connected workplace

We all want to feel like we belong. Psychologists have known this for a long time, describing belonging as a fundamental human need that brings meaning to our lives.

Traditionally, this need was filled by family and community networks. But as society becomes more individualised, with many people moving away from their community and family, the workplace has become an increasingly important source of meaning, connection and friendship.

Many employers know the value of belonging, boasting that their organisation is like a family – a place where everyone is welcome and takes care of one another. But, in reality, just being hired isn’t necessarily enough to feel like you belong. Belonging is about feeling accepted and included. This might mean feeling “seen” by your colleagues and manager, and that your work is recognised, rewarded and respected.

Most people want to do meaningful work; a sense of belonging and connection with others are part of this. Meaning in work may come from the job itself – doing something that aligns with our purpose – or from the relationships and roles people create in the workspace. Consider someone who has a (formal or informal) position of offering support to their colleagues. This sense of connection and belonging can make the job feel more meaningful.

Belonging is also good for business. Feeling excluded and lonely can lead people to disengage, negatively affecting their work performance. Surveys have found that over 50 per cent of people who left their jobs did so in search of better belonging, with younger workers more likely to leave.

The exclusion that comes from not belonging can be as painful as physical injury, and feeling isolated can have a range of negative health impacts. In contrast, when employees feel that they belong, they are happier and less lonely, leading to greater productivity, fewer sick days and higher profits.

As a psychotherapist, I work with people who feel unsupported and alone in the workplace due to direct or indirect discrimination and exclusion. The instinctive response can be to work harder to be accepted – but this can lead to burnout, trying to get the approval that might never come.

The Covid-19 pandemic altered how we think about and engage with work. Some businesses may feel that bringing people back into the office is the answer to building connections and fostering belonging. But the truth is, such actions alone could have the opposite effect.

People may withdraw and become less connected in such spaces. Those who prefer working from home may feel unsupported by their workplace if they have to come in to the office to deliver work they can do equally, if not more productively, at home.

On the flip side, for some people, being in the office offers a sense of belonging and connection that can be missing when working from home. Ideally, enabling a balance between the two allows people to benefit from the advantages of both spaces and work in a way that maximises productivity and connection. But it may be some time before employers figure out how to get the balance right.

ST ILLUSTRATION: MIEL

Finding belonging

Belonging is particularly important to consider as workplaces become more diverse. Workplace discrimination is more likely to be experienced by marginalised groups, and is a major barrier to belonging.

Employees in organisations that are more diverse, particularly in senior leadership positions, are more likely to feel a sense of belonging. Diversity is also related to greater productivity and profitability. But organisations must consider the diversity distribution. While grand statements of inclusion may attract new workers, if the senior leadership team is predominately white and middle class, these statements have little meaning.

For diversity to effectively create belonging, it has to go hand in hand with psychological safety. This means that everyone – not just those who share characteristics with the majority or the leaders – feels they have a voice and are listened to. A workplace where people feel nervous about raising concerns, are worried about making mistakes, or feel there is a lack of transparency is one that is lacking in psychological safety.

When people feel unable to bring their authentic selves to work, they may end up performing different identities or code-switching – adjusting their language – to become more “acceptable” and fit in. These strategies initially help workers create a sense of safety for themselves in the workplace, but can result in exhaustion and burnout.

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Friendships in the office

Creating ways that people can express their authenticity – for example, through employee resource groups such as women’s staff networks – can build a safe space to share with others who have similar experiences in the workplace. For those who are self-employed or work mostly from home, to combat isolation, consider finding online groups or local coworking spaces that mirror the social benefits of a workplace community.

Employees feel more connected with the wider team when their efforts are recognised and rewarded. But this does not have to be through a pay rise or promotion – even an e-mail from a manager can boost someone’s sense of belonging. The more recognition and appreciation for the work we put in, including from our colleagues, the more positive the benefit.

