When it comes to strategic networking, one of the areas in which organizations struggle is internal networking, i.e., strategic relationship building across teams and functions within an organization.
At the same time, many organizations grapple with silos, weak corporate cultures, low employee morale, and approaches to career advancement that make employees feel as though progressing within the organization is impossible, especially today. As remote work is more common than ever, internal networking is an acute challenge.
All these factors ultimately lead to one of the biggest consequences of a lack of internal networking: high turnover.
Conversely, improving employee morale and loyalty, creating a path for career advancement within the organization, creating a culture that fosters authenticity, and helping with succession planning have a direct positive impact on retention. Internal networking is a business imperative.
Internal networking is an approach to strategic relationship building across teams and functions within an organization. Too often, people think of networking as only being externally facing (i.e., an organization’s relationships with clients and prospective clients).
However, emphasizing the importance of relationships within an organization helps employees at all seniority levels feel connected to and supported by their colleagues. An added benefit is that when employees have strong networks across internal teams, they feel empowered to problem solve, ask questions, and help others.
There is a challenge and an opportunity here. Because many organizations do not prioritize internal networking, employees can feel disconnected to the organization, silos and turnover can persist, and even a strong corporate culture can lack the cohesion that makes employees stay. The good news is that companies that do prioritize strategic internal relationship building create a competitive advantage over peer organizations that emphasize client relationships over relationships between their own employees.
Implementing efforts to improve internal networking at an organization can be simple, organic, and cost-effective. The following is a list of ways in which you can prioritize strategic networking (aka relationship building) within your organization. Each strategy listed can be tailored to either digital or in-person initiatives, depending on the environment:
Retention is a talent imperative at which every organization hopes to excel. Once an employee gives notice, there is very little that can be done to successfully make him or her stay. We all know that relationships matter, and networking well is important. Throughout the talent management process, starting from recruiting, demonstrate the importance of strong and healthy internal networking relationships at the organization. New hires will begin to feel drawn to the organization’s culture, welcome and connected to colleagues, hopeful that career advancement is not only possible but encouraged, and certain that the organization is where he or she belongs.