About the episode

Loneliness is quietly affecting workplace productivity more than many organisations realise.

Despite being more digitally connected than ever before, many employees today report feeling isolated, unsupported, and burned out. This isn't just impacting individuals – it's costing businesses financially, and damaging workplace culture and team cohesion.

From performative perks to genuine peer connection, clinical psychologist Dr Zac Seidler unpacks how tech and hybrid work blur boundaries, why men are especially lonely, and what’s missing in our approach to employee wellbeing.

Please note this episode contains references to suicide and stillbirth. Please take care while listening.

This episode is hosted by Dr Juliet Bourke with insights from Professor Barney Tan.

Listen to our episode on creating healthier workplaces with psychosocial safety expert Carlo Caponecchia here.

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For the latest news and research from UNSW Business School and AGSM @ UNSW Business School, subscribe to our industry stories at BusinessThink and follow us on LinkedIn: UNSW Business School and AGSM @ UNSW Business School.

Transcript

Dr Zac Seidler: The way we work is rapidly changing. Home offices increase surveillance, tech performance pressures, the idea that your work is your life, that blurring of values and time, and I think that that ends up making people pretty lonely.

Dr Juliet Bourke: Dr Zac Seidler is a clinical psychologist and the Global Director of Men's Health Research at Movember. He's seen first-hand the effect poor mental health has on the bottom line of many businesses, and says loneliness is underestimated in modern workplaces. Loneliness thrives on being at arm's length, and I think that we have a lot of that because we are so rushed, because we are so productivity and profit driven. And it could not be clearer that this is harming productivity. It's harming cohesion, and it's something that we really need to be taken seriously.

Dr Juliet Bourke: So if the impacts of mental health are so clear. How can we change our workplaces to improve both employee wellbeing and our bottom lines?

Dr Juliet Bourke: This is the business of a podcast from the University of New South Wales Business School. I'm Dr Juliet Burke, an Adjunct Professor in the School of Management and Governance.

Dr Juliet Bourke: Just a quick note before we get further into this episode, this interview includes brief discussions of sensitive topics, including suicide and stillbirth. Please take care while listening, and know that it's okay to skip ahead if this episode is not right for you. So Zac, what are we seeing when it comes to the data on mental health in Australia right now?

Dr Zac Seidler: Things are not looking good, and I think that that is a pretty well worn narrative by now, when we're starting to consider the impact of mental health, especially within the workplace, we know its role in education and schooling, but more and more so, thanks to places like the Productivity Commission and others, we are aware of the fact that the vast majority of people are going to be experiencing mental health concerns in their day to day lives, throughout their working life. And I think that it used to be that the stigma was around these outliers who are going to be experiencing depression or anxiety. But it's really important that I stress that it is the norm now that it is a part of our ongoing humanity to experience these ups and downs, to be experiencing clinical levels of anxiety and depression. You know, we're at one in three, one in four within Australian culture in any given time frame. But I think because our measurement is getting so much better, our sensitivity to understanding the true impact of mental health difficulties in the workplace, I think it's very clearly unavoidable now to realise the true gravity of this situation, of how deeply embedded it is in our cultures, and the fact that we have done a very poor job at creating processes and workplaces and mentorship and policies that actually respond to this structural and systemic issue effectively. We have had band-aid solutions galore, and we're now bearing the brunt of that.

Dr Juliet Bourke: I think about other points in our history as humanity, they must have been very stressful as well. I think about food insecurity and a lack of resources and power and medicine and sometimes war. I mean, surely that is an endemic position. Why are you saying that now is harder than then?