Not everyone has the opportunity to leave workplaces that make them feel unsafe or unhappy. If you are in this position, you can minimise the negative impact by finding connection and belonging outside of work, and reconnecting with people and activities that bring you meaning and joy.

Nilufar Ahmed is senior lecturer in social sciences at the University of Bristol in the UK. This article was first published in The Conversation

hardwork mummy

There was dog urine on the carpet, vomit on her blouse and a queasy seven-year-old to look after, but Dr Whitney Casares had just a few spare moments to clean up and change so she could resume the keynote presentation she had been giving when the school nurse called.

Dr Casares, 42, a paediatrician in Portland, Oregon, tried to clean up both messes and race back to her computer. “But I was completely unnerved and underperformed,” she said. “When my husband” – who hadn’t picked up when the school called – “and younger daughter came home a few hours later, the first words out of their mouths were ‘Didn’t you get anything for dinner?’ and ‘Why does it smell so bad in here?’”

In that moment, said Dr Casares, the author of Doing It All: Stop Over-Functioning And Become The Mom And Person You’re Meant To Be, she related to a Taylor Swift lyric, “I did all the extra credit, then got graded on a curve”.

It has always been exhausting to be a mother, but each generation has had its particular pressures and ways of coping. Boomer mums didn’t expect motherhood to be anything but difficult, though the lack of social awareness around anxiety and depression meant most would never openly discuss it.

Generation X mums had to prove that they could do everything men could do – and then return home and work a second shift. Some Gen Xers were children of divorce, manifested an ironic detachment from their troubles and were prescribed Prozac to deal with the problem.

‘You go, girl!’

And then came millennial mums, the women raised on “You go, girl!” in the 1980s and 90s and who today are in their 30s and early 40s. On average, they enrolled in college in higher numbers than men, married later and delayed having children, sometimes to prioritise careers and other times because – with student debt and less wealth than previous generations – it felt impossible not to.

Still, it seemed like some things had worked out in their favour. Perhaps they could juggle work and motherhood more successfully. Maybe their male partners, if they had them, would be more attuned to gender imbalances at home.

“No one had these hard conversations with us about just how difficult it is to be a parent, have a career and a partner,” said Professor Brandale Mills Cox, 38, the mother to a four-year-old and a 15-month-old in Silver Spring, Maryland. “No one really talked about the burden social media plays, where a huge part of what we see of other people’s experiences makes us feel we are lacking as mothers. And no one talks about the real day-to-day, such as the friction between you and your partner regarding how you raise your children.”

Prof Mills Cox of Howard University said she wished that her boomer mother had sat her down for a frank conversation about the moments when “you’ll just want to go into a room and cry”.

The millennial mother midlife crisis

Lately, some millennial mothers – particularly those who are middle- to upper-middle class – are finding themselves at a crisis point.

While many Gen X mums confronted the middle of their lives as children were leaving for college, millennial mums are doing so with much younger children, and many more years of mothering ahead of them. Some are struggling to reconcile the vision they had of motherhood with a harsher reality they did not feel totally prepared for.

Call it the millennial mother midlife crisis, or MMMC. The hallmark of an MMMC is not going off the grid, a la Rachel Fleishman, the strung-out mother in the novel (and hit streaming TV series) Fleishman Is In Trouble, or meeting up with other mums to release primal screams.

After all, rage and angst are out, and wellness, equanimity and mental health are in.

For lots of mums, the MMMC is about maintaining a chipper facade, the appearance of having it together while quietly imploding. If the MMMC had a mascot, it would be a swan, an animal gliding easily on the surface while paddling furiously beneath the water.

Professor Jean M. Twenge, the author of Generations: The Real Differences Between Gen Z, Millennials, Gen X, Boomers And Silents – And What They Mean For America’s Future, said there was more of a bait-and-switch for millennial mothers than for Gen X mothers.

“Women are graduating at much higher rates, young women are accomplishing so many things, and then who is the one who still has to work when they aren’t feeling well during their first trimester?” said Prof Twenge, 52, of San Diego State University and the mother of three preteen and teenage children. “There is still this gender expectation.”

