Do You Inwork?

Progressive employers are working hard to create a culture of referral through inworking. While most networkers focus their efforts outside of their company, some are creating spectacular success by focusing in-house.

First adopted by multi-discipline professional practice firms a few years back, inworking is the act of networking within your organization. Take the example of a 300 person accounting firm with 6 areas of specialty. Normally in a firm like this each business unit would operate completely independently. Each discipline would participate in independent networks. In this best practice firm however, cross discipline inworking events take place frequently at all levels. These inworking events look a lot like the networking events that you've been to except everyone is from the same firm. A foundation of managing partner engagement and continuous partner and associate training have created a dynamic where the firm now generates more new clients from internal referral than any other source.

Other businesses use inworking events to provide a better connection between staff and management as well as staff who are geographically distributed. These practices are great for helping individuals develop their own career advancement network within the company as well as connecting to peers for collaborative purposes.

Ultimately inworking builds the most valuable organizational asset, the staff effectiveness and efficiency. When inworking is well implemented and nurtured the institutional knowledge is fully leveraged.