Social capital
Social capital is about creating value through employees through value-creating relationships, respectful and effective communication, and a constructive feedback culture that ensures everyone takes responsibility for their own communication and relationships.
High social capital has a direct positive impact on an organization's ability to deliver bottom-line results.
Focusing on collaboration and relationships from a well-being perspective can easily become about feeling good together and how you can help each other and yourself.
Social capital, on the other hand, is about developing the qualities that enable employees to work together on the core task (i.e. the guests). It's about "playing each other well" and working together to create good results that boost the bottom line and the collegial community.
High social capital means that we are good at helping each other improve across functions while respecting each other's differences. This means we can collaborate with the guest in the best possible way.
— An invisible value in strong collaborative relationships —
Social capital and the 3 dimensions
There are three types of social capital in organizations:
Unifying social capital - the social capital within a department or team
Bridging social capital - about the social capital that exists across departments or teams
Connecting social capital - about the social capital that exists between different levels or layers of management
This means that social capital must be present and actively practiced in all 3 dimensions of an organization.
It's no use having high social capital in a department if you can't work together across the board.If an organization has low social capital, the work is less attractive to employees.
Thus, there will be a risk of a lower level of well-being, high staff turnover, high sick leave, less productivity, resulting in an overall deteriorating work environment.
Social capital and the 3 diamonds
Put another way, the three key concepts are:
Trust, Fairness, and Collaboration on the core task
A little about fairness
Fairness is an individual feeling. As a leader, you can contribute to the sense of fairness, i.e. justice, being experienced in the organization and by the individual employee by:
Ensure everyone feels heard and involved
Be aware that everyone is treated with respect
Dealing with small and large conflicts constructively
Ensure that there is transparency in the processes and decisions that are made on a daily basis. This applies to both big important decisions as well as less important decisions.
It's also important to be aware of the different forms of justice, including;
Procedural justice
Are the processes fair?
Interpersonal justice
Are you treated properly and with respect?
Informational justice
Do you get enough information about the process?
Distributive justice
Are promotions, layoffs, recognition and benefits fairly distributed?
Make it fair!
Set the context, including the background, framework and direction of the change and expectations for employees.
Involve employees in developing and testing suggestions.
Explain the rationale behind approving, revising and rejecting employee suggestions.
A little about collaboration
When you strengthen collaboration, you also strengthen the social capital of your company. It's about creating value through employees through value-creating relationships, respectful and effective communication, and a constructive feedback culture. Good collaboration requires:
An appreciative approach to each other. Both manager to employee, but also at a collegiate level
A shared reality. Meaning that everyone understands the discourse of the conversation and the common goal
Good communication between the different levels and layers of management
Working proactively and constructively to strengthen the feedback culture
There is knowledge of each other's strengths and weaknesses
A little about trust
Trust is based on creating a sense of belonging, which creates more engagement and fertile ground for development. In order for you to create trust as a leader, it is essential to consider the following:
Create transparency when it comes to decision-making processes and organizational change
Delegate responsibility so that it enhances your employees' sense of belonging in the workplace
Be actively listening and present
Be equal in your communication when talking to your employees
Work on emotional intelligence with your employees
A little more about trust
Watch Dr. Linda Holbeche talk about management, trust and employee engagement. She mentions in the video that:
"We are now in a situation where organizations have to keep on changing. How do we reconcile the need for change with the need to maintain trust? Unless you have trust between employer and workers, you are not going to get engagement."
- Dr. Linda Holbeche
How do you create a sense of belonging?
The solution is trust - and that creates engagement!
Immerse yourself in the topic of social capital and learn more by watching these videos.
The first two videos are in English. If you prefer to learn in Danish, watch the next two videos.
Social capital comes in many forms, and as a leader, you can strengthen social capital in your workplace by focusing your leadership on:
The invisible value in strong collaborative relationships
The resources found in the relationships between people
An attribute that ensures that all employees can work together to solve the core tasks of the workplace
The more social capital there is in the workplace, the better the core tasks are performed
High social capital means that individual employees experience greater job satisfaction