This is just one of the stinging realisations that can plant the seeds for an MMMC. While millennial women might have expected a more equitable home life, they still, in most cases, do a larger share of the domestic work and household worrying than men.

The expectations for modern parenting have grown alongside the pressure on women to have careers, Prof Twenge said, making the standards for achievement in every arena feel stratospheric for millennial mums.

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The self-improvement treadmill

Gen X mums were expected to do better, too, but millennials were the first to step into parenthood with social media platforms like Pinterest and Instagram, which made it easier than ever to compare just how well they stacked up against other mothers.

“It’s hard not to internalise, even though I know it’s all curated, that you could be doing it better,” said Ms Sophie Brickman, a 40-year-old mother of three, whose forthcoming novel, Plays Well With Others, follows a frazzled New York City mother, Annie, navigating the competitive landscape of 21st-century parenting.

Recently, Prof Twenge was looking at a picture on social media of an influencer who had just had a baby and was posing with perfect make-up.

“I feel bad for millennial women who have to look at this,” she said. “I had my first child in 2006, and now it has become this whole thing that you have to have these glamorous pictures right after you’ve given birth, which is crazy.”

With the internet at their fingertips, millennial mums can also fall down a rabbit hole of searching for the perfect stroller and endless – and often contradictory – advice about breastfeeding or sleep training. Rinse and repeat for every other parenting quandary.

“When we had questions about parenting, we went to a book or called the doctor,” said Professor Margie E. Lachman of Brandeis University, a baby boomer with millennial children. “We got an answer, and that was it. Millennial parents have immediate access to unlimited information.”

Millennials are more likely than previous generations to think about these mounting pressures in terms of therapy speak. But the drive to become a more mindful, less reactive, more positive parent – a kind of mantra among many millennial mums – can create its own kind of pressure cooker.

Ms Natasha Jung, a 37-year-old founder of a digital media company in Vancouver, British Columbia, said that while her immigrant parents worked very hard to put food on the table and give their children a better life, “there wasn’t enough of an opportunity to support me on the emotional side”.

Ms Jung said she tries to focus on her three-year-old son’s emotional development and accommodate his sensitivities. “Through therapy, journalling and working with a life coach, I’ve learnt how to re-parent myself so I can be a better parent and have patience,” she added.

She recalled times when she had “adult breakdowns” because she found it difficult to cultivate the more thoughtful, emotionally evolved parenting style she expects of herself. “It’s so much easier to default to yelling and threats,” she said.

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One of the crushing realisations of the MMMC is that there is little choice but to forge ahead.

I found myself in the midst of my own mothering crisis a few months ago, after my six-year-old daughter lashed out at me and my four-year-old son had a meltdown because he did not like that “water is wet”.

It was in many ways a mundane scene that many mothers would recognise, regardless of their generation. There were e-mails to send to school, play dates to arrange and lingering work tasks to complete.

Like many in my generation, I was also taking care of an elderly parent.

For the most part, millennial mums are not blowing up their lives. The divorce rate is lower for this generation, and the stereotypical trappings of a midlife crisis – like buying a flashy car – are more closely associated with men, anyway. Rather, millennials are testing what is possible at a moment when more is demanded of them and they are demanding more of themselves.

The MMMC is about grappling with the notion that for all the strides made by previous generations of mothers, motherhood is just as difficult as – and perhaps even more conflicted than – before.

“I think the core question for the current 30- and 40-something mothers is whether they are going to do anything about a society that continues to overburden them,” said Leslie Bennetts, the author of The Feminine Mistake: Are We Giving Up Too Much?

Otherwise, she added, more and more women are going to “feel like they are going to explode”.

There is no Instagram parenting hack or self-care practice that can lift my generation out of the MMMC – and our culture has some serious work to do to be more accommodating to mothers. But right now I need to pick my daughter up from the bus and nudge an elderly parent about taking a walk. NYTIMES

Hannah Seligson is a millennial and a mother to a daughter, six, and a son, four.

