Building Relationships and Fostering Connection in Today’s Workplace
Practical ways to build better relationships at work
Sharing Key Takeaways From Our Research on Building Relationships and Connection in the Workplace
When talking with leaders and managers inside organizations, many people cited challenges around building relationships and fostering connection in today’s world of work.
We know that having strong relationships, and feeling a sense of connection and belonging to organizations is critical to individual and organizational success. But research shows that especially over the past few years, finding ways to build relationships and feel connected is really challenging.
About 65% of workers say they 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.
Looking For Finding Answers: What We Set Out To Learn
While the research I’ve found and the conversations I’ve had with organizations highlighted the problems, I also wanted to figure out what was working, and who was finding ways around this.
I know these are very real challenges. Many of us have struggled with finding ways to connect as a result of new modes of work, return to office policies, long commutes, endless amounts of meetings, and with too many things on our plates. But I felt that in spite of all these challenges, there had to be people who were finding ways around this, to build relationships to be more productive, effective, and engaged at work.
With the help a handful of part-time consultants (thank you to Will Seitz) my firm, The Edge of Work, decided to go and study this, and interviewed 75+ professionals on how they were finding ways to build relationships and improve connection with their peers and their organization. Below is a summary of what we found.
Background
From October 1st 2023-January 31st 2024, we interviewed 78 professionals across multiple industries, functions and roles about how they were building relationships in the workplace today. Our interviews set out to understand a few fundamental questions:
Why are relationships, and why is connection important to your job/role?
What are the common challenges you run into in your job that prevent you from building relationships and feeling connected?
What are you doing that is helping you build the relationships you need to be effective and engaged in your job?
How does where and how you work impact your ability to build relationships?
Summary: Key Reasons Why Your Employees Need Relationships
During our interviews, we uncovered 4 key ways professionals were building relationships, and structured our learnings and takeaways around these specific reasons. While these are not the only reasons for why relationships and connection are important, many of the interviews focused on these main themes, suggesting they were critical for any employee inside of an organization.
#1) Being effective and productive in my role/job
#2) Building connection with my fellow employees and this company
#3) Developing the relationships I need to grow in my career
#4) Building engaged and productive teams
#1) Being effective and productive in my job
It seems obvious, but the overwhelming reason why people focus on building relationships is that it is necessary for them to be effective and productive in their job. For client and customer facing professionals, not being able to build strong relationships makes it hard to be a successful seller or customer service professional. But even for those who do not work in those roles, relationships are critical to succeeding in today’s world of work.
Organizations are just a bunch of people that are working toward shared goals. You need the help and support of others to do things, as others need your help and support in their role. But in today’s workplace, it is also hard to work on something completely in a silo. Many of us are in cross-functional roles, or at least, cross-functional projects, that require the buy-in, support, and help of your colleagues and peers.
Key Quotes
Cross-Functional Work is the norm:“I work in a role that requires that I work with 6-7 other key teams. Without their support, and trust, it’s hard for me to be effective, that often takes time, and requires work.”
Meetings vs Connection: “My company has lots of meetings. What I didn’t realize at first is that there’s a difference between meeting, and actually connecting and building a relationship. The latter is much harder, and requires more effort.”
The Dual Role in Client Service: “When you work in professional services, you have to do this twice: first with your team, and then with your client”
Actions and Practices
The following are actions and practices that people identified they found to be helpful in building relationships for their role.
Bake it into your work plan – For any project that you are leading, factor in additional time and tasks for connecting and building relationships.
Ask for help – Work with your manager to identify the most critical relationships that you need, and get their help in getting support.
Hook Into Critical Cultural Moments – Find moments in your company that matter, (ex: new hire orientation, offsites, internal meetings) and use those as ways to meet new people.
Find The People That Know People – Find the “mavens,” “boundary spanners” and ”culture carriers” and get to know them.
When you’re new, draft off others - When you are onboarding, take the time to meet people that can be helpful, and don’t be afraid to ask your manager, or other trusted peers for introductions.
#2) Building Connection with my fellow employees and this company
Many of us choose to work for a company because of the ability to work with other people. And while that doesn’t always mean that we have to be best friends with everyone, many people stated that one of the core reasons why they chose to work at their company, or their specific role was for the chance to be connected to someone else, or something else.”
Key Quotes
You have to be intentional and proactive - “Because you’re isolated and in your own space, you have to be really proactive about meeting other people, asking for help, and putting yourself out there.”
Benefits/Challenges of connection as a remote worker - “As a 100% remote worker, I very much appreciate the flexibility that it provides. But if I am being honest, I have to work a lot harder if I want to replicate the same kind of connection to my peers that I had in previous jobs. For where I am in life, I’m okay with that trade-off, but I would be lying if I said I didn’t miss it at a times.”
