Pedestrians go about their business in Picadilly Circus, central London on July 30, 2021. - Workers ... [+]
After a year and a half of lockdowns, enforced social distancing and getting to grips with Zoom calls, the end seems to be in sight. Over the summer, many countries around the world have officially started to relax many of their Covid restrictions. For many, this includes a return to the office. But for others who either cannot or would rather not work in person, remote working may continue over the coming year.
Remote working during the lockdown has shown that flexible working arrangements can benefit some employers and employees. Yet, organizations vary widely in how they view the future of the office. Some organizations such as J.P. Morgan, demand that workers return to the office full time, whilst others, notably Twitter, are giving up physical offices all together and embracing fully digital ways of working. In between those two extremes, many organizations envisage hybrid modes of working where face-to-face and digital working can blend seamlessly.
Hybrid working modes can be beneficial, cutting down commuting times and providing flexibility to employees. But they may have unintended consequences as well. One concerning issue is a shift in employees’ networks. Employee networks affect not only coordination within the firm, but employees’ engagement with external stakeholders such as customers or suppliers. In a hybrid working world, the relationships that employees maintain to each other and to key stakeholders outside the firm may depend on whether they are in the “in (the-office) crowd” or not.
Fault lines between in-office workers and remote workers (who are more likely to be women with children or elders to care for) may emerge. Face-to-face meetings with clients or suppliers can increase bonds more effectively than purely digital ones, creating a disadvantage for employees who are not able to attend in-person meetings. Networking is vitally important for professional development, but tricky to conduct authentically when you cannot truly “meet” people.
In other words, hybrid work, if not managed well, can be hazardous to the health of employees’ networks. We could simply accept this as a cost of hybrid working life. Or, as individuals, we can take actions to counteract these forces.
So, what can you do to boost your network, when working remotely or back in the office?
1) Prioritise Diversity – While Building Trust
Though we know that diversity can encourage broader thinking, innovation, and fresh approaches in our workplaces, we often forget it can have the same impact on our own personal professional development. Unfortunately, we humans are naturally inclined to engage with those who are most like us and, at a time when many of us have prioritised only the most necessary relationships, we may have spent little time trying to branch out.
Pre-Covid, we had several means of increasing the diversity of our networks. For example, by enrolling in an executive education course or joining a club or special interest group, we would be interacting face-to-face with new people and perspectives. These environments offered a chance not only to boost skills and knowledge but also to meet and work with a wide variety of professionals whose differing experiences, ideas and perspectives only added value to the experience.
But increases in diversity are often accompanied by lower trust, as new individuals from different backgrounds join the group. We tend to be less comfortable sharing our ideas and views when trust is low, so the real benefits of diversity can be limited. But this trade-off is not unmanageable. “Diverse-closed” communities, those that operate on an invite-only basis but include a diverse set of individuals, offer the highest benefit – providing new information in a high-trust environment. For example, in London, where we are located, technology entrepreneurs have developed invite-only networks where members often meet both in person and digitally to build familiarity and trust while sharing insights from the wildly different businesses they run, such as gaming and DNA analysis.
As we re-engage with networking, prioritising diversity will help us break out of the homogeneity of our lockdown networks, where interactions with family, close friends, and close colleagues dominated. For those reluctant to re-enter busy social events, taking that first step into the unknown online such as joining an online course or discussion group, can still provide a meaningful starting point for broadening your network. And regardless of whether you are networking online or offline, increasing diversity while building trust is key to accessing fresh insights and perspectives.
2) Be Deliberately Spontaneous
Though digital communication has been invaluable as we’ve been restricted from physically sitting down with others, a clear trade-off between functionality and spontaneity exists. Scheduled Zoom calls can be highly efficient and effective but are typically focused and to-the-point, which limits spontaneity. Meanwhile, interactions on virtual message boards leave little room for deep conversation. There is a danger that, without physical networking opportunities providing the opportunity for unplanned discussions, our ability to be creative in our jobs and to innovate has been hindered. This is particularly true for hybrid workforces where Zoom and Slack may remain the primary means of interaction.
As we re-enter the workplace, it is time to make a deliberate and conscious effort to interact with those outside of our professional bubbles by (safely) taking advantage of post-pandemic opportunities for spontaneous interaction. Spur-of-the-moment exchanges with colleagues in a corridor or at the coffee machine, or chance meetings with professionals in other departments day-to-day are vital for fuelling creativity and innovation in our roles, helping us spot new solutions to problems we might face or leading to entirely new ideas. On those days we decide to go to the office, a slight reduction in our efficiency to get core tasks done may be a price well worth paying.
If you are working mostly from home, you can still create opportunities for unexpected digital interactions. One professional in our networks instituted weekly “digital office hours”, where anyone who connected to him on LinkedIn could sign up for fifteen minutes - for any reason. Others include their personal Zoom room link in their email signature, an open invitation for drop-ins to their digital office.
Spontaneity also plays a role in how to build networks outside of the workplace – digital or face-to-face. Spontaneity is often easier when building individual, informal relationships, rather than the formal ones we need to build and maintain as part of our jobs. Our personal interests guide where and how we spend our time, be it a book club, running club or alumni meetings. It is particularly in these social spaces that chance interactions often lead to new insights. In fact, professionals with more developed individual, informal networks are better at identifying new opportunities for their employers.
3) Avoid "over-networking"
As the world reopens, our hunger for face-to-face social interaction will likely lead to an explosion in invitations to lunches, drinks and other gatherings. In an effort to keep up, it’ll be all too easy to fall into a trap of “over-networking.” However, committing to everything and spreading yourself too thin can have the opposite effect.
Social butterflies do not necessarily make the best networkers. Effective relationships are built through a commitment of time, trust and genuine interaction. We must be seen as reliable and thorough on promises to establish trust – even more so in a business world which is increasingly dependent on transparency and strong ethics. The key is consistency in all interactions, online or offline. If you can accomplish this, you can become a real asset, both within your organisation and outside of it.
This article was authored by Dr Michelle Rogan, Associate Professor of Strategy and Entrepreneurship and Academic Director of the MSc in Innovation, Entrepreneurship and Management and Dr Anne ter Wal, Associate Professor of Technology & Innovation Management and lecturer on the Idea to Innovation Executive Education programme at Imperial College Business School.