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dementia

Our brains change more rapidly at various times of our lives, as though life’s clock was ticking faster than usual. Childhood, adolescence and very old age are good examples of this. Yet for much of adulthood, the same clock seems to tick fairly regularly. One lap around the sun; one year older.

However, there may be a stage of life when the brain’s clock starts speeding up. The brain starts changing without you necessarily noticing it. It may even be caused (partly) by what’s in your blood. This stage of brain ageing during your 40s to 50s, or “middle-ageing”, may predict your future health.

Psychologists studying how our mental faculties change with age find that they decline gradually, starting in our 20s and 30s.

However, when assessing people’s memory of everyday events, the change over time appears to be especially rapid and unstable during middle age. That is, even among healthy people, some experience rapidly deteriorating memory, while for others, it may even improve.

This suggests that the brain may be going through accelerating, as opposed to gradual, change during this period. Several structures of the brain have been found to change in midlife. The hippocampus, an area critical for forming new memories, is one of them.

It shrinks throughout much of adulthood, and this shrinkage seems to accelerate around the time of middle age. Abrupt shifts in the size and function of the hippocampus during middle age could underlie memory changes like the ones mentioned above.

Ultimately, what allows the brain to carry out its functions are the connections between brain cells – the white matter. These connections mature slowly throughout adulthood, especially the ones connecting areas of the brain that deal with cognitive functions such as memory, reasoning and language.

Interestingly, during middle age, many of them go through a turning point, from gaining volume to losing volume. This means that signals and information cannot be transmitted as fast. Reaction time starts deteriorating around the same time.

Through the white matter connections, brain areas talk to one another and form interconnected networks that can perform cognitive and sensory functions, including memory or vision. While the sensory networks deteriorate gradually throughout adulthood, the cognitive networks start deteriorating faster during middle age, especially those involved in memory.

Much like how highly connected people in society tend to form cliques with one another, brain regions do the same through their connections. This organisation of the brain’s communication allows us to perform some of the complex tasks we might take for granted, such as planning our days and making decisions.

The brain seems to peak in this regard by the time we hit middle age. Some have even referred to middle age as a “sweet spot” for some types of decision-making, but then the network “cliques” start to break up.

It is worth stating at this point why these subtle changes matter. The global population aged 60 and over is set to roughly double by 2050, and with this, unfortunately, will come a considerable increase in dementia case numbers.

Too much focus on old age

Science has long focused on very old age, when the detrimental effects of time are most obvious, but, by then, it can often be too late to intervene. Middle age could be a period when we can detect early risk factors of future cognitive decline, such as in dementia. Critically, the window of opportunity to intervene may also still be open.

So, how do we detect changes without having to give everyone an expensive brain scan? As it turns out, the contents of blood may cause the brain to age. With time, our cells and organs slowly deteriorate, and the immune system can react to this by starting the process of inflammation. Inflammatory molecules can then end up in the bloodstream, make their way to the brain, interfere with its normal functioning and possibly impair cognition.

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In a fascinating study, scientists from Johns Hopkins and the University of Mississippi analysed the presence of inflammatory molecules in the blood of middle-aged adults and were able to predict future cognitive change 20 years down the line. This highlights an important emerging idea: age in terms of biological measures is more informative about your future health than age in terms of years lived.

Importantly, biological age can often be estimated with readily available and cost-effective tests used in the clinic.

“Middle ageing” may be more consequential for our future brain health than we think. The hurried ticking of the clock could be slowed from outside the brain. For example, physical exercise confers some of its beneficial effects on the brain through blood-borne messengers. These can work to oppose the effects of time. If they could be harnessed, they might steady the pendulum.

Sebastian Dohm-Hansen Allard is a PhD candidate, anatomy and neuroscience, at University College Cork in Ireland, and Yvonne Nolan is a professor in neuroscience at the same institution. This article was first published in The Conversation