Building Social Wealth: How Leaders Create Lasting Social Health in Their Teams

Social capital is in the relationships you have built. Social Wealth is what you feel when those relationships are activated in ways that meet your social needs. We help organisations and leaders close the gap.

That gap matters. You can have a full address book, a busy calendar and hundreds of professional connections, yet still feel under supported. You can work with a capable team and still find trust, belonging or the confidence to ask for help are in short supply.

The opportunity for leaders is to design the conditions that help relationships become a source of energy, support and possibility.

This is the work of building Social Wealth.

Why Social Wealth matters at work

Disconnection is rarely about the individual. It is often a signal that the design of work has not caught up with the way people now connect.

Our study covered more than 1,200 remote and hybrid people leaders. 29% reported feeling lonely at least sometimes. 66% reported scrolling through social media every day without posting, commenting or liking. Our research described this pattern as habitual rather than replenishing (Doyle, forthcoming).

These findings do not define people. They point to an activation gap.

What is the activation gap?

The activation gap is the distance between having relationships and feeling resourced by them.

A person may have:

• Colleagues who are available, but no relationship that feels safe enough for honest conversation
• Professional contacts who offer information, but no inner circle for emotional support
• Digital access to groups and communities, but little sense of belonging
• A full social media feed, but limited reciprocal connection

This is why counting connections is not enough. Leaders must ask a better question:

Are the relationships in your social ecosystem helping you feel supported, valued and able to contribute?

The cost of ignoring this is human and organisational. Cigna (2020) estimated an annual employer cost of approximately US$4,200 per lonely employee. Other estimates vary, and some are lower, reflecting differences in method and salary assumptions. These are attributed estimates providing context, not a forecast of any individual organisation’s costs.

Social Health is not a perk. It is a capability that supports trust, collaboration, retention and sustainable performance.

Social Capital and Social Wealth are connected, but different

Think of Social Capital as the network you have built. It includes relationships, trust, shared knowledge, access to support and the resources available through connection.

Think of Social Wealth as the inner state that emerges when your network is activated in ways that meet your needs. It can feel like belonging, support, confidence, vitality or relational ease.

You need both.

A strong network without meaningful activation can become a list of names. Social Wealth turns that network into lived support.

This distinction also changes the leadership conversation. Instead of asking only, “How many connections do our people have?”, ask:

• Can people access support when pressure rises?
• Do new colleagues know how to enter the culture?
• Can distributed teams build trust beyond task delivery?
• Are leaders making space for relationships to deepen?
• Do internal communications invite participation, or only distribute information?

This is relational design, the intentional shaping of rhythms, environments and behaviours that make healthy connection more likely.

Use the Social Wealth Continuum as a reflective guide

The Social Wealth Continuum is a five-level framework, grouped here into three broad positions:

1. Loneliness
2. Social Wellbeing
3. Social Wealth

The continuum is reflective and directional, not diagnostic. It is not a label for a person or a score for an organisation. It is a way to notice unmet social needs, recognise existing strengths and identify a direction for investment.

You may move along the continuum across different areas of life. A leader may feel socially wealthy within a close friendship group while experiencing low connection at work. A person relocating to a new country may have strong professional relationships but need time to develop a local sense of belonging.

Ask yourself: What would help me move towards greater Social Wealth in this season?

You can use the Social Wealth Continuum quiz as a starting point for reflection.

Map your social ecosystem

Your social ecosystem includes the people, groups, places and spaces that shape your experience of connection.

Start with four areas:

• Self: Your needs, values, energy and capacity for connection
• Inner circle: The people you trust for care, honesty and reciprocal support
• Groups: Communities, teams and collectives that create identity and belonging
• Places and spaces: The physical and digital environments that make repeated connection possible

Within this ecosystem, consider both bonding and bridging relationships. Sociologists describe these as bonding and bridging social capital, a distinction introduced by Robert Putnam.

Bonding relationships offer depth, safety and emotional support. They often sit within your inner circle or closest groups.

Bridging relationships connect you to different perspectives, information and opportunities. They may include colleagues in other functions, professional communities, neighbours or people you meet through shared interests.

Healthy social ecosystems need both. Bonding without bridging can create silos. Bridging without bonding can create a culture of polite strangers.

Map both. Then look for imbalance.

