“More good days come together” – that is the motto of this year’s Mental Health Awareness Month in May. And it’s true: good mental health requires community. This also applies to companies: employees who feel like they belong to the team and the company are more resilient, more motivated and stay in the organization longer. The central question for HR teams and managers is therefore: How can I contribute to a real sense of belonging – also known as Belonging – in the team?
Belonging is a basic human need
As early as 1995, psychologists Roy Baumeister and Mark Leary showed in their influential work “The Need to Belong” that belonging is a fundamental human need – comparable to the need for food or security.
Conversely, the feeling of being excluded is an existential threat to our brain: Psychologists Naomi Eisenberger, Matthew Lieberman and Kipling Williams showed in a 2003 study that social exclusion stimulates the same areas of the brain as physical pain. So exclusion hurts in the truest sense of the word.
In a work context, this means that most of us want to be accepted as part of a team. We want to be seen and valued – with all facets of our own identity. But in reality this is often not the case. Loneliness in society in Germany is tending to increase.
Combating Loneliness: How Belonging Protects Mental Health
The World Health Organization has classified increasing loneliness as a global health risk in 2025 – around one in six people worldwide is affected, with health consequences comparable in severity to smoking or chronic stress.
What at first glance sounds like a private problem is actually an issue that also affects the workplace:
- The TK Loneliness Report 2024 shows that 15 percent of working people in Germany often or sometimes feel lonely.
- An Indeed survey found that 36 percent of employees feel lonely at work.
Belonging is the most effective counterpoint to this development. When this feeling is missing, a whole host of other mental health risks arise: chronic stress, anxiety, depressive symptoms and burnout.
The feeling of belonging in the team has a direct impact on the success of the company
Belonging in a corporate context means two things: the feeling of belonging to the team and an emotional connection to the organization. Both create meaning and determine whether employees look forward to the day in the morning or drag themselves to work unmotivated.
For many people, belonging sounds like a soft topic. There are specific business metrics behind it:
- More innovation and performance: Employees who feel like they belong get involved, share their ideas and take responsibility. Teams with strong belonging work more creatively and productively.
- Higher employee retention: The more employees feel connected to the company and the team, the more likely they are to stay with the company.
- Fewer days of absence: According to the Gallup Engagement Index 2024, employees with strong emotional ties were absent an average of 5.7 days per year – without commitment it was 9.7.
- Resilientere Teams: The feeling of belonging and cohesion helps to deal with pressure and to better cope with change and setbacks.
In this way, HR managers can build affiliation in a targeted manner
But how can a feeling of belonging be promoted? A sense of belonging is not created through one-off campaigns, but rather through structures and rituals that are firmly integrated into everyday work. HR managers can use the following seven levers:
- Making belonging measurable: Satisfaction surveys and pulse surveys should include differentiated questions about Belonging, such as “Can I be myself here?” or “Do I feel seen in the team?” It can also help to ask specifically about this in exit interviews.
- Make onboarding the first moment of belonging: The first few weeks decide whether new employees feel like they belong or not. Mentoring or buddy programs and early involvement in team-related projects help you get started quickly and reduce turnover.
- Establish rituals that create connection: Regular check-ins, which deliberately focus not on specific tasks but on the well-being of individual employees, strengthen the feeling of community and show the team that they are valued.
- Consciously design hybrid work: Employees who work primarily remotely are more likely to feel lonely than colleagues who come to the office regularly. What can help, however, are clear agreements on times of presence in the team, common fixed points and digital spaces for informal exchange.
- Support employee groups and networks: Employee groups that come together around common topics noticeably strengthen belonging. HR teams can support these groups, provide them with resources and align on the overarching strategy.
- Ensure inclusive structures and processes: Inclusion is the basis for ensuring that all employees can actually see themselves as part of the team. HR managers should regularly check whether the benefits, career paths and framework conditions work for everyone or only for certain groups.
- External, confidential support offers: Psychological advice, coaching and digital offers for mental health create a protected space for people who may feel excluded and do not (yet) dare to involve internal contacts.
The special role of the direct manager
In everyday working life, the feeling of belonging arises primarily in the relationship with the direct manager – perhaps even more than through team events or company campaigns. Managers therefore have a double mission: they are role models and designers at the same time.
Specifically, this means for managers:
- Actively see and address: Regularly involve every team member – not just the “loudest”. This also includes reflecting on your own blind spots: Who do I ask first? Who do I trust to do what tasks?
- Consciously balance parts of speech: In meetings, observe who is speaking and who is not. Actively involve remote participants in hybrid settings – don’t just ask “Anything else from online?” at the end.
- Address micro-exclusions immediately: Don’t let interruptions, derogatory jokes or passing over things stand, but address them directly in the moment and don’t let tensions fester.
- Conduct 1:1 conversations humanely: Don’t just use regular conversations as a status update, but leave space for the person: “How are you – personally, not just professionally?”
- Establish small rituals: a check-in at the start of the week, lunch together, virtual coffee breaks, retrospectives with a human touch. Celebrate successes together – even the small ones. Such rituals are often even more important for remote employees because the informal exchange that occurs in the office must be consciously organized.
- Be a role model for psychological safety: show your own insecurities and mistakes and consciously build personal relationships within the team.
Conclusion: More good days happen where people belong
Belonging is a basic requirement for mental health in the workplace and performance. It does not arise through posters or buzzwords, but through lived structures, rituals and relationships – every day. HR and managers share this responsibility.
The motto of Mental Health Awareness Month sums it up: More good days happen together. In the workplace this means: Where people really feel like they belong, not only well-being and health grow, but also what makes companies strong in the long term: loyalty, good cooperation as well as motivation and willingness to perform in the team.
