If you work from home most or all of the week, you may have noticed that conversations with your manager are easy to schedule while casual contact with colleagues quietly fades. Is that just your situation, or is it a pattern? A large UK survey suggests it is common, though it cannot say that home working is the cause.
The findings come from the Good Work Index 2026, a survey report published by the CIPD, the UK professional body for people management. The data are from the ninth wave of the CIPD and YouGov UK Working Lives survey, collected between December 2025 and February 2026 from 5,074 UK employees.
The sample was built with quotas and then weighted using official UK statistics, so that it reflects the UK workforce by factors such as gender, full-time or part-time work, industry, organisation size and age. People were asked to rate their relationships with their line manager and with their colleagues. The report compared people who worked fully from home with people who did not work from home at all.
The relationship findings are one small part of a much larger report that covers pay, job quality, wellbeing and other topics.
People who worked fully from home reported better relationships with their line managers than people who did not. At the same time they reported poorer relationships with their colleagues.
The starkest figure concerned people with no colleague relationship at all. Leaving out the self-employed, 10 per cent of those working fully from home said they had no relationship with their colleagues. Among those not working from home at all, the figure was 3 per cent.
The report also noted that it found no differences in relationships between employees and line managers across sectors or organisation sizes. More generally, it observed a slight improvement in both manager and colleague relationships across its series of surveys, and it linked positive workplace relationships with better outcomes for people and organisations.
It is worth keeping the numbers in proportion. A threefold difference sounds dramatic, but 10 per cent still means that nine in ten fully remote employees did report some relationship with colleagues. The finding is about a minority who may be at particular risk of isolation, not about every person who works from home.
This is a survey, so it shows associations. It does not show that working from home made colleague relationships worse. People who choose or are placed in fully remote roles may differ from others in many ways, including their job type, how long they have been with the employer, whether they work alone by nature, and whether their team is spread across locations.
The survey also asked for a simple rating of relationship quality. It did not look at what kind of contact people had, how often, or whether they wanted more of it. Someone with few colleague relationships who is content with that is different from someone who feels cut off.
The data are from the United Kingdom. Work arrangements, employment rules and workplace culture differ in Australia, and nothing here is Australian workplace or legal advice. Your own employer, award or agreement will set what is expected of you, including attendance.
The finding does not mean everyone needs to be in an office full time. The report does not say that, and it would go beyond what a survey like this can show. Many people value home working for good reasons, and the better manager relationships reported by fully remote staff are a real benefit worth noticing.
What the figures do suggest is that colleague relationships are something that may need deliberate attention when people are not in the same room. That could mean planned time with peers, not only with a manager, and some contact that is not about tasks. Whether a given approach would work for you or your team is something the survey cannot answer.
If isolation is affecting your mood or sleep, consider talking with your doctor or another qualified health professional. In Australia, Lifeline is on 13 11 14, and 000 is for emergencies.
Source: CIPD Good Work Index 2026 (survey report)
Conceptual illustration of working remotely while seeking colleague connection. AI-generated editorial illustration. This article summarises published research in our own words and is general information, not personal health advice.
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