Practical activation for individual leaders

You do not need to redesign your entire life or calendar at once. Begin with small, repeatable rhythms.

1. Name one social need. Do you need encouragement, challenge, practical help, fun or quiet companionship? Be specific.
2. Review your current ecosystem. List the people, groups, places and spaces that currently support your wellbeing. Notice what is missing, not only what is present.
3. Strengthen one bonding relationship. Block time for a recurring conversation, walk or shared activity with someone who restores your energy.
4. Activate one bridging relationship. Contact a colleague or community member outside your usual circle. Ask what they are learning, building or navigating.
5. Use social media with attention and intention. Social media is a tool rather than a substitute for connection. It can help you discover people, maintain relationships and find communities. Use it with attention and intention. Comment with care. Share something useful. Move an important connection from passive scrolling towards reciprocal conversation.
6. Create a rhythm you can sustain. Choose a weekly or fortnightly practice. Consistency builds trust more effectively than occasional bursts of enthusiasm.

For individual leaders who want guided support, Social Wealth Activation offers a structured way to map and strengthen a personal social ecosystem. Request a call with Shelley.

Practical activation for HR, Communications and leadership teams

Organisations cannot manufacture belonging through forced fun. They can, however, design conditions that make meaningful connection easier.

1. Map relational risk. Look for points where trust has not yet formed, where support is hard to access, or where useful connection has faded. Consider onboarding, promotion, restructuring, relocation and distributed work.
2. Design for bonding and bridging. Create small group spaces that support depth, alongside cross functional opportunities that expand networks and perspective.
3. Build connection into communication. Move beyond broadcast messages. Invite stories, questions, peer recognition and useful exchange. Make participation accessible across locations and time zones.
4. Protect relational time. Review meeting load and workload expectations. Connection cannot thrive if every minute is allocated to delivery.
5. Use places and spaces intentionally. Treat office days, online communities and shared physical environments as opportunities for connection, not simply locations for individual work.
6. Measure movement, not just mood. Combine employee feedback with practical indicators such as participation, access to support, cross team relationships and the quality of onboarding. Keep the focus on learning and improvement.
7. Develop internal capability. A Social Wealth Strategist, a practitioner who designs connection at work, can help translate research into leadership behaviours, communication practices and sustainable relational rhythms.

The Social Health in Professional Leadership Certification is a 12 week pathway for leaders responsible for organisational health, culture and employee engagement. Participants learn to identify relational risk, map social ecosystems and embed Social Health into everyday work. Apply for the certification.

For leadership teams seeking a focused conversation, speaking, briefings and workshops can bring the research into an existing strategy day or leadership programme. Request a call with Shelley.

Relocation can be an opportunity for Social Wealth

Relocation and expatriate life are often told as a story of what gets left behind. A person leaves familiar places, routines and relationships. That experience can be demanding, but it also creates an opportunity for intentional social ecosystem design.

Leaders can support this transition by helping people:

• Identify local groups connected to interests, culture or values
• Build relationships beyond the immediate workplace
• Find places that support repeated, low pressure connection
• Maintain important relationships across distance
• Use professional networks as bridges into wider community life

A relocation programme that supports Social Health does more than help someone settle into a role. It helps a person build a life that can sustain the role.

Lead with agency

Building Social Wealth is not about eliminating every experience of loneliness. Loneliness is a signal. It can show that a social need deserves attention.

The leadership task is to notice the signal, understand the ecosystem and design a meaningful response.

In an eight-week pilot with eleven leaders, not one finished below Social Wellbeing, and three months later 90% had started new rituals of connection in their own lives.

Our work is grounded in five years of applied research with more than 1,200 remote and hybrid leaders, and informed by conversations with Corey Keyes, Robin Dunbar and Pete Bombaci. This research included an MA completed with Royal Roads University and supported by a Mitacs Accelerate Award. Explore the research behind Social Wealth and Social Health (research), or listen to conversations on the podcast and watch page.

Then ask:

What relationship, rhythm or environment could you activate this week?

Start there. Small, intentional actions can close the activation gap and help people feel more supported by the social ecosystems they have built.

The bottom line: Social Wealth is not a fixed advantage. It is a direction you can choose, design and strengthen, one relationship and one rhythm at a time.