Work, Company, and People

The three most frequently appearing words in our employment engagement survey are work, company, and people — the holy trinity of the workplace. No surprise there. However, we found that disengaged companies are more vocal about company-related issues, whereas the term people was favored by the engaged.

We also found the relative gap between the use of terms company and people is much larger at disengaged companies. Disengaged companies use the word company much more. Or perhaps, it could be said that engaged companies simply don’t have as many company-related issues or concerns to bring up as it pertains to engagement.

One thing is for sure: highly-engaged workforces are more concerned with people than any other topic besides work.

On the Topic of Culture…

The cliches seem to hold up — culture is a topic highly-engaged companies are more vocal about. Culture is ranked 11th at engaged companies, the first word to have such a significant gap. For less engaged companies, culture ranks 58th, ranking slightly under pay (56th).

Other than perhaps love (10th overall), no other word at the top of the list carries more weight (see: place, great, I’m, working, think, job). And no higher ranked word can be attributed more to the differences between a highly-engaged company and one that is disengaged.

My hunch is these organizations are more vocal about culture in general, spending more time talking in-person about culture in the workplace. And this open discussion fosters awareness, leading to change and reinforcement of cultural values.

Are We Colleagues or Friends?

One of the most notable and interpretable gaps we’ve found between the two sets of companies is the frequency of the word colleagues. In engaged companies, people are far more likely to use the word friends, and far less likely to refer to people as colleagues. And the difference is one of the largest differences we’ve found, 53rd vs 371st — this is a factor ~5x (0.035365 vs 0.007057) in terms of frequency score.

Opinions differ on the boundaries between work-colleagues and work-friends, but our data show stronger personal bonds appear to have a link to better-engaged companies. Despite a downward trend of work friendships, the research seems to show that amongst those with friendships at work, “their job is more fun, enjoyable, worthwhile, and satisfying.”

The (In)tangibles

And despite the rave reviews about on-campus cafeterias and the incredible perks of many Silicon Valley companies (many of which are companies we work with and represented in this analysis), we found that when it comes to engagement, food and perks are not a major part of the narrative.

The terms food and perks are only represented at highly-engaged companies, and we suspect that those perks are pretty generous. However, when compared with intangible concepts such as environment, friends, and culture; perks and food are far behind.

Pour Conclure

This is only the tip of the iceberg in better understanding employee engagement. But the initial research seems to say highly-engaged companies share these traits:

People over company

Culture at the forefront

Friends more than colleagues

Environment over perks

One way to interpret this is to say the trend seems to lean more on intangibles such as people, culture, and friendship as being drivers of engagement at work. As employee perks start to disappear, and work engagement becomes an increasingly talked-about topic, it’s important to shift the conversation away from what we can offer to people (the tangibles), but what we can do to foster connection, motivation, and commitment.

For now, I’ll leave you with this quote from Richard Branson: