Blog · Corporate Culture
The benefits of networking
Networking rests on just one thing: talking. It sounds trivial, and that's exactly why it almost never happens inside a company — because talking isn't scheduled anywhere in a typical working day.
Published 23 September 2021 · revised 16 August 2026
The point
Networking softens professional boundaries
Whether internal or external, networking lets people ask for advice about their careers, circulate ideas, and build relationships that go beyond their role. In a word: it makes the professional fulfilment of the people who work there possible.
It's still far from being a normal practice inside companies, which remain tied to an idea of productivity made of hours, not connections.
Who gets left out
Networking as we usually think of it — evening events, personal initiative, ease with strangers — isn't neutral. It rewards one specific kind of person and leaves many others behind.
Making it part of the working day, instead of an individual attitude to be exercised off the clock, is the simplest way to widen the pool of people who can take part.
Two concrete things
What a company can do, without spending
Put networking inside working hours
Stretch the lunch break and the coffee break a little: people get more chances to talk to each other, and internal relationships get built there, not in a dedicated meeting.
Productivity doesn't necessarily grow with hours. It grows when collaboration is rewarded instead of competition.
Leave no one behind
Someone who entered the workforce thirty years ago struggles more with today's tools, and that's not a flaw: it's a matter of updating, which is solved with periodic training rather than silent exclusion.
The same principle applies: networking online sits alongside networking in person, it doesn't replace it, and it should be taught the way any work tool is taught.
One word at a time
A culture doesn't change through good will
It changes by giving someone the mandate to change it. That's the step this article, in 2021, didn't yet have.
Why good will isn't enough
Without a mechanism that establishes who moves first, mutual waiting is the system's equilibrium state: no one takes the first step, and value stays frozen. It's the First Law, the Law of Inaction, and it holds inside a company exactly as it does between two companies.
Who holds the mandate
In the discipline, the figure who governs a company's relational network is called the Referral Director: in-house, trained, with an explicit mandate. They don't sell — they run the routine, decide who to introduce to whom and read the numbers.
It's also the answer to the Fourth Law: activating an organisation multiplies effort, but only if someone inside the organisation is designated to receive that push. Without it, the push is lost in the friction of internal processes — which is a precise description of what happens to a cultural initiative with no one responsible for it.
Cultures don't change through conviction. They change when someone is accountable for them.
The first step
Where your company stands, as a number
AIRA-SCAN© measures the relational capital your company already has: ten questions, three minutes, no registration. Your browser calculates the score and it shows immediately, with the areas where you lose the most points.
The extended report then arrives by email, and within one working day a person calls you: you look at the result together and assess whether the Stoic Analysis AIRA-DX© makes sense for your company. It is free and limited to twelve a week, so it is not owed to whoever does the check-up: it is decided by both of you.
Prefer just talking about it? The number is 0549 888808.