The Importance of Intimacy at Work

As published on LinkedIn.

We had gathered in a tight, stuffy conference room in our office on Hollywood Blvd for a call announcing shelter-in-place orders. For the first time as a company, we would be working from home.

It felt like the end times, and for many it was, but for those of us who remain, the pandemic was also a beginning -- of life after loss, social movements, globalization, and new ways of working. Pre-2020, I would have described my life in these chapters: Childhood, 9/11, High School, Financial Crisis, Marriage, Divorce. Now, everything is either The Before Times (pre-COVID) or not.

The adjustment from sharing conference rooms to being in employees’ homes over Zoom was not a tough one for me. It felt natural that I would be able to see a colleague’s messy kitchen counter or hurriedly-made bed over their shoulder. Working in HR has always been intimate.

Over the past 15 years across different industries, companies, and locations, I’ve met with young lovers asking about policies on romance in the workplace, caregivers navigating wildly-transformative-but-also-weirdly-administrative life moments like birth, adoption, relocation, illness, and death. I've called a mother who was fighting cancer to notify her that her position had been eliminated and to worriedly sort out pay and benefits through the end of her treatment.

I’ve performed wellness checks a dozen times – calling emergency contacts when an employee is a no-show. One person was found unresponsive and brought to the ICU; others needed help checking into detox and rehab. I’ve lost beloved coworkers, and I've supported colleagues through loss.

So you can imagine the face I make when anyone tries to tell me that work and life should be kept separate. Separate how? Separate for whom?

But it’s not just my anecdotal experiences that have me nearly panicking over any continued insistence on this illusion of separateness. The research shows a staggering and urgent need for more togetherness:

• The U.S. Surgeon General reports social connection is as essential to survival as food, water, and shelter. "Loneliness and social isolation increase the risk for premature death by 26% and 29% respectively…a 29% increased risk of heart disease and a 32% increased risk of stroke…it is associated with increased risk for anxiety, depression, and dementia [and] may increase susceptibility to viruses and respiratory illness."

• The World Health Organization reports an estimated 12 billion working days are lost globally every year to depression and anxiety at a cost of $1 trillion per year in lost productivity

• 44% of Americans report dreaming of a deep emotional connection with someone, then waking up with nobody in their real life to share it with, according to Nonfiction Research's Study on Intimacy in America

Many of us instinctively know that all business is also personal, but we don’t always know how to safely embrace this reality at work. Employee handbooks detail legal guardrails and codes of conduct, but it's up to us to navigate our social contexts. With 64% of Americans regularly wondering if they're good enough or worthy of being liked, it makes sense that some would forgo relying on our internal compass in favor of prescribed professional or social roles.

With traditional professional expectations represented in movies, TV shows, on the world stage of politics, and often by the leaders of our own workplaces, it's no wonder we often hesitate to reveal more of ourselves in the work environment. Corporate careers in particular tend to reinforce performative professionalism in everything from comms to dress code. In world's feigning separateness from the every day, code-switching becomes a common strategy for success, and 30% of Americans report being unsatisfied with their ability to open up to people they enjoy being around.

The good news we seem to be in the midst of a sociocultural reckoning with being human at work. Studies on the importance of psychological safety, defined aptly by Mckinsey as the absence of interpersonal fear, have been making the rounds at HR conferences and company all-hands meetings alike as we continue to assess and address the social injuries that have surfaced into the global consciousness over the past 5 years. Center for Creative Leadership, Harvard Business Review and other reputable outlets provide helpful guides on how to cultivate more psychological safety at work.

We're starting to understand that even human-centric concepts like work-life balance insinuate a separateness possible only in fantastical satires like Severance. We are not innies and outies; we bring our whole selves to work whether we like it or not. Balance IRL looks less like separation and more like integration. Implicit acknowledgement of this can be seen in organizations' significantly increased investments in coaching offerings and case studies on Employee Assistance Programs showing the positive impacts of an increased focus on mental health in employee benefits programs.

While the world of structures and processes continues to catch up with our humanity, there are some steps we can all take to generate win-win workplaces where we see greater productivity and better health outcomes just by being ourselves. Here are three simple proven strategies you can implement today to improve connectedness (and save the world):

1. Go first. Share 10% more of yourself. Start by sharing more at the start of your next meeting (this might look like “I’m extra sleepy today, I wish I could take a nap!” or “I saw this TikTok last night about how trees communicate with each other” or “I saw my favorite band play this past weekend!”) and invite more from others. Listen. Give connection time. This will not always feel comfortable, especially if you or your team are not used to exercising your sharing muscle, but vulnerability begets connection, connection begets vulnerability, and sharing gets easier over time.

2. Encourage time for reflection, together. I know I just told you to share more, but silence in social settings is important for intimacy too. We all process differently and creating space for reflection is a good inclusion habit to integrate into your meetings and work days. I once worked with a team of senior leaders who did a lot of internal processing but cringed over their moments of awkward silence and the pressure they felt to fill the space. We worked together to start naming the silences to reduce some of the awkwardness. “I’m marinating on that idea” is an easy way to name a silence and begin softening into the warmth of productive quiet. Protecting time for group reflection also helps foster a growth mindset.

3. Practice playfulness. Not everything is serious. It's possible that nothing is serious. As a recovering perfectionist, I sometimes struggle to start or share projects because I have a loud and prickly inner critic. Practice over perfection is the mantra that helps me take the first step, and practicing playfulness is taking me farther than I could have imagined. When you or your team feel weighed down by a problem ask “What if it all works out?” and create from there.

We spend a third of our lives at work and more time with coworkers than family during our prime working years. So the next time you hesitate to connect authentically at work, remember: you mean much more to your coworkers than you realize. I promise.

I have personally witnessed the relief that washes over a manager's face when I, in my role as an HR practitioner (which is to say assumed hall monitor/harbinger of doom), take a human-centered approach. The levels of care that I've witnessed time and time again remind me that we want to be good to each other. We matter to us.

By doing our part to foster healthy intimacy in the spaces we already share - virtual and in-person - we get to shape each other's days. We get to save each other’s lives.

Through MEETINGS. Imagine that?

But someone always has to go first. I’m looking at you.