In our always on, globally connected and geographically dispersed work environment, organizations need their people to work collaboratively in order to successfully complete projects and deliver for their customers. Today, while individual agency and effort is important, it is very difficult for one single employee, regardless of the size of an organization, to work solely by themselves and in a silo.
And given how much companies are looking to focus on productivity, as well as fostering connection to employees and to each other as a result of changing norms around where and how work gets done, making sure you people are able to connect and form the relationships and bonds they need to be productive and engaged is critical to success. This is true, whether you’re a solo founder of a company or a large Fortune 100 organization – what all companies need to bring their people together in today’s world of work, is to unleash the power of social capital.
What is Social Capital and Why Does it Matter at Work?
The textbook definition of social capital refers to the resources and advantages an individual can access through their network of social relationships.
It is the collective value of all social networks and the benefits that arise from these networks.
When an individual has social capital, she can call on her peers to advance an initiative, get support for a project, or gain exposure to people she needs to meet in order to achieve a goal. The sheer fact of engaging with someone else in also helps promote connection and trust, something that’s critical for most employees and organization.
Working inside of an organization is rarely done in a silo. Most knowledge worker employees operate in a system that is much bigger than themselves and their work.
In order for that employee to be successful, they need to have the trust, goodwill and relationships needed to get support for their work, advance their cause or initiative, or find the opportunity to contribute.
Without it, it’s hard to be effective in your job, and personally, it makes it difficult to advance toward your own career goals.
Social capital fuels how work gets done in organizations. It is what brings people together to collaborate, identifies the right people for the next project or opportunity, amplifies an idea that turns into the next new product or solution into a big hit, and ultimately what your employees need to get things done.
So why does social capital matter at work? A number of reasons:
- Organizations are just people that are working toward shared goals – Organizations are just a bunch of people working toward shared goals. We all need one another to be productive at work. In 2015, Rob Cross found that the amount of people working on collaborative work had increased over 50%. That number is likely higher today. The reality of our world of work today is that people work on teams and in a cross-functional nature. What is needed then, is some elbow grease, to bring these people together, and to enable them to work effectively
- Employee Engagement and Satisfaction – When people have social capital, they have the relationships they feel connected and engaged. In a survey of 5,902 U.S. workers, researchers at the Pew Research Center found that high satisfaction with workplace relationships plays a major role in workers’ overall satisfaction with their jobs.
- We need relationships to advance in our career – If we want to advance in our career we need the relationships and support of others. I like to say that your career is a team sport, and not an individual one. Having social capital, and relationships to rely on is critical to that success. Your success in your career is correlated with the amount of people who want you to succeed. The degree to which you have social capital, and relationships to grow and advance, the more likely you are in fact to grow and advance.
- There is a connection and loneliness problem – About 65% of workers say the feel less connected to their co-workers since the start of the pandemic. According to Workhuman, 59% of respondents said they feel there is less human connection since the start of the pandemic. And relationships with peers was the highest contributing factor to employee well-being. All of these have implications for employee engagement, commitment, satisfaction and potentially even retention. On the flipside, BetterUp found in their own survey data that when managers make an effort to connect with their peers and colleagues they then feel a better sense of connection and report higher levels of friendships at work.
People really want relationships and need to feel connected (Hubspot Hybrid Report, 2023)
Why Leaders Should Care About The Social Capital of Their Employees
During the pandemic, McKinsey did a research study on social capital and found that social capital had waned as a result of the pandemic. And while social capital had waned the people it hurt most are arguably the people who needed it most.
When people aren’t getting the relationships, norms, and knowledge that help them connect and engage with the broader system, it can hinder them as well as the organization. It can be easy to say that this just means that employees need to work harder, make more connections, or take ownership of their career. And all of that has a place.
But the reality is that while that may work for some people (a lot of time who already have social capital) it excludes a wide array of professionals who may not have social capital either due to their background and upbringing, or because of the nature of the systems that they step into were just not made for them.
