IRL
Social connection is a new kind of service, and it might take a moment to wrap your head around it all. This page describes how our work might be applied In Real Life.
The work of growing meaningful connection looks different depending on who you are and who you serve. Here's how it shows up across the organizations and communities we partner with.
Workplaces & Employers
Every organization is also a workplace — so this applies whether you're a business, a nonprofit, a clinic, or a town office.
The connection problem at work
Something is quietly fraying in workplaces — and leaders feel it in the numbers that matter most: who they can attract, who stays, and whether teams can actually do good work together.
Three pressures are converging at once:
The political divide has followed people to work. Colleagues who once collaborated easily now move carefully around each other, unsure what's safe to say. When people can't talk across difference, trust thins and collaboration stalls.
Remote and hybrid work removed the everyday moments connection used to grow in. Without shared rooms and hallway conversations, many people are simply out of practice — social anxiety rises, and the relational muscle that lets teams work well together weakens from disuse.
AI is becoming the easiest "colleague" to talk to — faster, judgment-free, always available — and people increasingly turn to it instead of each other.
We've heard it firsthand, here in Vermont
In our earlier connection work through Social Tinkering, we surveyed Vermont workplace professionals — and the same themes surfaced again and again, in people's own words:
"People forget how to connect and interact in a meaningful way."
"Remote work has reduced employees' ability to interact positively with co-workers — a lost skill of human interaction."
"People self-isolate. They are less likely to engage with others. Less team-oriented, less productive."
It's not all-or-nothing. Some Vermont workplaces are already doing this cultural development beautifully — mindful and intentional about connection. Others haven't yet begun. Wherever yours falls, there's a next step from here.
The national picture — and the cost
The research backs up what we're hearing, and puts a price on it:
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BetterUp's study of 3,000+ U.S. workers found 69% of employees aren't satisfied with the opportunities for connection at work — and that employees with a low sense of belonging are 313% more likely to intend to quit and 176% more likely to be job-hunting. (BetterUp, Build a Culture of Connection)
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A 2026 Workday study of 2,150 employees found 14% had taken time off due to loneliness or isolation in the past year, and concluded that the small moments that build trust must now happen "by design now, not by default." Low engagement is estimated to cost the global economy $10 trillion in lost productivity a year. (Workday, The Human Connection Workplace Index)
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The U.S. Surgeon General's Framework for Workplace Mental Health & Well-Being names Connection and Community as one of just five essentials of a healthy workplace. (HHS)
The reverse is just as measurable: highly connected employees show markedly higher wellbeing, stronger relationships, and far more professional growth. Connection isn't a culture nice-to-have — it's the infrastructure underneath retention, attraction, collaboration, and performance.
How we help
We help workplaces rebuild meaningful connection on purpose — designing the conditions where people across differences can talk, trust, and do great work together, even as remote work and AI reshape how we interact. That can look like a connection audit, staff training, a workshop like Stretching Into Connection, leadership and board sessions, or an ongoing advisory partnership.
→ See our Services Page to start a conversation today!
Mission-Driven & Service Organizations
Nonprofits and service organizations — aging, healthcare, recovery, youth, family services, and more.
Your Mission Runs on Connection
If your organization serves people, meaningful connection is doing double duty: it shapes your own team's health, and it's often the deeper need underneath the services you provide.
Inside your organization, the people doing hard, emotionally demanding work need to feel seen, valued, and supported themselves. Connection is what sustains them — and what protects them from burning out.
And among the people you serve, many are those most affected by disconnection — for whom "go socialize more" was never a real answer. When long-term isolation and loneliness affect your clients, it can quietly hold back your mission, too: it's hard to reach your outcomes sustainably when the people you serve are being impacted by disconnection. The shift starts with looking honestly at the underlying causes — and building cultures and systems grounded in compassionate belonging, so the people you serve are welcomed in and finally feel seen, valued, and supported.
That's where we come in. We help service organizations in both directions at once: strengthening connection inside your own staff and culture, and weaving meaningful connection into how you serve — recognizing isolation in the people you work with, building referral and belonging pathways, and designing programs that actually reduce loneliness rather than assuming people can simply show up and connect.
This is structural work, grounded in lived experience and global research, co-created with you and the people you serve — never prescribed from outside.
→ Explore Consultation, Training, or check out our Community Engagement Events!
Community Groups, Clubs & Third Spaces
Libraries, recreation centers, faith communities, clubs, neighborhood groups, and the gathering places where community life happens.
from gathering to belonging
Third spaces — the places that aren't home and aren't work — are where so much belonging is grown or lost. But gathering people in a room isn't the same as connecting them. A space can be busy and still leave people feeling like they don't belong.
We help the people who run gathering spaces design for compassionate belonging: welcoming newcomers authentically, making the implicit work of connection explicit, and creating conditions where people of different ages, backgrounds, and comfort levels can show up as themselves. The goal is spaces that are genuinely connection-ready — where someone experiencing isolation and loneliness can walk through the door, actually make it into the room, and want to return after.
This is the same practice we bring to our own community gatherings — Wild Belonging, Speed Friending, and more — where connection is named and woven through, not left to chance.
→ Talk with us about designing your space and gatherings for meaningful connection! Contact us through our Services page to get started today.
Government, Civic Life & Regional Planning
Municipal and state government, civic organizations, and regional and community planners.
Connection Is Infrastructure
Almost every community challenge — from civic disengagement to a fraying sense of belonging to the hardening of political divides — traces back to connection and disconnection. Thriving communities aren't only well-resourced; they're well-related. People feel safe, they engage, and care flows between neighbors and the place they call home.
We work with government and civic leaders to treat social connection as community infrastructure: something to plan for intentionally, the way you'd plan for roads or housing. That can mean helping communities bridge division and rebuild the capacity to talk across difference, supporting civic engagement grounded in belonging, and advising planners and regional partners on designing communities, development, and public life so that connection — and the wellbeing, resilience, and economic vitality that follow from it — can take root.
When connection is built into how a community is planned and governed, its economy, its environment, and its residents all have a better chance to thrive.
→ Start a conversation with us today about planning for connection in your community. Complete our contact form on the Services page to connect.