Making friends as an adult is hard. Outside of coworker happy hours or obsessively pre-planned outings with a lifelong best friend, making time for cultivating relationships can be inaccessible to most adults.
And reliance on social media and digital platforms doesn’t help what the World Health Organization has called a global public health concern: Loneliness.
One major Swedish pharmacy chain has stepped up with an idea to reduce loneliness and improve social relationships among its employees.
Apotek Hjärtat, the pharmaceutical company, has launched a pilot program for “friendcare” after the Swedish government called on businesses to play a part in combating loneliness.
“I’m really tired when I go home. I don't have time or energy to meet my friends,” Yasmine Lindberg, one of 11 participants taking part in the trial, called “Friendship Hour,” told the BBC.
She added that she spends most of her free time with her teenage children, who she sees every other week following a divorce four years ago. She admitted feeling “quite lonely.”
But under the Friendship Hour program, Lindberg receives 15 minutes a week — or an hour per month — during working hours to focus on her friendships and new connections. During this time, she is allowed to chat on the phone, make plans via text, or meet up with someone in person.
Participants are also given 1,000 kronor (or $100 USD) from the company to help pay for social activities during the year-long trial. Employees are also encouraged to take an online training to help them recognize and address loneliness.
While the allotted time and stipend aren’t exactly enough to fully cultivate a relationship, Lindberg said it helps.
“I wanted to make it better for myself … like, kick myself in the back to do stuff,” she told the BBC. “I feel happier. You can’t live through the internet like most people do these days.”
The program is an extension of what many Swedish companies already offer: “friskvård,” or a benefit for employees that offers a tax-free annual wellness allowance to spend on fitness activities, massages, or other perks. Some companies also offer a weekly wellness hour for staff called “friskvårdstimme.”
Apotek Hjärtat’s “friendcare” program came from a previous collaboration with mental health charity Mind, which found that short, meaningful conversations between pharmacists and customers helped pharmacists feel less isolated at work.
The company’s CEO, Monica Magnusson, said they wanted to test if this short dose of “friendcare” could also have a positive impact on employee wellbeing. Apotek Hjärtat again worked with Mind to develop the pilot and loneliness training program.
“We try and see what the effects are from having the opportunity to spend a bit of time every week on safeguarding your relationships,” Magnusson said.
“Employees in workplaces are an important target group for us. We hope to promote a humane work environment, teach more people how to spot warning signs and encourage them to nurture social relationships,” Rickard Bracken, Secretary General at Mind, said in a statement.
“It doesn't have to be complicated. A text message to check on the situation may be seen as a small gesture, but can mean a lot in the long run.”
Although the pilot was launched in April 2025, Mangusson says it is too soon to decide whether the “friendcare” efforts will roll out widely. But, she added to the BBC, self-assessment surveys from the small pool of participants indicate higher levels of life satisfaction compared to before the program started.
“I think this is very interesting and I’m following what they’re doing,” Swedish Health Minister Jakob Forssmed told the BBC. “[But] I’m not going to give you any promises that the government is going to scale this up or give a tax deduction or something like that.”
Still, Apotek Hjärtat is eager to lead the movement to reduce loneliness on a corporate level. The company is also part of a business network called “Together against involuntary loneliness,” which Forssmed formed in 2023. It includes about 20 major Nordic brands (including Ikea), whose leaders meet and discuss strategies for tackling loneliness.
“It’s quite a different approach to working together,” Magnusson said, “collaborating as companies in an area where you just let competition go, and instead try and figure out ‘how can we tackle this common obstacle that we have?’”
While some experts believe loneliness is a structural issue, requiring people to have access to communal living, events, and socialization, interventions like Apotek Hjärtat’s may be key to “lowering the threshold” that makes it difficult to prioritize friendships.
“In our business, we encounter loneliness daily, and our employees will also go through the stages of life when the risk of involuntary loneliness is greatest,” Magnusson said in a statement.
“We want to give them knowledge and tools to better prevent this for themselves and those close to them.”
You may also like: After 4-day workweek success, this company is letting employees work whenever and wherever they want
Header image by Brooke Cagle on Unsplash
