Have you ever felt lonely at work, even when surrounded by colleagues? Despite constant messages and back-to-back meetings, many employees still feel disconnected.

Workplace loneliness isn’t just personal — it’s a global health crisis. Lonely employees are more likely to take stress-related sick days, while disengaged employees have a U.S.$8.9 trillion impact on the global GDP. Simply put, loneliness is bad for business.

Belonging, on the other hand, fulfills a fundamental human need for deep connection — to people, places, and shared experiences. It’s the feeling of “fitting in,” enabling people to thrive where they feel most at ease.

Beyond a feel-good concept, belonging is a measurable performance indicator tied to collaborative team cultures, shared mission-driven commitment, and diversity embraced as a strength. High retention rates and employee satisfaction associated with feelings of belonging underscore its potential impact as a future currency — or key performance indicator — of successful workplace design.

Like loneliness, belonging can seem intangible, especially when tied to physical environments. Yet, design holds the power to foster belonging — if we shift our priorities and intentionally create spaces that connect people and nurture community. The question is: how do we design for it?

Designing for Belonging

#1: Expanding teams to include more diverse skillsets

Harnessing the full power of belonging requires bringing in new and nontraditional talents to foster it from different angles. On the design front, this means approaching projects with an expanded set of core competencies, and surrounding architects and interior designers with a multidisciplinary team of technologists, strategists, wellness and sustainability experts, and other specialists.

Greater inclusion in the design process can happen on the client side as well. By expanding stakeholder groups beyond real estate teams and including HR, finance, IT, executive leadership and even next generation junior talent, designers can better understand and amplify the many dimensions through which people feel a sense of belonging.

#2: Uncovering true user needs

Designing for belonging requires pushing past surface-level, purely functional needs in order to reveal the true needs that lie beneath. In pre-design stages, surveys or ethnographic studies might initially reveal teams’ appetite for types and quantities of spaces. But diving deeper into these surface needs — and examining them through an emotional and cultural lens — can provide a more nuanced understanding.

A self-reported need for meeting rooms might reveal a true need for small groups to ideate and sound out ideas. A desire for an all-hands area might signal a true need for a full team to come together and connect, whatever format that might take. A request for dedicated focus spaces might be a true need to tune out noise and tune into one’s thoughts.

By thinking of self-reported needs as starting points for investigation rather than definitive requirements, we can design more unique spaces that enable people to better interact with people — as opposed to merely interacting with space — shifting the paradigm toward more genuine connection and belonging.

#3: Creating diverse spaces that users can call their own

It may seem like a one-size-fits-all approach to workplace design is the best way to meet everyone’s needs, but these spaces often end up feeling impersonal. Meeting rooms, one of workplace’s most common space types, are a perfect example: they’re traditionally designed to meet the needs of all potential users, but their uniformity makes it difficult for people to feel a true sense of belonging when using them.

By breaking a one-size-fits-all approach and embracing edge cases — or diverse preferences — of users, spaces can speak to a wider range of users and, in turn, support belonging more meaningfully. In a belonging-oriented workplace, a typical meeting room might be replaced by three uniquely different spaces like an outdoor conversation corner, an immersive presentation room, and a workshop scrum space.

Each of these spaces support the same tasks and conversations, but they also account for the constantly evolving preferences and moods that a space’s many users might have. And while every space might not be used or preferred by everyone, chances are there’s at least one space everyone can make their own.

#4: Bringing spaces to life with meaningful activation

The story of a space doesn’t end with construction. Rather, it begins when people gather, connect, and engage. As Melvin Noriega, program manager at Communities In Schools Los Angeles aptly says, “It matters to have someone in the room.” It’s human presence that transforms spaces into places of connection.

Service design is a way to bridge the gap between physical spaces and community needs, unlocking their full potential. By designing and planning for their operational and logistical needs, thoughtful activations like pop-up cafés, public workshops, and art events can turn spaces into vibrant hubs for connection.

The Future of Belonging in Design

Belonging is more than a concept — it’s the foundation for a new era of design with the potential to transform spaces far beyond the workplace. Schools, hospitals, senior living facilities, and public spaces can all be transformed for the better by recognizing belonging as an indispensable design currency.

By fundamentally shifting our focus to prioritize belonging, we have the potential to create more impactful and transformative spaces that mitigate loneliness, foster connection, and drive value for people and organizations.