and ultimately have a negative impact on the organisation as a whole.
With more people working from home, there are fewer opportunities for face-to-face contact with colleagues, leaving some people feeling more isolated and alone.
We’ve brought together some useful information and resources to highlight the importance of addressing loneliness and give some practical tips on tackling loneliness in the workplace.
Read more or download the workplace loneliness fact sheet
Stand up to youth loneliness
How can we help young people who are struggling with feeling lonely?
Research conducted by The Co-op Foundation suggests that 76% of young people felt lonely at least occasionally during the lockdown, compared to 59% before restrictions began.
Yet many young people experiencing loneliness struggle to ask for help, with only 36% feeling confident to talk about their feelings. While many do not know where to go for support, the large silence surrounding the topic suggests that tackling stigma is critical in supporting them to seek help.
Our youth loneliness campaign, Stand Up To Youth Loneliness, was created in consultation with young people from across the county, highlighting the issues surrounding the social isolation that affects young people and encouraging conversations about loneliness so that this stigma is reduced. It is aimed at young people aged 11 – 18. This campaign includes signposting to resources that can support young people.
The campaign content can be downloaded using the links below or, to request hard copies of materials, get in touch by emailing info
All these resources direct young people to the dedicated loneliness page on The Go-To, a website managed by NHS North Yorkshire Clinical Commissioning Group, on behalf of local authorities supporting wellbeing and mental health for young people in the county.
The resources include information on the Lonely Not Alone campaign, the #LetsTalkLoneliness video from the Department of Culture, Media and Sport and links to the Youth Isolation toolkit by Neighbourhood Watch.
Let’s Stand Up To Youth Loneliness and tackle youth loneliness across North Yorkshire together.
Combatting loneliness through volunteering
Research by both the What Works Centre for Wellbeing and NVCO has shown that volunteering in itself is associated with enhanced wellbeing, not only for individual volunteers but also for communities as a whole. While the simple act of volunteering can be beneficial, what is perhaps more important is that the act of volunteering is rarely done in isolation and most volunteering roles involve contact with others to a greater or lesser extent. Clearly, some roles may have lots of opportunity for contact with others, but the fact remains that, whether volunteering for a befriending service or for a beach clean, it can provide a sense of purpose, broaden our horizons and give us a feeling of connection to a wider group of like-minded individuals.
I recently had at the privilege of speaking to three Marie Curie volunteers about how their volunteering roles as Helper Volunteers have helped to combat loneliness, not only in their service users lives but also in their own lives. The overwhelming message was this: volunteering has enormous benefits for both the volunteer and, in their case, the service user in combatting loneliness. I was struck by their sense of commitment and passion too, during what has been a very difficult period for all volunteers and it reminded me of the invaluable roles our volunteers have within our communities and voluntary sector organisations.
So, grab yourself a coffee and a nice comfy chair and listen to a recorded podcast of the conversation. If your time is limited, we have some short snippets of the podcast below. Perhaps it will inspire you to volunteer within your own community to create connections and combat loneliness? You can listen to all the podcasts on our ‘Volunteering and loneliness‘ web page.
By Colleen Allwood, development officer at Community First Yorkshire
Enhance your wellbeing through volunteering
Improving feelings of connectedness for both individuals and communities
Over the last year, we have increasingly heard about the cumulative impact that social isolation, due to Covid-19 restrictions, has had on individuals, volunteers and voluntary sector organisations.
Whilst volunteering is often thought of in terms of alleviating loneliness in others, research conducted by the What Works Centre for Wellbeing found that the act of volunteering itself is associated with enhanced wellbeing, both for individual volunteers and for communities as a whole. Volunteering involves being with others, which helps volunteers feel less isolated and gives them a sense of purpose and connection to others.
Read our blog
Our development officer, Colleen Allwood, shares her thoughts on how volunteering can enhance your mental wellbeing and tackle feelings on loneliness in this blog.
Information to help you
We’ve put together two information sheets that bring together a wealth of innovative ideas on how to help volunteers maintain their feelings of connectedness and well-being if their roles are paused. Both resources illustrate the importance of staying in touch with others and offer tips and suggestions on how to achieve this.
There are two information sheets: one for volunteers and one for volunteer involving organisations.
Listen to our podcasts
Colleen chatted to three Marie Curie volunteers about how their volunteering roles as Helper Volunteers have helped to combat loneliness, not only in their service users lives but also in their own lives.
You can listen to either the full interview below or dip into inspiring snippets
Let's talk loneliness
In our Voices of North Yorkshire series, colleagues from The Loneliness Campaign North Yorkshire project talk with residents about loneliness and how it’s affected them. If you would like to listen to podcasts, please click here to go to Voices of the North, Community First Yorkshire.
The benefits of promoting wellbeing within an organisation
Wellbeing is an important aspect of everyone’s lives, but when it comes to the workplace, what is being done to help support individuals? Our Chief Executive, Jane Colthup, discusses what wellbeing means to her personally and how she supports this from an organisational perspective:
For me, wellbeing is essential in the workplace. I want our people to feel valued. The team are pivotal to me, not only as a resource for the business but to me personally. We are a conscientious and ethical employer and wellbeing is part of that principle. I don’t just see improving wellbeing as a tick-box exercise, it’s really important and I care hugely about it. It’s so important that I push myself to apply it to my own life and behaviours.
Read more about the benefits of promoting wellbeing within an organisation here.