Guidance 28
Why Aged-Care Befriending Models Don't Transfer Cleanly to the Workplace
Employers borrowing peer-buddy and befriending schemes from older-adult loneliness research should check the mechanism before the format. What worked in aged care was recently outperformed by a more structured approach in its own population.
Scaling a Workplace Connection Programme Without Killing It
The features that made a small workplace connection pilot work are usually the first things cut when it goes company-wide. A practical checklist for what to protect.
Employee Connection Programmes: What Happens in the First Four Weeks
New hires are most open to forming workplace ties in their first month and least likely to be offered anything structured. A look at how sequencing, not just programme design, determines whether workplace connection efforts hold.
What the Science Remote-Work Study Actually Gives You for a Cost Case
A new study puts a number on remote work's contribution to isolation. Here's what it does and doesn't let you claim to a finance director, and what evidence to use for the rest.
Why the Workplace Social Programme Rarely Touches Loneliness
A post-mortem on the standard employer response to workplace loneliness data — optional social events layered onto unchanged work structures — and why it fails to move the numbers it was built to fix.
Evaluating a Workplace Connection Programme: What You Can Actually Measure
Most employers evaluate loneliness programmes with a single satisfaction survey. Here is a design that survives scrutiny without requiring a research team.
Designing the Handoff: Referral Pathways From Work Into Social Connection Support
Most workplace referrals into social prescribing or community programmes fail at the handoff, not at the point of need. A framework for designing the pathway so the referral survives contact with the next service.
Choosing Outcome Measures a Workplace Commissioner Will Actually Accept
A sequenced approach to picking loneliness and connection metrics for a workplace programme that will survive scrutiny from finance, HR leadership, or an external commissioner — not just a satisfaction survey.
What Cigna's 2025 Numbers Change About the Referral Handoff
Cigna's Loneliness in America 2025 shows 52% of workers lonely and rising among younger staff. The gap that matters is not awareness — it's what happens between an EAP referral and an actual social contact.
Running a Peer Group Digitally vs. In Person: What Actually Changes
A practical comparison of digital and in-person delivery for workplace connection groups, with the design changes each mode forces and how to combine them without losing either.
Fixing the Point Where Workplace Connection Programmes Lose People
Most peer groups and buddy schemes don't fail at launch. They fail at week four, when novelty runs out and nothing structural replaces it. Here's how to build past that point.
Designing the Handoff: What Happens After You Refer an Employee for Loneliness or Isolation
Referring an employee to an EAP or social prescribing pathway is not the same as connecting them. A practice note on where workplace referral handoffs fail and how to close the gap.
Making the Case for Connection in the Language Commissioners Already Use
A framework for translating the connection evidence into the terms that actually move a budget decision — absence, turnover, and risk registers — and where that translation runs out.
Why the Loneliness Toolkit Built for Retirees Doesn't Work on Your 27-Year-Olds
Gallup's new global data shows loneliness is a young person's problem, not an old person's one. Most workplace interventions were designed for the opposite population.
Before You Evaluate a Connection Programme, Audit Its Logistics
Attendance data from workplace connection programmes is usually a logistics signal, not an engagement signal. Here is how to separate the two before you report results to a funder or a leadership team.
Why Your Connection Programme Only Reaches the Already-Connected
Workplace social connection programmes tend to recruit the people who need them least. Here is how to change who signs up, not just how many.
Picking Loneliness Metrics a Commissioner Will Actually Fund
A practical guide for workplace programme leads on which loneliness and connection measures hold up under commissioner scrutiny, and which ones invite a budget cut.
Who Holds a Workplace Group Together: A Role Audit for Peer Groups and ERGs
A practical way to evaluate whether a workplace connection group has the roles it needs to survive past its founder — with the measures to track and the table to bring to a funder.
Building the Cost Case for Workplace Connection Without Overselling It
A guide to making a defensible financial case for workplace social connection programmes, including which numbers hold up, which don't, and how to present uncertainty to a budget holder.
Recruiting, Training, and Keeping Volunteers for Workplace Connection Programmes
Most workplace peer-support and social-connection schemes run on volunteer labour, not budget. Here is what to build before you recruit, and why most of these programmes die when one person leaves.
Matching the Programme to the Kind of Disconnection, Not the Word 'Loneliness'
Employers keep buying the same wellbeing perk for three different problems. A look at how workplace loneliness interventions can be matched to what is actually driving disconnection, rather than treated as one thing.
Workplace Connection Programmes Recruit the People Who Least Need Them
Voluntary sign-up for workplace social programmes systematically misses the isolated employees they're meant to reach. Here's what to do about recruitment before you launch anything.
What the Surgeon General's Advisory Changes for Workplace Referral Pathways
The 2 May advisory gives employers the numbers to justify acting on loneliness. It does not tell you what happens in the ten minutes after an employee discloses. A guide to designing the handoff between a manager, an EAP, and a community destination.
Why Workplace Friendship Programmes Quietly Die
A framework for diagnosing why employer connection programmes stall after launch, built around the failure points programme managers keep hitting and how to design around them.
Building a Cost Case for Workplace Connection Without Overselling It
A practice note on how to justify budget for workplace loneliness programmes honestly — using the absence data you actually have, not mortality statistics that were never designed to answer a business question.
Measuring Whether Your Connection Programme Reaches Anyone Who Needed It
Attendance numbers tell you who showed up, not who was reached. A guide to evaluating workplace connection programmes for recruitment bias, not just participation.
Measuring Volunteer Recruitment, Training, and Retention as Leading Indicators
Volunteer attrition is the metric most social connection programmes fail to track, even though it predicts outcome failure earlier than any beneficiary survey. A guide to measuring the volunteer pipeline itself.
When to Kill a Workplace Connection Programme
A practical set of decision rules for deciding whether a peer group, buddy scheme, or social club at work has stopped earning its budget line — before someone else decides for you.