Why organisations must understand loneliness and ageing

Heather Fraser, Global Life Sciences & Healthcare Lead at IBM Institute for Business Value, talks to us about the role organisations play in tackling loneliness.

The impact of the pandemic

Living through the COVID-19 pandemic over the last 16 months has been a challenge for all of us. Whether it be adapting to working from home and the incessant meetings, the joys of juggling home schooling, or the lack of social and physical contact with family, friends, and colleagues. With governments implementing self-isolation and social distancing guidance, along with many individual suffering personal loss, the spread of loneliness escalated across a large swath of the population, in particular in the older adults.

Why we should care about loneliness

Loneliness has implications for personal, economic, and societal well-being. It can trigger unavoidable physical and cognitive health problems that can decrease the individual’s quality of life. Additionally, there are many hidden costs of loneliness in older adults. These range from businesses whose employees juggle caregiving with work, the loss of voluntary contribution of these individuals to their communities, and governments trying to manage their already stretched social care budgets. This conundrum is only likely to worsen as this demographic continues to grow. By necessity technology has played a key part in keeping individuals safely connected with their family and communities during the COVID-19 pandemic. Organisations, whether they be large, SMEs, academia, public, private, or not-for-profit -have rapidly adapted existing solutions and innovated new ones.

• Call & Check who provides a digital platform supporting community health and social care, rapidly redesigned services provided by postal workers from face-to-face to a telephone interface and virtual visits.
• The University College London’s Industry Exchange Network used virtual reality to create a series of three-dimensional social settings, such as a restaurant or a park, encouraging social interaction between those living alone and family members and friends.
• On Hand, an “Uber for volunteers” developed a technology platform to match volunteers with requests from older adults and their caregivers.
• VOICE, a part of the UK’s National Innovation Centre for Ageing (NICA) developed a unique system of digital and physical engagement which combines the professional experience of retired individuals to help drive innovative solutions for ageing.

And more recently, in a bid to offer some joined-up thinking across research, technologies and innovation of business models associated with ageing, NICA has launched Longevity as a Service™ bringing together companies from a range of different industries. Their motto, “Longevity is a journey, not just a destination”, fills me with optimism as I fast approach a birthday where, in my grandparent’s generation I would have been graduating as an older adult!

The IBM perspective

So, as we take our first cautious steps on the path out of the COVID-19 pandemic, how can organisations help curb a longer-term loneliness pandemic? What can organisations do to meet the challenges encountered on the longevity journey for the older adult, family, and their friends? Organisations such as IBM provide opportunities for flexible work and volunteering to ensure the wealth of expertise of the older adult is not lost. They connect individuals to lifelong learning experiences, so they remain intellectually engaged and vital in the workplace. Additionally, organisations can provide volunteer opportunities to benefit employees, retirees, older adults, and society as a whole. Start today by looking at your existing organisational networks and infrastructures for opportunities to help mitigate loneliness in our ageing population.