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The Last Place We Gather: On the loss of community and the pressure on workplaces
Years ago on a flight, I ended up seated next to a sociology professor who was teaching a course on community. We fell into the kind of meaningful conversation you sometimes have with a stranger you’ll never see again. At the time, online communities like chat rooms and message boards were still new, and we debated a single question: Could they be a substitute for in-person community? Could a screen give you what a room full of people does?
Today online communities are woven into how many of us socialize, learn, vent, organize and stay in touch. They have real value but even at their best, they do not entirely replace the experience of being physically present with other people.
Sociologist Ray Oldenburg called the places that hold a community together, “third places,” the other two being home and work.1 The pub where you see your neighbours after work, the religious community, or even a bowling league are all third places. These third places reduce social isolation, build a sense of belonging, and provide a shared sense of purpose2. In Bowling Alone, Robert Putnam traced a steady decline across nearly every kind of membership and gathering.3 In other words, our third places are steadily disappearing. That means that for many adults, work has become one of the few remaining places where we regularly encounter the same people in real life.
I was reminded of the loss of community during the Encounter World Religions program I took earlier this summer. This was a week spent inside a range of faith communities. I watched children playing together while their parents chatted; people arriving to a room full of faces they already knew. It made me aware of a hole in my own life. Like many people, I had long ago let the habit of gathering with others slip without noticing. I told myself I was busy. What I didn’t appreciate was what I had lost.
That experience reminded me of that long-ago conversation because it helped me see something I also see in workplaces. As third places have declined, our expectations of work have expanded. What was once primarily a place where we expected reasonable pay and fair treatment, is now also expected to provide belonging, purpose, and sometimes even the friendships we previously made elsewhere. For many of us, work is the closest thing to community we have left.
There is value in recognizing this reality. Of course, work cannot replace every other source of community, nor should it try. But it would be a mistake to overlook the importance of connection or to treat it as a soft extra. Team building, in-person time, and informal opportunities to get to know each other as humans matter because they foster the ordinary bonds that make work feel less transactional. That does not mean forced fun or pretending a workplace is a family. It means understanding that people work better, and often stay longer, when they feel connected to the people around them. Employers can also support community beyond the workplace. Paid volunteer days, for example, recognize that community is not only something employers create internally. It is also something they can help people make room for elsewhere.
Ultimately, the need for community has not changed. What has changed is where we have started looking for it. Increasingly, that is the workplace. Employers do not have to fill that entire void, but should understand that connection is no longer a nice-to-have. For many people, it is part of what makes work sustainable.
[1]Ray Oldenburg, The Great Good Place (1989), coined “third places”: neutral, low-cost spots that are neither home nor work, where regulars gather and belonging asks little of you. See “Third Places: Why Losing Them Made Us Lonelier,” Simply Psychology (2026). In their 2014 research paper, Social Interactions and Well-Being: The Surprising Power of Weak Ties, Gillian Sandstrom and Elizabeth Dunn assert that casual interactions with acquaintances and peripheral network members significantly boost daily happiness and a sense of belonging
[2] Mental Health Foundation. “How Community Benefits Your Mental Health.”
[3]Robert D. Putnam, Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community (2000), documents a steep decline across nearly every form of social capital since the 1970s.
