For years, people treated dating problems and workplace problems like two completely different universes. One involved unread texts and awkward first dates. The other involved Slack messages, Zoom meetings and passive-aggressive emails.
But according to Lakshmi Rengarajan, the gap between the two worlds has almost disappeared.
Speaking at the Fortune Workplace Innovation Summit, the former Match.com executive and workplace connection advisor said modern work culture is starting to mirror the emotional patterns people experience while dating — and companies may have more to learn from romance than they realise.
Why did the expert compare ghosting with quiet quitting?
Rengarajan explained that ghosting and quiet quitting are both forms of disengagement.
In dating, ghosting usually means suddenly disappearing from communication without explaining why.
In workplaces, quiet quitting refers to employees emotionally disconnecting from their jobs while still technically remaining employed.
According to her, both behaviours often happen when people feel emotionally overwhelmed, uncertain or unequipped to communicate honestly.
“Sometimes we don’t know what we’re experiencing,” she said during her talk.
“We don’t have the tools for how to handle the moment.”
She explained that ghosting is often misunderstood as people simply not caring.
But in many cases, she argued, it reflects an inability to communicate discomfort, rejection, confusion or emotional complexity.
“That’s actually what’s behind a lot of ghosting,” she said. “It’s not someone not caring. It’s someone not having the language or the skills to meet that moment.”
She then linked this directly to workplace culture.
According to Rengarajan, employees often quietly disengage at work for similar reasons — not always because they are lazy or indifferent, but because they struggle to express burnout, frustration or dissatisfaction openly.
“In both dating and work, we’re trying to figure out who other people are,” she said. “We’re trying to see if we can build something.”
That, she argued, is why the two worlds increasingly mirror each other.
How did dating apps change workplace behaviour?
Rengarajan believes dating apps quietly changed the way people experience relationships long before workplaces became fully digital.
She said dating was one of the first spaces where people developed “split personalities” online and offline.
“You had who you were on screen and then the person you met,” she said.
Now, the exact same thing is happening at work.
Employees are no longer known only through in-person interactions. People now experience colleagues through Slack messages, emails, Zoom calls, documents and online profiles — all at once.
And according to her, that shift can become emotionally confusing.
“You start to know who they are in a document, who they are on Slack, who they are on Zoom,” she said.
Did remote work change workplace relationships permanently?
Rengarajan said the pandemic accelerated a major emotional shift in workplaces almost overnight.
“One day some people were remote and overnight everybody was remote,” she said.
She compared this to the sudden explosion of online dating, where millions of people entered digital spaces without fully understanding how those environments would affect human relationships.
According to her, people were never really prepared to be constantly available online.
“We didn’t necessarily prepare people for what it meant to be available all the time,” she said.
And when people struggle to adapt to these new systems, they often blame themselves instead of questioning the system itself.
What are employees losing in digital workplaces?
One of the strongest moments in her talk came when she described the tiny workplace interactions people no longer notice disappearing.
Not major meetings.
Not performance reviews.
Small human moments.
Holding the elevator.
Helping someone fix a PowerPoint presentation.
Sharing extra food.
Tapping someone on the shoulder to ask for help.
Rengarajan shared a personal story from her first corporate job, where a colleague spent two evenings teaching her how to make better PowerPoint presentations.
Years later, she became a bridesmaid at that colleague’s wedding.
“I wonder sometimes if I had used a YouTube video or Googled it, would I be standing next to her on the most important day of her life?” she said.
For her, that story reflects what digital convenience sometimes quietly replaces.
Younger workers are questioning workplace culture
Rengarajan also spoke about growing concerns among younger workers around identity, emotional exhaustion and digital overload.
She referenced conversations around dating app burnout and how many people are beginning to question what constant screen-based interaction is doing to their emotional lives.
“It’s not the technology,” she said. “What they’re concerned about is how a screen will shape the experience of their heart.”
She argued that people are asking similar questions about work now too.
Not just:
“Is this productive?”
But:
“Is this keeping me human?”
What is a ‘connection strategy’ at work?
According to Rengarajan, companies now need to think about workplace relationships more intentionally instead of assuming connection happens automatically.
She called this a “connection strategy” — something designed carefully across teams, timings and work environments.
Because connection, she argued, is not one-size-fits-all.
“You have to look at the team. You have to look at the dynamics,” she said.
At a time when AI tools, remote work and digital communication are rapidly changing professional life, she believes workplaces are facing a deeper emotional question underneath all the technology:
“What is going to keep me as human as possible amidst all of this change?”
