Have you ever felt lonely in your professional journey, unsure where to seek guidance or how to build meaningful connections? You’re not alone.
For many women, loneliness in the workplace is a persistent and overlooked issue that shapes day-to-day experiences, as well as career progression over the long term. Recent research shows more than half of women report feeling a sense of loneliness in their job, driven by isolation, lack of support, and being unable to be their true selves at work.
In an increasingly remote and hybrid work environment, loneliness is becoming a key issue for Australians. Indeed, Medibank’s latest Loneliness Population Index shows 15 per cent of people report working remotely as a trigger of their loneliness, while 20 per cent of people said starting a new job triggered their loneliness.
It’s an issue that Bobbi Mahlab and Adina Jacobs are actively seeking to change with Mentor Walks, an organisation that brings senior women leaders together with aspiring women to walk together and chat about all things career and connections.
It was launched in 2016 on the steps of the Sydney Opera House and has since supported over 13,000 women in 17 cities and five countries.
Speaking to Women’s Agenda, Bobbi Mahlab, the Founder and Chair of global B2B communications agency, Mahlab, said Mentor Walks was a success from the beginning—in part because it made mentoring and connection accessible to professional women.
“The mission of the program is to help women get career guidance from senior women in their cities, and to help them build their connections,” Mahlab says.
“And those connections and communities are not just with senior women, but peer to peer. Our model is every mentor walks with up to three mentees, and they collectively workshop each other’s issues. The opportunity to build connections with peers is significant.”
The idea for the organisation was ignited when Mahlab and Jacobs attended a Mentor Walks in China, led by Michelle Garnaut AO.
“At the time, I was looking at taking my communications agency into China, and the group I went with, I talked to two women who saved me six months of work in terms of the advice they gave me and the connections they gave me,” Mahlab explains.
“Those conversations radically accelerated my decision whether I was going to take my business into China or not. And by the time we got to the gates of the park, I turned to Adina and said, “My goodness, this is such a simple, effective and useful idea, why don’t we take it to Australia?”
It’s not just professional connections that are built at Mentor Walks, Mahlab says there is a strong sense of women building friendships that last far beyond the walks.
“There’s clearly a lot of friendships being formed out of mentor walks, because it’s attracting like-minded women,” she says.
“They’re all women who are invested in their career and see the value of networking and building their community.”
Mahlab says Mentor Walks often attracts women who are new to a city, because they are actively looking to meet other women and build community.
“It never ceases to amaze us how many people become friends through the program that we’re running,” she said.
Does Mahlab see loneliness as an issue impacting women in their careers? Definitely.
“In careers, loneliness is a problem. It’s well known the loneliness of being a CEO when you’re there at the top by yourself,” Mahlab says.
“But I think a lot of women, as they move up their careers, they don’t necessarily have the people around them to have conversations with, who have got the experience or whom they feel safe enough to have those deeper conversations”
“Mentor Walks is a safe and confidential environment where women can talk about things that they can’t talk about in their workplaces or at home, either because they’re not safe to or they’re just not with people who have got the experience that might be able to help.”
Research into the impact of Mentor Walks has shown time and again that the most common thing women say after coming on a Mental Walk is: ‘I thought I was the only one’.
“And if there’s any statement that speaks to feeling lonely and isolated, it is that,’ Mahlab says.
“What we’re doing is creating a place where women can talk about what they need to talk about, and find out that they are not the ‘only one’.”
To learn more about Medibank’s commitment to reducing loneliness head to We Are Lonely | Medibank.
About the research
Research commissioned by FiftyFive5 on behalf of Medibank. Research was conducted in July 2024, among a sample of (n=4,131) Australians.