Speaking notes for ER&L session: Cultivating your Organizational Garden: Social Capital in the Workplace

1. Cultivating your Organizational Garden: Social Capital in the
Workplace
Jenifer Holman (holman@hope.edu)
Abstract:
Like any garden, our workplaces require mindful cultivation to help them thrive.
Research shows that engaged employees are more productive, healthier, and
less likely to leave for other jobs. Learn about theories of social capital and
explore concrete ideas to help grow and maintain a connected and committed
workplace.
Presentation Outline
Organizational Strategies Track
Speaking Points
o Introduction
o Hi & thanks for being here at
Cultivating your organizational garden: social
capital in the workplace
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I’m ...
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Agenda:
o Social Capital: What it is and why it
matters
o Techniques for creating/maintaining a
healthy, connected organization
o Please share your thoughts/ideas via
this twitter hashtag:
#connectAtWork #erl17
o A little context to begin …
As librarians, we talk about users, resources,
budgets, new technologies and discovery
systems, but what about our people? Our

2. people are our most important resource.
Especially E-Resources Librarians (slightly
biased)!;the hiring process is amazingly
expensive in terms of money, time, and staff
morale. We want to retain our people.
Perhaps the way to keep our people is to
shore up the ties that bind us: to strengthen
our organizational social capital
I knew nothing about social capital or why it
might be important before I switched jobs
after 17 years at the same institution. Seeing
an organization through the lens of a new
librarian has been a pivotal experience for
me. I believe that our social capital gives us a
web of interconnectedness that makes us feel
valuable and trusted in our workplaces.
These connections strengthen our
organizations, and, I would suggest, hold
value for strengthening our larger
communities as well.
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Robert Putnam, in an amazing book from
2001 called Bowling Alone, defines social
capital as the “...connections among
individuals - social networks and the norms of
reciprocity and trustworthiness that arise
from them”
Social capital is an organizational asset, no
less important that monetary capital
o {SLIDE}
Organizations lacking the necessary nutrients
of participation, trust, and civility (the
building blocks of social capital) can
inadvertently cultivate a toxic environment

3. that can lead to employee turnover,
diminished creativity, and a lack of trust.
These changes happen slowly - maybe some
staff retire and new staff come on-board or
positions get cut and workloads increase
leaving coworkers to become too busy to
maintain connections. It’s not unlike how
wild violets can completely take over your
yard if left to their own devices. Without
deliberate care and feeding our workplace
connections can wilt, weeds can creep in,
and our organizational gardens can decay.
Our libraries can be places filled with
immense stress for workers; we are in the
midst of an unprecedented age of change -
there’s a reason why our keynote speaker at
ER&L in 2014 was Sarah Durrant, who spoke
on Resiliency in Times of Change
Under this immense stress, our sense of
community can be the first casuality: - in
Bowling alone, Putnam cites Charles
Heckscher’s White Collar Blues, in which
Heckscher writes about a frequent reaction
to immense stress: “Rather than turning on
another, most people drifted apart,
becoming more isolated and wanting to be
left alone”
The other side-effect of this stress is
incivility, which is also on the rise. The
results of incivility (as surveyed by Porath
and Pearson in a 2013 HBR article include
employees: intentionally decreasing work
effort and time spent at work, lowering the
quality of their work, lowering their
commitment to the organization, leaving
their job, and even taking their frustration
out on customers.

4. {SLIDE}
Before moving on to ideas for strengthening
our social capital at work, I want to
acknowledge that there is a dark side to
social capital: a recent Chronicle of Higher
Ed article reported the disappointing story of
the Amherst men’s cross-country team, in
which these runners used their privilege and
status, their high social capital to exclude
others through racial and sexist acts and
language. Hiring with too much emphasis on
organizational fit is another negative
example of social capital. Our organizational
gardens are stronger and more resilient when
we plant a wide variety of flowers. I envision
building social capital such that individuality
is celebrated at the same time as we strive
to connect and support one another. A call,
as Robert Putnam says in Bowling Alone, to
both fraternity and equality. (p.359)
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Shawn Achor, a Harvard-educated happiness
researcher, writes about the role of fun in
the workplace and finds that happy
employees are more productive, healthier,
less likely to move on to another job, and
more creative and innovative.
He finds that…"The most successful people, …
Instead of turning inward, … actually hold
tighter to their social support. Instead of
divesting, they invest. Not only are these
people happier, but they are more
productive, engaged, energetic, and
resilient."

5. The best news for me, as a librarian without
a formal supervisory role is that ...
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as the Dalai Lama has said, “one person can
change the atmosphere of a workplace
environment. Michael Tews finds that
leaders simply creating an open environment
and then stepping away is often all that’s
needed. In his 2017 article in Journal of
Vocational Behavior he writes: “When
employees are afforded opportunities to
socialize with one another, higher-quality
relationships are more likely to develop,
which can open the door for the exchange of
ideas.”
o {SLIDE}
With all this in mind, what can we do to
cultivate social capital in our organizations?
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As Cohen & Prusak write in the book In Good
Company, “Conversation and story are the
voice of social capital. They communicate
values, behaviors, understandings, and aims -
all the shared cultural messages that define
groups and turn individuals into members of
groups.”
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Building strong social capital starts by just
taking the time to talk together and share
our stories
Our stories are powerful, and few shared
story are as powerful as office gossip stories.

6. I’m not encouraging rampant gossiping, yet
by engaging in what we might call
professional gossip, you are participating in
group relationships built on a high level of
trust - an essential ingredient of social
capital. About a month after I started my
new position, staff members started opening
up to me about some local stories. It wasn’t
malicious and I certainly never repeated it to
anyone, but I felt like I was a trusted
member of the team after that.
Stories help us understand our orgs and feel
like we are a part of them. Failure stories,
war stories, hero stories, and creation myths
are all powerful ways to bond people.
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Aside from sharing our stories, it’s worth
exploring other ways we can connect within
our institutions, after all, as Brene Brown so
convincingly tells us “connection is why we
are here” (TED talk - citation)
And, I’m happy to say I’m not the only one to
be thinking of building social capital lately,
Stacey Marien of American University led a
lively discussion on acqnet about building
work culture back in October: several great
ideas included - monthly potlucks, noon yoga,
book groups, craft groups, attend campus
events as a group, vitamin D walks - these
events and activities create shared stories,
that can be passed on to build a connected
workplace.
Another idea is to develop a staff mascot -
possibly even a stuffed animal that coworkers
pass around to mark staff achievements.

7. When coworkers see the mascot, they
hopefully ask - hey, what did you do to get
the mascot - and then conversations happen
and kudos are shared.
Another way we are working to build a
connected workplace is through lunch n’
Learns. These can be built as a journal club
in which journal articles are shared and
summarized or can be build around different
team members sharing lessons learned from a
conference or a brainstorming session on a
certain topic. I see this as a no-stakes way to
gauge where our coworkers stand on a
various of issues.
I also love the idea of volunteering as a
library, or attending plays/sports events
together. I think being seen together in your
larger community is a powerful message to
share.
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All these things may seem small, but they go
far to maintain participation, trust, and
civility. And when we put our people first, I
feel like we will be much better positioned to
weather the uncertainty ahead.
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Thank you!
Your thoughts + questions