Dr Zac Seidler: Yeah, yeah. It's a great question Juliet, and it's something that you know, we grapple with in the mental health field all the time. I think that we are in a bit of a backlash era, whereby the amount of awareness that has come from understanding what mental health issues are, how they exist, where they come from. We have serious, heightened awareness in our society. Now. We have media and film, and everybody is jumping on this bandwagon of talking about mental health, and we are still at the same level as we were, I think, many generations ago in our response, I don't think we have met that need. And so the systems and structures that underpin our workplaces, our schools, our universities, are not adapting fast enough to respond to the fact that we are also in a fundamentally more stressful time than ever before. I believe that to be true. I think the way in which technology has sped up our day-to-day, the fact that we have access to information at our fingertips. That they are all making our lives a bit more stressful than they ought to be, and our solutions are not catching up fast enough. And so when you look at the fact that it's costing $39 billion you know that's kind of the amount of money that our mental health crisis is costing workplaces. I don't know why we need to put this in economic terms for people to understand, but historically, in all of my keynotes, if I'm going into a bank or a law firm, you've got to clarify what it's going to do to their bottom line. And it could not be clearer that this is harming productivity. It's harming cohesion, and it's something that we really need to be taken seriously.

Dr Juliet Bourke: What is it about the way that we work that is fueling this mental health? Would you say epidemic?

Dr Zac Seidler: I would say that the things that are really rife within our workplaces and have evolved since, like the dot.com boom, really the always-on culture, we have constant connectivity. It blurs the boundaries between work life and home life, the workplace flexibility paradox, which is this idea that there are kind of unclear expectations about when you're on and off home offices. I'm in one right now. It's a luxury, and it's also really difficult because I sit here online on my own for eight hours of the day. And thankfully, I feel like I get a bit of connection, but I do feel really disconnected from society in many ways. And then you've also got performance pressures whereby there's increased surveillance and productivity. You can get metrics for things that you never could previously. And so there is a real hustle culture that makes it really difficult to turn off. And then there's the broader contextual circumstance, which is not going to be a surprise to anyone, the cost of living, crisis, job market, insecurity. And then we have social and political stresses, which mean that when we're pulled into reading about war zones or climate catastrophe, you get source confusion, which is this idea of not really understanding where your anxiety comes from. And so when you are at work and you're reading the news between zoom meetings, and you read some pretty shitty news, and then you end up in a meeting, all of that bleeds into each other, and the anxiety becomes this homogenous blob, which just consumes you in many ways, and you don't know how to intervene, because you don't know what was causing it. And so I think that that's happening a lot with our online lives.

Dr Juliet Bourke: So you've spoken a little bit about this hybrid being part of it and creating a sense of isolation. I'm wondering, though, if you can talk through the sort of loneliness experience for those people who are physically present in the workplace, is it a different kind of loneliness that happens then, or is actually what you're saying, that physical presence mediates a lot of what is driving the mental health issues?

Dr Zac Seidler: The way in which we're engaging in the workplace now doesn't look the same as it did five years ago. When it comes to, you know, the water cooler chat of days of old, I'm just not witnessing that anymore. I go into plenty of workplaces. I see how they're interacting with one another, and it's very siloed, and it is, you know, very project-oriented. And it seems very much like the types of interactions of going out for lunches and workplace drinks that has completely been dismantled. And so I think workplace culture is nowhere near as strong as it was. And you'd like to think there are only so many hours in the day, if you've dropped the five to 7pm drinks with your colleagues, then you've gained dinner time with your family. That is not happening. That is not happening. And so that's my concern, which is that that time, which was pro-social, it was connective. If you are not replacing that with things that are fundamentally good for you. We're kind of going to be struggling as a society, and that's where we end up with this idea that your work is your life, for many people, and we end up with that blurring of values and time, and I think that that ends up making people pretty lonely.

Dr Juliet Bourke: So how do we shape our workplaces to support good mental health?

Dr Zac Seidler: When it comes to creating safe, you know, mentally healthy workplaces, it is about creating the safe bounds for your workforce, your employees, to respond and create suggestions around what is helping and harming them, providing them with avenues to actually take pause and consider. What is it that is making you anxious here? What is it that is making you feel down and out? What is it that we are doing as a workplace that is creating those confines for you? And I think that the really stressed, you know, thing that I talked to the C. Suite about is when you hear those things and those are going to cost you to implement, you know, a four-day work week, for instance, as a blanket example. You know, the numbers don't lie here. And so if it's going to cost you millions of dollars to bring about and implement these changes, it is costing you far more in money that you can't even see currently. This is the thing, like creativity is stifled when anxiety is high, the ability for your team cohesion, for your employees to get along with each other and actually get the most out of each other when they are not feeling held and supported. So when I talk about positive workplaces, I think, that we need to really be focused on understanding your employee base and their needs, and really focusing on the fact that they might be so inculcated in these ways of working that it's going to take, you know, structured, knocking those walls down, to get to the bottom of some of the difficulties they are having.

