100 people every hour. 870,000 every year. The hidden cost of loneliness in organizations

Every hour, 100 people die.
Every year, 870,000.

The cause: loneliness.

If 1 in 6 people are affected, then it is very likely that this effect is present in your organization as well. However, it does not appear as loneliness. It appears as cost.

It appears through absenteeism and presenteeism — through people who don’t show up, and those who do, but cannot function at their full capacity.

This is rarely connected to its root cause. Which is exactly why it remains unresolved.

Most organizations address performance issues through motivation, benefits, or education. These are valuable approaches, but they do not address the underlying structure of the problem.

Because the problem is not primarily in motivation.
The problem is in communication.

It manifests through the quality of information, through the level of understanding of the situation, and through interpersonal relations. When these processes are disrupted, the outcomes become predictable: absence, reduced performance, errors, and additional pressure on the system.

What makes this particularly challenging is that the cost does not appear in a single line item. It accumulates quietly, across multiple dimensions of organizational functioning.

If the cause is rooted in communication, then the solution cannot exist outside of it.

OpinioNet is a communication infrastructure and platform that, in complex life situations, aligns communication between families, employers, and healthcare and public institutions.

Rather than introducing another program, it introduces structure — a structure that enables understanding of the situation, proactive participation, and timely planning.

By structuring communication, the underlying drivers of absenteeism and presenteeism become manageable.

Loneliness, in that context, stops being an invisible cost.
It becomes a factor that can be understood, addressed, and managed.

WHO Commission on Social Connection – “From loneliness to social connection” (2025)