Editorial
Employee wellbeing has taken a hit between longer days, uncertain working arrangements and the sheer number of digital tools. We’ve been told that AI will streamline and automate much of this. Job done, goodbye stress.
But will the stress really ease? Something else has been steadily bubbling up, proving a huge obstacle to resilience, wellbeing and productivity in our digital workplaces. It’s come up in every single one of my workshops across a wide range of organizations and sectors. This bottom-up need is barely addressed at an enterprise level:
We’re simply desperate for more connection with our colleagues.
Building Our Networks Has Fallen by the Wayside
According to a 2021 Glint report, the most cited reason for burnout at work is a lack of connection with colleagues. As we continue to drag on the debate about the merits of the office or the home for productivity, we’ve lost sight of what really matters.
Workplace connections operate on two levels. Firstly, we have a professional network which provides tacit coaching, problem solving and the sharing of knowledge. Secondly we have a personal network that provides a social circle at work: colleagues that provide friendship, support and a sense of belonging. Both are incredibly important for our productivity and wellbeing. A 2022 report from Gallup found that people who have a best friend at work are more engaged than those who do not. They were also more likely to engage with customers, work more productively, innovate and have fun while at work.
Since the pandemic, the focus has been on the team. As an immediate reaction to a seismic event, this made sense. We had to find ways to maintain productivity in incredibly challenging circumstances, creating a set of transactional arrangements to deliver work within the team. Networking and social connection were not a priority. In fact, active participation in Viva Engage — Microsoft’s enterprise social network (ESN) decreased by over 30% between 2021 and 2022. Virtual networking has suffered in the face of demands for productivity.
Virtual networking has huge advantages, especially for larger organizations. It allows us to express ourselves to different people that we simply can’t otherwise. We can’t really rely on our colleagues to walk around the office wearing a name badge, randomly muttering about their hobbies, interests and ideas so we can meet and learn about them (think awkward conversation starters at a disappointing conference sandwich buffet).
But instead of reporting these colleagues to a medical professional, there is a far more effective way to express ourselves and build a network.
Related Article: Workers Are Lonely: Here's What Leaders Can Do
Back to Communities
Communities of Practice (CoPs) predate the age of Web 2.0, when user-generated content started to penetrate our workplaces in the early 2000s. Typically comprising informal groups, they have existed to share knowledge, solve problems and source expertise among peers. Often technical in origin, each community is bound by a specific focus or knowledge area.
With today’s hybrid working environment the norm, CoPs and networks of shared interests and identities, such as Employee Resource Groups (ERGs), should be flourishing in our organizational networks. Team-focused working limits us in terms of building a professional support network as well as finding others with shared interests.
The value of groups and communities is not in doubt. Employees who belong to effective ERGs report higher positive inclusion scores at work than those who do not, or whose ERG group is ineffective.
It’s easier than ever to create and curate such groups. Technological barriers are no longer much of an issue: community and network tools, typically in the guise of ESNs, such as Viva Engage (formerly Yammer) and Workplace by Meta, are ubiquitous in modern workplaces.
It really is time that we embraced our digital networks. So why don’t we?
Related Article: How to Build Your Teams as Communities of Practice
Have Enterprise Social Networks Become Anti-Social?
I encountered some interesting observations on a recent project. Data on ESN adoption didn’t look good and when we dug deeper, surveys surfaced that the network was actively disliked, distrusted and lacking in obvious purpose to the bulk of its users.
Going deeper still, it became apparent that the network — once full of the pleasures (?) of cat pictures and comments about cat pictures — was now almost exclusively the domain of senior leaders. A place for formal communications and not much else.
I see this trend repeating all over: an ESN is rolled out where everyone is encouraged to contribute without any clear business need or focus, only to later become a tightly controlled communications space, where the majority of the workforce feel disengaged and unempowered to contribute.