Dr Juliet Bourke: So you've spoken about a number of things there. Which do you think is the one that workplaces could get most bang for buck? Is it about employee empowerment? Is it about re-looking at job demands? Is it about technology and the blurring between work and life? What do you think?

Dr Zac Seidler: I think the blurring of tech is something that should be tackled on an industry-wide level. I think that that is something from a policy perspective, that needs to be taken seriously, because, again, it's become so insidious that we can't even see its impact. So I think that needs to be dealt with. The job design stuff is really nebulous. In my eyes, it feels very hard to pin down. You talk to people about it, it's not very sexy. You know, PDS is not the place that people want to spend their time. So I definitely think that instead of that, like focusing on harnessing the strengths of your workforce, of understanding their needs and desires, and spending time co-creating solutions with them, because that also makes them feel empowered fundamentally, and also answers their qualms, and makes them feel like they're in the right place that is in line with their values, that is going to lead to greater retention, and also makes them feel that the leadership has their best interests at heart. And I know for a fact, you look at the data, they do not feel that way. Workforces across the board often feel left out at sea by leadership. And so something that I often stress, if we're talking about empowerment of your workforce, the best way to do that is to validate vulnerability in leadership. You know, I was at an event with one of the banks and a very high up C suite individual I was doing my talk, and he asked a question, and then shared with all of his juniors the fact that today was the fifth anniversary of the fact that he had had a stillbirth with his wife, and he was crying in front of this whole group and just watching the way in which that humanised him. You know, I just said that the lines are very blurred between work and life, and that doesn't mean that we trauma dump, but it does mean that we find ways to show up at work as three-dimensional beings, because that is the way in which you cut through loneliness. Loneliness thrives on being at arm's length, and I think that we have a lot of that because we are so rushed, because we are so productivity and profit driven, the soft stuff is not of interest to many people. And as any psychologist will tell you, who's worth their salt, a bit of the soft stuff will lead to huge, huge benefits.

Dr Juliet Bourke: Now that example that you've just given about the CEO, I'm just going to make an assumption here. You'd said he was a male, but was he in his late 40s? He was because I think your research shows that men in their late 40s are overrepresented in loneliness statistics. Now why is that?

Dr Zac Seidler: I think the fact that they often hold the most power and are making the most money, leads to a pretty negative view of lots of these guys, and they also, when they move into those middle years, in the same way that women often talk about it, they kind of gain a strange like emotional invisibility, whereby they are the protector and provider for their family or their workplace, but they are no more than that. And so what you see is that as men age, especially as they move into the fathering age bracket, their priorities start to shift, and they move very quickly away from social connection, whether it's football or gaming, whatever it is that is tying them to their friends, those structures become far less important, and work really dominates. So it is a really pressure-filled environment. Even though we are moving towards, hopefully consistently, gender equality, this notion of men as the breadwinner is still rife within our. Culture, and many men feel it, and so we have lots of guys who are ageing, and they are slowly dropping close friends, because men are putting their attention elsewhere, not realising that those friendships are so essential for their wellbeing. They always say that they're life-saving and life giving in many ways, and they don't necessarily realise that to the point where you have, you know, one in five, one in four men, depending on the sample, who say that they have no one close to them that they can call on. They have no close friends. And it's really, really sad, because it's very bad for fathering. It's very bad for your work life. It's very bad for your marriage. It's just not a healthy situation, and that's why, when we talk about male suicide, the suicide rate is highest in those men in their middle years. So we need to be doing better in our workplace to go actually, if you want to be the protector and provider, you're going to have to go and call your mates. You're going to have to hang out with them.

Dr Juliet Bourke: I wonder if part of the solution, then, is workplaces, encouraging friendship, providing opportunities for men, in particular, to connect at that peer level. What do you think about workplaces doing that?

