A Guide to Building Social Capital at Work

Social capital is an important metric many companies need to use to ensure that they create positive places of employment. By knowing how to build social capital, workers can make the positive relationships they need to further their careers and network successfully.

Developing workplace relationships is not new. Data from the American Psychological Association’s 2023 Work in America Survey tells us that 89% of workers are very or somewhat satisfied with their relationships. 82% also agreed that their workplace fosters positive relationships among colleagues.

Here’s our guide to help you build social capital among your colleagues, and how you can use this to create strong and long-lasting professional relationships.

What is the value of social capital?

The importance of social capital shines through when an issue occurs in an organization. Since good social capital is all about the bonds we build with one another, these can come into play during difficult times. We need to be able to rely on one another and lean on strong interpersonal connections to move forward and make progress.

Building trust and mutual respect is not easy. It takes time and effort. When people are disingenuous, others pick up on it. Taking time to get to know colleagues, whether you have mutual interests or what they like and dislike, isn’t just a box-ticking exercise to make the day go by easier. It is a real and important exercise to foster strong relationships among team members and build that mutual trust needed for support in the future.

How do you build social capital?

Building social capital can be as simple as casual conversations and discovering shared interests in social settings. However, it can also be done through professional interactions, establishing yourself as a reliable person of trust. Taking time to demonstrate the following actions could help promote yourself as a reliable and trustworthy colleague that others are willing to approach for assistance.

1. Offer support to colleagues

Don’t be the person who waits around for someone to come to them. If a colleague needs help with a task, offer your support as best you can. Remember that you should not seek to take over the task unless they hand it off to you. Instead, focus on how best you can assist them, and do so based on their own needs and requests from you.

2. Participate actively

No matter what you are asked to do, try to participate actively. There will always be some tasks that we simply don’t want to do, that is just the nature of work. However, the attitude we bring to these tasks can greatly inform our social capital at work. Would you rather be known as the person who rolls up their sleeves and gets stuck in no matter what, or do you want to develop the reputation of someone who goes into a task with resistance and snark? Who do you think your colleagues would rather work with?

3. Be a good listener

Active listening is one of those soft skills that will be valuable at every level of your career. Proving yourself as a good listener will help both management and colleagues. You may have better attention to detail, or you can offer insights and feedback that others might miss. Active listening is one of the most important soft skills you can develop, and its benefits are endless.

4. Share knowledge and resources

Knowledge sharing is a great way to build social capital among colleagues. If you know how to do something, share it. If you know how to leverage technology to its fullest advantage, share it. Though there is value in being the only one who knows how to do something, being willing to share resources and knowledge makes you more trustworthy, more amenable, and a better colleague overall.

5. Encourage networking and relationships

Don’t keep the focus on yourself. Encourage colleagues to network and create their own relationships that might not involve you at all. Successful professionals have wide networks from which they can pull to help them reach their goals. Some of these connections may not even have anything to do with their current role. You might have met someone through shared personal interests, but you know that there is something about their job role that can help you out with a current issue. Colleagues see your success and begin building social capital and connections for themselves.

Can you measure social capital?

Since social capital is built around social concepts and activities, it can be tricky to track and measure. It isn’t necessarily defined by milestones in the way KPIs or other business objectives could be. So, how do you measure social interaction?

An organization might implement something like China’s Corporate Credit System, applying positive value to certain interactions and consequences to negative ones. However, this simply isn’t practical in a business setting and could eat up valuable admin time that should be focused elsewhere.

Instead, focus on improving the intangible. Create a good company culture and focus on metrics that you can affect. Work on your retention rates and create a workplace that people actually want to engage with. Give employees the opportunity to socialize. Let them enjoy one another’s company, and you should soon see social capital at play.

5 examples of good social capital

What does good social capital look like in the workplace? Here are some of the signs of a positive company culture where social capital is thriving.

1. Mentorship programs

Mentoring is a great way to build social capital, whether you are a mentor or a mentee. Ideally, your workplace should already have a mentorship program you can get involved with. If not, you may have to forge your own connection or you could be enterprising enough to set up an in-house mentoring program.

Mentors can help build connections for their mentees that otherwise might not get. It is also a great way to share knowledge and experience, whether that is from a senior staff member to a junior, or even the other way around as we see with reverse mentoring.

2. Employee resource groups

Employee resource groups (ERGs) are groups of employees who all share a distinct characteristic or interest. As an example, you may set up an ERG for Black employees, for women, or maybe just people who like cycling. It gives employees a safe space to come together and form a community. They can connect with other similar employees who they might not have met if not for the ERG.

ERGS can also help to give marginalized employees a voice in the company. If employees have something they wish to change, the ERG can lobby management on their behalf.

3. Social gatherings

The professional setting often doesn’t provide a good vehicle for employees to get to know one another. Social gatherings outside of work can be a great way to relax and strike up a conversation. They could be formal outings, such as a celebratory dinner at the end of a major project, or they could be more spontaneous in nature, such as a visit to the local bar for some after-work drinks. These relaxed environments are the perfect place for getting to know colleagues in a way you don’t in the breakroom.

4. Open communication and collaboration

Encourage open communication and collaboration at every level of your organization. Allow even junior members of staff to contribute and pass criticism on decisions in projects. Set up a clear understanding of what is and isn’t acceptable behavior in internal communications. Build a psychologically safe workplace where employees are comfortable speaking up and contributing, and watch as everyone begins to build their social capital.

5. Cross-departmental collaboration

Finally, social capital works best when connections can be built across the full business. Siloing employees and keeping them trapped and isolated in their own departments will only stifle relationships and won’t create that collaborative atmosphere that leads to success.

This is where cross-departmental collaboration comes in. When you have a big project on the books, make sure people from multiple teams are brought together to work on it. Encourage people who otherwise wouldn’t meet or work together to do both those things and foster strong relationships across all areas of your organization.

Lay the foundations of social capital in your business today

Since social capital is not easily measured, it might be pushed away with executives more interested in tangible results. However, many of those tangible results can be influenced and improved in companies that have employees with good social capital. If you want to improve things like employee engagement, turnover rates, and team morale, you need to look at the relationships shared among your team members.

One of the best ways to kickstart relationship building is with mentoring.

It is a quick and easy way to forge a connection between two people, or more in a group setting, who otherwise might not meet. A good mentoring connection can take professionals far and can expose them to worlds that otherwise might have been out of their reach.