Your employer isn’t your camp counselor

Two labor economists argue that remote work explains a third of the recent rise in Americans’ mental distress.

Their proposed fix isn’t a full return to the old office norm. It’s “doses of in-person time with one another,” supported by employers who are more intentional about restoring some of the connection remote work has eroded.

They cite firms redesigning coffee spaces, rewarding “the too-often-invisible work of connecting teams,” and — more dubiously — turning managers into mentor-matchmakers.

I’m sympathetic to part of this. In-person work facilitates the informal knowledge-sharing and trust-building that makes work better. And the best offices can enable collaboration — Pixar famously designed its campus to increase chance encounters across teams.

But Pixar’s goal wasn’t to make employees less lonely. It was to improve collaboration. The friendships that followed were incidental. That distinction matters.

Employers should care whether people communicate well, trust one another, mentor junior colleagues, and share useful information across teams.

But that doesn’t mean employers should solve loneliness.

Work can produce meaningful relationships. But those relationships are a byproduct of work, not what work is for.

Your employer isn’t your camp counselor.