Dr Zac Seidler: I love that. I was talking with a mental health minister from one of the states, and I was saying, it seems that one of the best interventions that we could possibly put our money towards is by a friend like that's kind of what I end up being as a psychologist. For many people, it's a sounding board. It's someone to for an hour, who's going to hear you out, who's going to listen to you, who's going to motivate you. And so many guys, they literally don't have that. It's a great thought. Juliet: that, for like one-hour on a Thursday, you get randomly assigned another guy, and you go and have coffee with him, and you must talk to him about non-work-related stuff. You must connect on a human-to-human level. I think that would make people feel seen and heard and understood, and actually stretch that muscle. And the really important thing here, Juliette, is that shame, male shame, is the number one factor that stigmatises and undermines male-to-male connection. Female loneliness is a serious issue. There is no doubt that women deal with this as well, but they just have socialised processes that safeguard them in many instances that many men don't have. And I hate the rhetoric that exists out there that's like, Oh, my dad. You know, he's long gone. He can't possibly do that. He's not going to pick up the phone. And I'm like, Well, if you make golf a part of it, suddenly they're all doing it. So you just need to create the right structures. And I think if a workplace does that, you'll see that the floodgates open.

Dr Juliet Bourke: I wonder if that's the way it would happen in a workplace, though. I mean, what I'm thinking about here is exactly what you said with golf, there needs to be some sort of parallel activity going on. I don't know. Would it work if you just said to a guy in the workplace, you have an hour off each week. Find a buddy, or we'll give you a buddy and go download. Would they do it? Or do they need something else?

Dr Zac Seidler: This is exactly like, as I said, co-design and create that thing. So, for instance, the idea that, okay, the workplace is going to book out three squash courts down the road, we're in the CBD, going to book those out, and six guys you've never played before. We don't care they're booked out. We're randomly matching you, and you're going to go and have a chat and have a game. And I think that that's what's really important, is that forcing eye-to-eye, face-to-face conversation for many men is extremely stressful. We often talk at Movember about shoulder-to-shoulder, and how central that is in creating comfort. You know, being busy with your hands, for instance. You know, I've got a pool table in my therapy space. It's essential for like, just an easing in. Workplaces can go that extra mile if they can build out all of these other structures. HR can definitely sit down and come up with some novel and innovative ideas about how to create those bonds, because they will see long-term benefit.

Dr Juliet Bourke: Are there some industries that are feeling it more than others. You were talking about tech before, and you were saying tech is actually part of the problem here. And I'm thinking, Okay, those tech industries, they seem to have places for people to socialise. They seem to have pool tables. So are they actually doing it better because they know how bad it is? What do you think?

Dr Zac Seidler: I think that lots of people, maybe we'll call it the pool table or ping pong table phenomenon, have dropped this thing into the common room and thought that they've washed their hands clean of any need to create any different processes. And you often see that 10% of the workforce is playing ping pong all the time because they're the ones who aren't under the pump. They're not the ones who were smashed. And it actually pisses off everyone else who's listening. Do these guys play while they're working all the time? So again, it's actually really important to work out who are those most in need of response. How are you going to structure it? It's often, obviously the junior staff who are doing the most, who are struggling the most, and understanding what types of non just like, Oh, we're going to help our recruiters by putting this stuff on our website, but understanding how it embeds into workplace culture and productivity. Because culture, this is the thing: Culture is put over here. We put culture in this beautiful box, and it's never linked to output. And I think it's really essential that you create an entire organisational structure whereby that culture, those you know, workplace values, are actually embedded in your real work, not just, Oh, we're now having a lunch and learn, you know.

Professor Barney Tan: So, like Zac said, the pool table or ping pong table phenomenon is not a true solution for the mental health concerns in the workplace.

Dr Juliet Bourke: That's Professor Barney Tan. He says these initiatives are often symbolic and fail to make systemic change.

