Pumping Up Your Social Fitness And Building Social Connection At Work

Remote and hybrid work environments are the new way of working for most of us. Social connections are more effortful than they were when we were all present full-time. To connect with colleagues, you have to consciously create opportunities to be in the office on the same day, to meet in a third-place for coffee, or to be at the same networking event. Trust is an important part of working relationships, and we’re missing opportunities to build trust through connecting with each other.

Social Fitness

Social fitness at work is the positive sense of fulfilment derived from spending time socializing with others and fostering a sense of belonging, closeness, trust, and affiliation with colleagues. Like physical fitness, we have to build up social muscles and keep honing them with exercise and practice to break our solitary routines. In the same way that physical fitness positively spills over to physical and emotional health, so too does social fitness.

From an evolutionary perspective, we are social creatures – we evolved to live in groups of people, to contribute to communities, and to reap the benefits of relying on others. So much of our effective decision-making, our bonding, and our joy revolves around spending meaningful time with others.

5-3-1 Framework

Social scientist and author Kasey Killam proposed a method for boosting social health at work.

• Step 1: Connect with five people every week.
• Step 2: Maintain at least three close relationships.
• Step 3: Spend one hour of quality time per day connecting with others.

Not everyone is a natural extrovert of social butterfly. What I love about Killam’s 5-3-1 approach is that it recognizes the effort involved when sociality doesn’t come naturally to all. It provides conscious overrides to disrupt unconscious routines.

For example, Killam recommends setting a thank you reminder in your calendar. This is to remind you to contact a colleague to express gratitude once (or five times) a week so that you don’t forget to connect.

Get creative. Connecting socially for an hour could be having a walking meeting with a colleague or finding a shared interest, such as visiting a museum. Not all socializing has to happen sitting down at a café or at the office.

Consider The Social Needs Of Others

It’s important to note that not all people want to fulfill their social needs from work. Some have strong communities outside of work and would be happy to work 100% remotely with very little social contact with colleagues. Even if this describes you, others may be really needing this connection from work. They may be suffering from poor social fitness.

Reaching out to coworkers, especially if you are a leader, may mean more to them than you know. It’s part of being a good organizational citizen and a colleague who is committed and involved.

What About Gig Workers?

This is more a challenging ask for gig workers and others who have less autonomy in planning their day. For those who do not have immediate co-workers, they could consider joining an outside networking group or professional association that meets locally. They may want to invest in building social connections outside of work to ensure their social health is looked after.

Finding Time

With constant work intensification, people may feel like they don’t have an hour a day to spare for being social. But sometimes it’s in the informal meetups where opportunities are shared or new ideas are sparked. Most things can wait. Tasks, emails, and requests cannot be as urgent as they are beginning to feel. Making time to be social is worthwhile and necessary and should not be seen as a waste of time, even if you don’t get something out if it on every occasion.

In recognition of the increasing importance of soft skills for leaders and for those wishing to emerge as leaders, organizations need to provide developmental opportunities for their people to build and practice the soft skills, such as communication, influencing others, and building rapport.

Encouraging social fitness and allowing genuine time for employees to engage in socializing with each other allows for the development of these skills. It facilitates psychologically safe workplaces, where people can talk to each other and to clients, with employees that feel fulfilled and rejuvenated for their regular work tasks.