"Networking".

Bit like "engineer", I find.

Means a different thing to every person.

If you mention networking in some offices, managers assume you mean "gossiping" in another guise. I think that's because they don’t see any value in the PAs and administrators talking to one another. Why not? Ah - that'll be because it doesn’t translate directly into greater profitability for the organisation or raise its profile in any way. Or so they think.

Internal networking does sometimes involve what could be called "gossiping" but then I think "gossiping" has got an undeservedly bad name. "Gossip" conjures up images of reputation-trashing conversations in private between jealous rivals of the person under discussion. It’s nothing more than the lingua franca of TV soap watchers or those with nothing better to do than wonder about Jordan’s love life.

Well, I beg to differ. "Gossiping" can also cover the exchange of information between colleagues about non-work matters that helps us work better as a team. My recent chat with a PA colleague about her house purchase and my evening class sound like a way of frittering 10 minutes. What we walked away with was the knowledge that one of us has a very stressful few months coming up and may need extra help from colleagues; and that the other one won’t want early meetings on Wednesday mornings after studying late on Tuesday night. Hardly earth-shattering stuff, but there is a mountain of data from studies on good teamworking that shows communication to be at the heart of it. And that doesn’t mean exchanging purely work information.

The gender gap
It’s a sad fact but there are some work-culture dinosaurs who think that support staff don’t really have anything important to say to one another. I believe this springs directly from status and gender. Back in the days when men were men and women were "just secretaries", the assumption was that two of us talking without a file in our hands meant a private conversation. Two men in the office talking meant higher sales figures.

Of course, they may have been talking about their golf handicap but the assumption was that it was important, men’s business. Now we have many more women managers, that image has altered somewhat. What hasn’t been updated in some colleagues' minds is the range and complexity of information handled by PAs and other support staff.

And it’s a fact: women talk more than men. We gather information and communicate it to one another more often. That’s what we do. We’re good at it, in the main, and it’s a skill that should be developed and encouraged, not denigrated.

Developing relationships
Networking outside the organisation is just as valuable and can open up whole new worlds of ideas. When you call or email your network for information or advice, you don’t get only them – you get everyone in their address books, too. DeskDemon’s information on a safe taxi service was cut and pasted to every woman in my contacts book, whether I felt I knew them well or not. Sharing useful information is one of the things that develops greater bonds between us.

Did it translate into cold, hard cash for my employer? No, it didn’t. But I know from the emails I got back thanking me that it has developed alliances between me and external colleagues. It’s a small contribution to much bigger relationships which I am positive will help me in future.

And networking doesn’t only take place at conferences, trade shows and organised events. It’s not only for people who feel legit walking up to complete strangers and pressing a business card into their hands. It’s for all of us, all the time.

When things go pear shaped
This idea that your private life and your business life run along straight lines is nonsense. Office life is as messy as the rest of it – high ideals and lower standards, promises forgotten, amazing unexpected support , exciting opportunities appearing on a dull day. Of course we need to talk to one another a lot. We need to do that to keep up with what is going on and to help us "read" one another’s behaviour. That all adds up to smoother-running offices and greater resilience when it all goes pear shaped. And at some point, it will go pear shaped.

That’s when all hands on deck can mean your internal network stepping up to help out and your external one holding the fort on your behalf at the other end. Instead of loud tutting from virtual strangers, you’ll find a lot of helping hands and empathy over your triumph turning to near disaster. If anyone can explain to me how that doesn’t help in the public image of your company or the quality of its employees work, I’ll eat my contacts book.