Don’t get me wrong: internal communications and the presence of senior leadership is one very clear and desirable business need from ESNs. But it’s the 360 degree swing from the early days of everything goes to just this that has put us off. The social element is clearly missing.
Make Networks About People Again
We need to learn more about (and from) our colleagues and ESNs have to be front and center of this. But this doesn’t happen automatically. We need to clarity on what we want to see, why we need this and invest in the right roles to not only get started, but to sustain activity.
Build and Nurture Communities in Your ESNs
According to the Oxford English Dictionary, a community is defined as “the condition of sharing or having certain attitudes and interests in common.” Plenty of these conditions likely exist in every organization.
So where do we start? Simple options are to build social communities around events, locations, interests. Just to get people in there, talking, sharing more about themselves.
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The real value, though, lies in aligning communities with topics that matter to your organization: problems, opportunities, needs. Consider any topic that’s affecting your business where questions remain – here’s a community! Artificial Intelligence is one such trend where we are still learning how best to apply it – perfect subject material for a community to discuss what we’ve learned and applied, what didn’t work and test out some scenarios. A community could be around a particular customer, discussing their needs and sharing observations. It could also be around specific knowledge gaps or issues and trends facing your organization. Consider spending time with your people understanding their frustrations and needs. Could a community or ERG help with any of this?
The latest SWOOP Analytics benchmarking of Viva Engage includes some specific examples of effective communities, such as one at The Home Depot, where a kitchen designer community connects both designers and hardware staff that otherwise wouldn’t have had a space to share issues and ideas around customer needs.
Communities are typically diverse, safe spaces for a conversation and incredibly effective for more complex working conditions. Yet, more powerfully, they allow us to interact with different people- to find out what other people are working on and to learn from them.
An important footnote though: invest in community managers. A thriving community needs someone with responsibility to drive those conversations, bring people into a thread, cajole some content to kick things off. Without such a role – and it only needs to be a couple of hours a week – we run the risk of losing credibility and disengaging people.
Related Article: Want to Boost Your Business? Boost Your ERGs
Make Your User Manual Your Brand
Inside and outside of our team, how do our colleagues learn about our skills and interests beyond normal work? Team user manuals are a neat way of sharing otherwise hidden attributes, such as how we like to work, skills we love using, secret superpowers and personal interests. Teams often share and discuss these, but sharing them more widely, such as in a community or ERG, is a quick way to learn about the hidden talents and interests of our colleagues. Make your user manual be your shop-front, a way of displaying your skills like you used to browse shops before they became vape stores and we all moved to the internet.
This makes it easier to strike up a conversation with someone new. How else would you find that other person with the same interest in toads of Papua New Guinea within the organization?
Make onboarding about communities and people, not reading the intranet.
Spending the first week in a new job browsing the intranet, reading manuals and waiting for your new manager to free up five minutes to then delegate introductions to someone else is not the start we need in a new workplace.
Onboarding really needs to be about meeting people,spending informal time with your colleagues and developing new relationships. I have a hunch that week one in a new job entirely comprising social conversations will lead to greater productivity in the long-term over a week of learning policies and practices.
But look further afield: Have a program of introductions into digital networks and ERGs, join communities early, introduce buddies from outside the team who may have shared interests or skills.
Related Article: Personal User Manuals, Team Agreements and Company Handbooks for Hybrid Teams
Focus on What Matters When in the Office
The final piece in the puzzle is appreciating the value of human connections. We have to ensure that hybrid working practices prioritize face-to-face time over focus time in the office. Even if it is just with people we already know, casual conversations and small talk are proven activities to build relationships.
Using internal networks to learn about our colleagues is where we can start. Connect over a problem we’re solving, bond over a shared love of amphibians. Then take this virtual connection and make it real. Invite the hidden expert that solved a problem to your next team meeting, start a toad club lunch meet, even just say hi when passing by.
Making our skills, experiences and interests visible is more important than ever. Surface the things that make us who we are. That’s where we start a conversation. That’s where we build a connection.
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