Professor Barney Tan: Now I've visited the largest tech firms in China, and I've seen this firsthand. They have beautifully designed office spaces with net parts, with basketball courts and even indoor running tracks. But the strange thing is, a lot of these facilities are completely unused during working hours. They're there more as a signal than a support structure, and that's the issue. These amenities are meant to project care, but they often don't get used because people don't feel safe or supported enough to take a break in the first place. So the core problem is in the absence of cool spaces or relaxation perks, it's the absence of psychological safety and connection. Many modern workplaces are so efficiency-driven that we've eroded the kinds of interactions that support wellbeing, those spontaneous chats in the pantry, the casual venting over lunch, those water cooler moments may seem trivial, but they play a huge role in how supported people feel at work, and these interactions have become even more uncommon post-covid. So unless perks are embedded in a culture that encourages their use, and unless people feel the permission to step back without being judged, these would just be decoration. So the real work is actually cultural.

Dr Juliet Bourke: And so thinking about those cultures, as well as the vulnerabilities of certain groups. Are there industries where you think this industry is at highly at risk, and this group of people are highly at risk?

Dr Zac Seidler: Yeah, the industries that I think we continuously overlook and misunderstand are mining and construction. Like the suicide rate in the construction industry is rife. If you go and you talk to any guy who is out there on site, and you ask him, has he ever lost a work buddy to suicide, everyone is going to say, yes. It is so, so common. And as a result, thankfully, there was a pause moment with someone who could actually make meaningful change, and Mates in Construction was born. And that is an incredible on site intervention, where they go and they connect you up with someone who is a construction worker themselves, but has been trained and upskilled to be on-site and offer guidance and advice when you need it. They're an open ear. They go and they talk about mental health, literacy and training. It's a beautiful programme, and it's been rigorously trialled across Australia and is now being rolled out across the globe. And there's Mates in Construction, there's mates in mining, carpentry, there's all of these different offshoots of it now. And so I think we are always going to see, if you just match suicide rates to various demographics, it's going to be those men in their middle years. And where do they show up? You know, they're often in blue-collar jobs where things are insecure, and we are still witnessing plenty of white collar distress, loneliness, suicidality. We can't pretend that that's not the case. So I think that we need to be very aware of the fact that this stuff doesn't discriminate by any means. It doesn't matter how much they're being paid, but it does matter that creating places, especially, and I'll just say this really quickly, Juliet: EAP. An EAP is not sufficient in having this service that you pay $100,000 for as a bank, or whoever it might be. Have you checked how many people are going and speaking to these people? Like rolling this thing out, asking your workforce if they actually like it? Most of them don't think it's confidential to start with, so they don't even go and speak to them. So I think that we really need to be considering how we are offering. Psychological support. If you are taking that on as a responsibility as an employer, make sure that you're offering something that works.

Dr Juliet Bourke: How are these Mates in Construction? How are they different to an EAP provider?

Dr Zac Seidler: So it's not an EAP because it's literally other employees. They are other guys who have been in that place, and they are not there to offer you counselling. It's Tom, who used to work next to you, who now he gets a mate's hat that he walks around onsite. It's a very clear suggestion about the fact that he is open for chat. He's been trained to look out for distress and help you out with your manager, whatever it might be. And he also really understands the pipeline of referral, which is a really important thing, which is that if it's beyond him, he's going to link you up to the next level. And so this is the thing. This is where you get a stepped care, like a tiered system. And so the next level is someone who's been trained in assist training, which is like suicide prevention training, and so they're still not a clinician, but they've done days and days of this type of work, and then above them, they can put you in touch with a psychologist or psychiatrist or whoever. That might be a lifeline or otherwise. So I think that it's just understanding we don't need everyone to do everything, but having that person or these people there all the time, creates an openness to that discussion and makes it much more likely to take place.

Dr Juliet Bourke: So what would make Employee Assistance programmes more effective? Here's Professor Barney Tan again.

