While there are still plenty of ways in which your employees work independently, in many cases you need them to contribute to each other’s work and leverage each other’s experience. A strong culture of mutual contribution helps your bottom line when you find that two people can do more together than either could do independently. Furthermore, many people tend to be social creatures, so by encouraging collaboration and mutual learning you create a working environment they appreciate, which can boost retention and help you avoid the high costs associated with attrition.

This is something we probably all realize, but the trick is how to do it. One thing many organizations do to build this collaborative culture is to hold social events and team-building exercises outside the normal workflow, in an attempt to get people to know each other on a more casual basis. The problem with that is, they don’t really need to know each other on a casual basis; they need to know each other on a professional one.

The challenge of using social events to boost engagement is that it doesn’t help employees see how the organization works It helps them see all the people, but that doesn’t mean they understand what those people do and how they complement each other. Research has shown that social events and networking for the sake of networking do little to help employees’ ability to work synergistically in the workplace, precisely because the important thing isn’t to know people; the important thing is to know what they do. You don’t get that at the company picnic, or in a bar somewhere.

What we have found is that relationships that are built in the working environment and that enable an understanding of other people’s requirements and capabilities in the context of their work make for a much stronger bond. You understand the business — including its culture and values — better when you understand what others in the company do, and how they can contribute to your work while you contribute to theirs. Having a thousand friends on your internal social media system doesn’t matter; knowing what 50 other people do that can help you does.

Social events can play a role in building a collaborative culture, but they cannot be your entire strategy. They provide an opportunity to meet people, but your folks then need to build on those introductions and find the internal networks that support their work. Perhaps social gatherings can be a starting point, but then you need to encourage further, professional discussion. Beyond that, you need policies and processes that make collaboration the norm rather than the exception, but that’s another discussion for another day.

Social events can offer a good start toward building a stronger culture. They are not a bad thing that should be discarded, but don’t assume they are going to get you to where you want to be. They’re fun, they’re useful, they can build camaraderie, but they ARE just a start, and you need more than a start. Your engagement strategy cannot revolve around social functions if you expect it to translate into high-quality work.