The re-organization of workspaces to ensure distance among people is likely to hamper social connections and, in turn, negatively affect employee mental and physical health.With reference to and application ofOB theories and concepts:

1. How can organizations foster high-quality social interactions among co-workers when working in de-densified workplaces?(15 marks)

Topic : Social Distancing and Loneliness.

The loss of social connections is a less obvious impact of COVID-19; however, we know from research that high-quality social interactions - including informal chats among co-workers - are essential for mental and physical health (Mogilner, Whillans & Norton, 2018). Handshakes are another social activity we know to be valuable (e.g., Schroeder et al., 2019) that can no longer be practiced. Against this backdrop, both the requirement to WFH and plans to de-densify workplaces in support of physical distancing are likely to have side effects that include at least some degree of harm to individuals' mental and physical health (Brooks et al., 2020).

More extreme than the loss of social connections, loneliness is a psychologically painful emotion that results from people's subjective feelings that their intimate and social needs are not adequately met (Cacioppo et al., 2006) and was already considered "an epidemic" (Murthy, 2017) prior to COVID-19. Workplace loneliness has been shown to have strong negative relationships to employees' affective commitment, affiliative behaviours, and performance (Ozcelik & Barsade, 2018). While we noted that virtual communications lack richness, a more negative risk of communications going online is that misunderstandings - in the absence of non-verbal cues - are likely to increase employees' concerns about being interpersonally rejected, which is a major trigger for loneliness (Cacioppo et al., 2006).

As organizations develop paths forward in the wake of COVID-19, prior research recommends that workplace loneliness be acknowledged and addressed as an indicator of employee well-being in HR policies, programs, and practices. Close study of innovations that people started initiating within weeks of mandatory shutdowns (e.g., Virtual Happy Hours) would also be valuable for informing future practice as well as research intended to help prevent loneliness and increase resilience. Such investigations would complement recent work focused on developing resiliency through experimentally tested interventions (Williams et al., 2018).