You may be thinking to yourself, why would after work happy hour be such an important event to attend? While you may have originally believed it to be vital because of the free drink tickets or the tasty appetizers, the real benefit lies in your future success at your job.
Regardless of if you work in the public, private, or nonprofit sector, most organizations are too large for you to know everyone you work with, especially the people that you may not interact with in the context of your job. For example, as a government accountant, how familiar would you be with the program administrator in a large government branch? Not very.
Events outside of worktime, like happy hour, are vehicles to get to know more people and plant a professional relationship seed. Essentially, these events allow you to meet colleagues that you don’t interact with in your daily routines and build stronger relationships with the coworkers you do know through sharing common experiences and having deeper conversations.
The combination of meeting new people and strengthening relationships with those you already know can help you build a stronger professional and personal network. This network is important because it enables you to accomplish simple tasks much easier, as you feel more comfortable asking coworkers you know questions than coworkers you don’t know, or give you a bigger view of operations of the organization because you now know what’s happening in other parts of the workplace you may not have been privy to before. This is important when you attempt to navigate potentially murky bureaucratic waters in the organization to complete projects or assignments.
You may be thinking to yourself that happy hours are great if you have the time, but you have a family to see, graduate school classes to attend, or other important after-work needs to take care of. What is someone to do in this case? Here are three other tips to achieve the same desired effect of building a strong informal network if you just can’t make the company happy hour:
Setup coffee and lunch meetings often. People love to eat and people love to talk. Lunches and coffee conversations give you a defined set of time (30 minutes typically for coffee, and about an hour for lunch) to get to know someone during a break you most likely would already take.
Stop and say hello to coworkers around the office. The key word here is to stop. It’s easy to say hi as you pass by, but that isn’t a conversation. Find out when coworkers have a few minutes to chat and do it. Informal conversations work as well, especially if you are in a long line to get coffee at the closest Starbucks.
Join workplace affinity groups. In the last two organizations I have been part of, I have found ways to get involved with workplace affinity groups, like employee feedback councils and book clubs. As a result, I’ve met colleagues outside of my normal role as we work to improve the workplace for other coworkers or converse about shared interests.
The key takeaway here is that you must find opportunities outside of your regular working schedule to develop your professional and personal network, whether that be through attending organizational happy hours, getting involved with workplace affinity groups, or just setting up lunches and coffees with those weak-ties in the office that you want to know better.