Professor Barney Tan: Well, EAPs are widely offered, but they're also one of the most underutilised resources in businesses today. Research based in the US shows that less than 5% of employees actually use them, and one of the biggest barriers is trust. People worry that using an EAP might come back to bite them professionally, even if their service claims to be confidential, that lack of psychological safety kills engagement. To make these initiatives more effective, we need to shift from availability to accessibility and trustworthiness, and that starts with transparency. So who runs the service? How is confidentiality maintained and how is it culturally normalised within the organisation? Beyond these traditional channels for employee support, we are also seeing promising developments in the digital mental health space. For instance, the US Department of Veteran Affairs has implemented virtual reality therapy programmes like brave mind developed by the University of Southern California's Institute for Creative Technologies. This programme uses immersive VR environments to help veterans confront and process traumatic experiences in a controlled setting, aiding in the treatment of PTSD. Another example is Ellie, an AI-powered virtual therapist. Ellie engages users in conversations, interpreting verbal and non-verbal cues to provide empathetic responses. Studies have shown that veterans are more likely to disclose symptoms of PTSD to Le than in traditional assessments, highlighting the potential of AI in creating safe spaces for mental health discussions. In addition, anyone can now download an AI companion like REPLIKA, which offers users a platform to engage in conversations, providing emotional support and companionship, while not a replacement for professional therapy. Such tools can help alleviate feelings of loneliness and provide a non-judgemental space for users to express themselves. However, it's important to remember that these tools are supplements and not replacements for a supportive workplace culture. Technology can aid in mental health support, but it cannot substitute the need for genuine human connection and a culture that prioritises psychological safety. Organisations should aim to integrate these tools thoughtfully, ensuring that they complement broader mental health strategies that include open communication, supportive leadership and a stigma-free environment.

Dr Juliet Bourke: I want to ask you a controversial question, and that is, to some degree, what you've been talking about have been social pressures on people. It might be around the cost of living, housing crisis, and now what we're saying is that the workplace has a responsibility to do something about that. Why does this become a responsibility? Or is the actual argument? It's not an employer's responsibility, but gosh, it makes great sense if you put an intervention in place to help someone.

Dr Zac Seidler: I think that both things are true here, that it definitely makes great sense to do this. It's also realising, yes, lots of this stuff is not necessarily your responsibility as an employer, and it's not something that you can fix, either, like if we're really going to get down. To it. The vast majority of mental health difficulties are down to adverse childhood events. That is not a workplace problem, you know, but it is workplace opportunity for a solution. So like financial pressures and the job insecurity and the melding of work and day-to-day life, like lots of these levers are actually within the employer's grasp, and the things that they can really pull and make meaningful difference in ways that an individual, and this is what's really important, the individual only has so much power. Juliet, this idea that, like, if you just get it together, get your shit together, work harder, be nice to yourself, self-love. What the hell does any of that mean? When you are struggling to make ends meet, or you are working to a deadline, or whatever it might be, you need your CEO from the top-down, to create something that is actually going to help you, because helping yourself is a bit of a pipe dream sometimes when all of those stressors are completely out of your control. So allowing them the freedom to be able to feel that breath of relieving that pressure will actually allow them to then do that individual work after the fact, but they can't do that when there's not enough oxygen.

Dr Juliet Bourke: Where do you see this all going to, because we started off this conversation? You say there's greater awareness around mental health now, but there's also a lot more pressure in it. Our systems are not designed for it. Do you see a continuation of that and an exacerbation of that thread? Or do you think we're coming to a point where we're going to do some significant interventions to reverse it.

Dr Zac Seidler: There is going to be, and there already, kind of is, in some workplaces, a bit of a revolt, honestly, around the fact that we cannot keep this going. We cannot keep up. And I hope that it doesn't take any more tragic deaths to get us there. I hope that it comes from an understanding that this is in your best interest. This is how you're going to run a successful company. And it's lovely to see plenty of leaders now stepping up and going, actually, I'm not just going to say or wear a pin or have a cupcake. I'm actually going to do the work with my team to embed processes that make sure that people want to come to work and can look after themselves. So I'm extremely optimistic. I will continue to be shouting from the rooftop, and hopefully your listeners gain something from today.

Dr Juliet Bourke: Thanks to Dr Zac Seidler for joining us on this episode. Learn more about designing effective workplaces in our conversation with psychosocial safety expert Carlo Caponecchia.

Carlo Caponecchia: That’s one of the major fears that organisations have, that this means that suddenly I'm responsible for people's mental health. That's not the case. This is not about managing mental ill health. It's about managing the things in your business that could create those outcomes in future.

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