Challenges for new employees - “As a new employee in my first job, I new I needed help, I just didn’t know how to ask for it, and I felt so scared to ask for help. This felt incredibly isolating.”
Litting things can make a difference - “My team does a really good job of checking in with one another. It seems small, but just knowing that people care about you can really make your day.”
Actions and Practices
The following are actions and practices that people identified they found to be helpful in building connection.
Pick the means and ways that work for you – Find the mediums/spaces that you prefer, and stick to focusing on those practices.
Practice small habits over time – Relationships are built brick by brick. Find small practices, and make them rituals.
Find things that fit within your existing schedule – Try to incorporate small moments that fit within what your doing. For example, after a team meeting, ask to connect with your boss or peer for 5-10 minutes just to say hello.
Bring People to you – Facilitate a group meeting, instead of going somewhere else, bring people to you.
Find small ways to help people – Research shows doing small acts of service make you feel better. Find ways to help people and you’ll feel better.
#3) Developing the relationships I need to grow my career
A common theme in our conversations was around the role of relationships and career advancement and growth. Most people understood the importance of having strong supporters and advocates, and wanted to have those relationships. There were less ideas about how to do this in authentic and impactful ways.
A lot of the conversations we had also centered around the importance of visibility and branding. Employees, especially those in high-performing cultures and/or large organizations also stressed the idea that “putting your head down and working hard is not enough to get seen or promoted.”
Key Quotes
Hard Work is Not Enough: “On its own, hard work is not enough. In order to stand out or advance, you have to get noticed, and you have to promote your work, and advocate for yourself.”
Get to the office to get promoted: “The CEO of our company is on the record for saying that being seen in the office matters to career advancement. But even if they hadn’t said that, I would encourage anyone who wants to get promoted, to understand that being seen by leaders, whether you agree with it or not, often factors into advancement.”
Learn how the system works: “I connected with my org’s HR Business Partner and sat down with them to learn exactly how performance management works. I can’t say I have all the answers, but I am far more confident I know what I need to do to grow here than I was before that conversation.”
Actions and Practices
The following are actions and practices that people identified they found to be helpful in building the relationships they needed to grow their career
Learn what your culture values - Identify the behaviors, actions, etc that matter to advancing and getting promoted."
Meet the decision makers - Learn who the people are inside of your organization who often make decisions around key career milestones, and work with your manager & mentor to get exposure and visibility to those people.
Keep track of your accomplishments - Each month, document your projects, accomplishments, and wins, and share them with your manager.
Learn how performance management works - Work with your manager and/or HR to understand the performance management process, and what your role is in the process.
Promote and share your work consistently - Get into a regular practice of sharing with your stakeholders what you are working on and what you are doing.
Connect with existing communities - Find other people in Employee Resource groups and other internal communities to connect and associate with.
#4) Building connected, engaged, and productive teams
We talked to a handful of people managers and team leads who underscored the importance of building a sense of connection and trust to help teams work effectively and to feel engaged.
Many of these leaders understood that working together requires that sense of trust, and it takes time and effort to build that trust to get the team to be effective. A handful of leaders also underscored the importance of role modeling, in that, making time to build that sense of connection was something they needed to do so their people understood that they should do this too.
Key Quotes
Small but consistent actions: “It’s really hard to stay connected to all of my direct reports, so I really focus on trying to find as many small moments as I can to let people know that I’m here and paying attention.”
Model it for your team: “Investing in ways to build relationships and connection has a knock on effect. If you do it, then your team will start to do it too.”
It takes work: “It’s very easy to not invest the time in this because there are just so many other things to do. You have to fight the urge to brush it aside and make the investment of your time.”
Actions and Practices
The following are actions and practices that people identified were helpful in building engaged and productive teams.
Establish team norms and ways of working - For leading teams/projects, co-create with your team established norms around communication, meetings, and governance, so people are aligned and aware.
Do regular spot check ins - Identify specific people you want to check in on each week, and send them a note to see how they are doing.
Create a team-wide learning journal - Create a document that encourages your team members to share what they are learning, and review it regularly in team meetings.
Celebrate wins - Create a slack channel where you can communicate and share wins and celebrate success of your team.
Create “Office Hours” - Carve out time to let your team do “drop-ins” like a professor does in college.
Conclusion
At the end of the day, there aren’t any silver bullet answers, but what we did find is that the best things you can require small actions that can be practiced consistently over time.
The good news is that many of the employees we interviewed suggested actions and practices that seem reasonable and at least worth exploring. If you’re looking to build better relationships or connection, consider giving these a try.
Are you doing anything that’s working? We’d love to hear what you think.