As a manager or leader, part of your job is figuring out how to make your employees successful. Ensuring that your employees have the social capital they need to do their jobs but also to develop and grow is how a manager can scale the impact and effectiveness of each of their employees. But how do you as a manager or leader who wants to take an active role in the career development of your employees, help them get the social capital they need? I’ve developed a light framework that I use when I work with managers which I think could be a good place to start:
- Relationships – Making sure that your employees have relationships with other key people they need to be successful, such as a key stakeholder, or other key leaders in your organization
- Opportunities – Getting them onto the playing field and into the game. Oftentimes, they cannot do this on their own, and with your support and advocacy, they can showcase the talents they have, but only when they can get the chance.
- Exposure – When you’re employees are doing great work but it’s not getting heard, being their “megaphone” and hype-person can often scale the impact of their work and improve their visibility for other opportunities
- Resources – It might be budget, could be headcount or simply just a simple approval, but getting the resources to do their jobs more effectively can be what the doctor ordered.
Helping your employees build the social capital they need helps your employees grow their careers, but also helps create more of an equitable workplace, where people get the support they need to contribute in a way that fuels organizational goals, as well as individual advancement and career mobility, which in today’s workplace, is what employees desire for their careers.
How You Can Build Your Own Social Capital
Intentionally Build Relationships With Your Peers – Most employees intuitively understand that having positive relationships with peers and colleagues is helpful and important, unfortunately it is easy to not make time to actually do this, outside of just working together with someone. Instead, one way to do this is to intentionally set aside time to connect with your peers and colleagues. To do this, identify 1-2 people each quarter who you want to improve your working relationship with, and set aside a chunk of time that quarter to get to know them better, focusing on getting to know them, their goals, their key projects, as well as learning how to best engage and work with them. Doing this helps strengthen the relationships you eventually need to work on cross-functional teams.
Share Your Knowledge and Expertise – If you’re doing great work, others should know about it. Making sure that you are sharing your work, and your expertise with other people is critical to building social capital at work. This can be challenging for some people as it may seem as “braggy” or too much “self-promotion” but the reality of this is that while hard work is important, it’s not enough. Making sure you are making others aware of what you are doing is not just critical for standing out and advancing, but it’s actually also helpful to other people. When other people know about what you are working on, as well as your strengths + expertise, they can call on you for opportunities or when they can use your support, or recommend you for opportunities or to other people.
Help Other People – We help and support other people that we know, like and trust. One way to build social capital so that other people want to help you is to be someone who is helpful and resourceful to other people. Helping other people makes you interact with the “outside world” and takes you out of just executing tasks. This in of itself, increases your surface area for opportunities and connections to form. But simply going around just helping everyone in sight, while laudable, probably isn’t the best use of time. One way you can do this is through a simple practice of doing “5 minute favors.” This concept is borrowed from Adam Grant, but the general principle of this is to find ways to support someone in a small amount of time that means a big deal to them. This could be offering to provide someone feedback on something they are working on, helping someone prepare for a key presentation, or just taking the time to coach someone through a challenge they are facing.
“Draft” Off of Managers and Leaders – While you can always build relationships on your own, another way you can build relationships is through getting introduced to key leaders and stakeholders that are recommended to you from your manager or leaders. Going to your manager or leader and asking them to help you identify 1-2 people outside of your day to day work who would be important to know, and then asking your manager to help make an introduction is a way to start developing your weak ties, and laying the foundation for further opportunities for growth and development.
Build Your Career Team – If you talk to successful leaders and ask them what made them successful, eventually, all of them will point to other people who helped them out by lending a hand, giving them an opportunity or advocating on their behalf.
What these leaders have is the social capital needed to advance in their career. And while each individual is responsible for their own career, we all need the support of others around us to help us grow and advance. Building out your “Career team” or people who are supporting you in your career is one way to do this. To do this, start to identify the people who are currently supporting and helping you grow and advance in your career today, and write down how they are helping you do that. Then, start to identify how you want to continue building those relationships with those people, so they can continue to support and guide you in your development and growth. From there, you can also start to identify the type of other relationships and people who might be helpful to you right now.
We Need Each Other to Succeed in Today’s Workplace
And as employees, when you are actively taking responsibility for developing your social capital, you are putting yourself in a better position to contribute to the organization while developing your own capital you need to advance toward your definition of career success.