As generative AI increasingly handles many daily tasks, excelling at work will require a strong set of social skills that have traditionally been challenging to define and develop. At the Forbes Future of Work Summit, LinkedIn economist Aneesh Raman emphasized that we are on the cusp of entering a new "relationship economy," where social abilities are central to the workplace. This shift means that so-called soft skills are becoming the new hard skills, and they are the ones that matter most. To prepare for this future, organizations must focus on enhancing divergent thinking, collaboration, and social agility, all of which begin with workplace relationships.
However, building effective relationships in the current workplace climate can feel daunting. Layoffs are surging, recruiters are posting "ghost" jobs with no intention of filling them, workplace loneliness remains prevalent, and employee engagement is at a ten-year low. It's tempting to retreat rather than engage.
Yet, we know that relationships are crucial. It's time to design a human-centric future of work—a socially networked ecosystem that leverages technology to boost productivity and innovation rather than replace human capital. Imagine a workplace where healthy relationships are at the core of the business. What would it take to achieve this? Here are seven concrete steps leaders can take to foster a productive relationship economy:
Champion Your Principles
Most organizations have articulated a set of values, often displayed on walls or laminated wallet cards. These values represent the company's aspirations, but they often remain just words or phrases like "trust" or "customer service." Transforming these values into actionable principles allows employees, even the most junior, to bring them to life. This shapes behavior and guides decisions amid conflicting priorities and pressures. For example, at Tableau Software, "product excellence" is a value, while "We won’t release a product until we use it ourselves" is a principle.
Reframe Flexibility
Flexibility has taken a hit in the heated debates over return-to-work mandates, but it means more than just choosing where to work. True flexibility empowers employees to do their best work and gives them the freedom to be effective in their roles in their own way. This includes accessing training and learning resources to support and strengthen their skills, even those adjacent to their current work. To build nimble teams adept at flexible thinking, create spaces for colleagues to share ideas, tackle challenges together, and learn from each other—regardless of their location. By understanding what each person brings to the table and being flexible about how they support the collective mission, you can neutralize proximity bias and better leverage the skills of your entire team.
Redesigning Collaborative Spaces for Hybrid Teams
Despite the media's focus on the return to office (RTO), many companies still operate with hybrid teams. This presents an opportunity to rethink the physical office environment. The goal isn't to make the office more Instagrammable or to create playgrounds reminiscent of early tech companies. Instead, it's about designing spaces that foster collaboration—more meeting rooms, advanced technology, and flexible layouts that encourage interaction and build trust-based relationships. Research shows that increasing the distance between teammates reduces communication; when people are more than 8 meters apart, they have only a 5% chance of communicating weekly. If you're bringing teams into the office, it's crucial to design spaces that facilitate interaction.
Foster Interpersonal Connections
Creating spaces for meaningful interaction is essential. This involves not just face-to-face but also brain-to-brain connections. Regularly scheduled times for conversation, such as lunch and learn sessions, community service projects, or coffee breaks, can significantly impact team dynamics. For instance, Bank of America partnered with MIT scientist Sandy Pentland to study the effects of socializing on call center productivity. Using sociometers, they found that coworkers who interacted more had faster call times, and less stress, and maintained high approval ratings. By synchronizing employee breaks across call centers, the company saw a 20% drop in call handling time, resulting in a $15 million productivity boost and increased customer satisfaction. Encouraging interaction at all organizational levels fosters the relationships that drive productivity, creativity, and innovation.
Develop Communities of Practice
The complexity of today's world means no single person has all the answers. A network of colleagues within the same domain, sharing a broad array of experiences and expertise, can deepen learning and solve complex problems. Communities of practice are self-formed groups of colleagues who share ideas and support each other's work. These can be informal, like photocopier repair teams sharing tips during breaks, or more formal, like Chrysler's (now Stellantis) tech clubs, which supported new car development and shared expertise across platforms. Professional service firms often share knowledge through internal practice networks dedicated to industry and functional expertise, leveraging the entire organization's knowledge to address individual challenges.
Align Incentives
It's widely understood that incentives should align with desired behaviors. Fostering a relationship culture requires rewards that honor team-based collaboration, effective mentorship, and knowledge sharing. This includes incentivizing relationship skills like active listening and healthy disagreement, alongside commercial performance metrics and technical accomplishments. IBM, for example, evaluates performance based on both business results and skills development. How can your compensation structures reward the forward-looking efforts you want to see?
Celebrate Success
Highlight and celebrate the behaviors you want to encourage. Regularly recognizing and celebrating team efforts, even if they fall short, can inspire and motivate your teams. Make celebration a habit—honor collective work rather than individual achievements. Highlighting great work in a company newsletter or giving awards to teams that go above and beyond is a good start. Celebration should be an everyday occurrence, honoring both successes and failures. One CEO regularly reminds his teams to be loud and proud, sharing their successes and efforts with the entire organization. As work becomes more challenging, every incremental step counts. Highlighting these steps can inspire the next leap forward.
Shaping the Future of Work
The future of work and the tools we use are still being written. However, we must be intentional about how we work. AI offers opportunities to reframe work, allowing us to delegate mundane tasks and focus on innovation and creativity. To do this well, we need to enhance workplace social skills. The choice is ours: do we succumb to exhaustion and disengage, or do we prioritize the social skills needed to shape the relationship economy? If we deprioritize these relationships because we're too busy, we risk stifling human ingenuity and the creativity needed to breathe life into the future of work. AI can't build this for us; we must build it ourselves—together.