Forget the Lonely-Hearts Club, in a post-pandemic world the new trend is the Lonely Workers Club, but a Witney co-working space is reversing the trend for isolated workers. To combat rising loneliness, boredom, and the lack of the weekly ‘Friday feeling’ for those who are WFH, Dodo Works in Witney is bringing back the joy to people with a range of activities.
The neighbourhood co-working space has created a club for lonely workers, affectionately dubbed the ‘Lonely Workers Club’, which offers after-work drinks and networking nights and a complimentary drinks trolley that will be out and about in Oxfordshire hunting down lonely home workers.
Cookie the dog sits with the Lonely Workers Club drinks trolley which will be taken to lonely home workers on Friday afternoons to bring back the Friday feeling.
To mark the launch of the campaign, the soon to be famous drinks trolley was taken to a local residential WFH hotspot where home-based workers were given drinks in the sun on a Friday afternoon. Anyone who wants to socialise again without the office politics can join the club and enjoy the perks.
The initiative launched following the news that more than a third of remote workers feel lonely* with 74% of younger workers saying they had struggled with the social isolation of remote working**.
Area Manager at Dodo Works, James Punch, said: “Our members often comment how they have lost the Friday feeling and they miss the social side of office working. Only having virtual and digital human interactions in your working week is not good for anyone and this is why we have created flexible working packages which encourage people back into a more social setting, encouraging people to venture from their home office to Witney high street.”
“Boris Johnson might want people to return to the office, but we believe in supporting local whilst also bringing communities together. But if home working is the new normal, then the Lonely Workers Club will be putting Thursday after-work drinks and Friday afternoon drinks officially back in the diary.”
The first after-work drinks event will be held on 09 June at the Part and Parcel and will happen every Thursday, with the Friday drinks trolley available on Friday afternoons at Dodo Works and out and about in Oxfordshire. To find out more about the Lonely Workers Club and to see where the drinks trolley will be visiting next, head to @dodworkscoworking on Instagram.
