Rising rates of loneliness among employees during the pandemic have put the well-being of employees top of mind for most companies as they map out the future of work. They know that loneliness brings health problems, reduced productivity, turnover, and burnout. Some, including JPMorgan and Google, have already declared a return to the office. While increasing face-to-face interaction may be beneficial for some aspects of work, it will not, by itself, create strong interpersonal bonds among colleagues. If it did, my research with INSEAD professor Mark Mortensen wouldn’t have shown high rates of loneliness in employees prior to the shift to social distancing and remote work.

Whatever form the return to the workplace takes, building high-quality connections will require a focused set of structures and practices built on a bedrock of psychological safety. Here are the five important elements to consider.

Look out for the invisible enemy.

Employees don’t advertise their loneliness. Objective markers like team membership, network structures, or someone’s degree of extroversion don’t reveal it either. Loneliness at work is an entirely subjective internal belief: Few people truly know me or would support me in my time of need. The lonely feel only superficially connected to others, perhaps cordial but not truly collegial.

Employees themselves may not even recognize that they’re lonely. For example, an executive recently came to me with what he thought was a motivation problem. “When I took my new job last summer, I was excited about the pharmaceutical industry,” he told me. “But six months later, I’m really unmotivated. I guess I really don’t like this industry or job as much as I thought, so I’m going to start looking for something else.”

When we unpacked his dilemma, it became apparent that his waning motivation and interest had nothing to do with the substance of his work, but everything to do with the social context in which he performed it. Working on a small team embedded in a large department, he had plenty of official ties in the organization, including daily meetings with his teammates. Yet he didn’t feel genuinely connected to any of them. Upon reflection, he realized he lacked social fulfillment at work.

Understand psychological safety.

That executive’s experience highlights just how essential high-quality connections are for combatting workplace loneliness. Jane Dutton and her colleagues at the University of Michigan’s Center for Positive Organizations characterize high-quality connections as those based on empathy and interdependence. Ideally, as companies design their return-to-work policies and structures, they will focus on these two factors. But first they need to ensure psychological safety exists in their organization.

Psychological safety is the perception that a given environment is conducive to interpersonal risk-taking. Research in this area, led by the Harvard Business School professor Amy Edmondson, has historically focused on learning-oriented behaviors like asking questions, raising concerns, admitting mistakes, and offering ideas. Employees are unlikely to speak up in these ways unless they receive strong signals from leaders and teammates that they’ll receive positive reinforcement for doing so. They’re also unlikely to reach out to colleagues to connect interpersonally without a similar safety net.

Going beyond superficial workplace relationships can be risky, because true intimacy involves some level of vulnerability — for example, the disclosure of something private or emotional to someone else. My research and advisory work has shown that employees of all levels and backgrounds frequently cloak their inner worlds — not just their negative feelings and experiences but also their positive ones. As a healthcare executive said in one study, “I feel like our system is a little bit impaired in that way. It’s not a real safe place…it’s just like, identify your supports and stick with those and otherwise keep it under wraps.” An aerospace executive recently made a similar observation: “Using time for anything other than work is culturally regarded as taboo, and employees govern one another accordingly.” These perceptions about cultural norms and prohibitions exemplify how essential psychological safety is to facilitating those first vulnerable moves toward bonding with someone else in the workplace.