Increase Productivity & Retention With Better Connectedness at Work

Connection. As social creatures we naturally seek out and build connections with others. But, what about at work? Should you be friends with coworkers?

Social creatures build social relationships where ever we find them. This is natural. If you supervise others, can still be friends (or be friendly) and hold direct reports accountable. I love my kids, but also hold them accountable; ditto for those whom I supervise. Indeed, if milestones are consistently not being met and remediation is ineffective, it is unkind to keep a frustrated employee employed rather than let him or her find a position that dials up their passion.

Work from my academic lab and by Immersion's subscribers has shown that organizations in which the employees are psychologically safe connect more readily to team members and are more productive. Then, guess what? Productive employees enjoy their jobs and are unlikely to quit to work elsewhere. Reducing turnover is ever more important with nearly worldwide labor shortages.

Connecting to team members can be a challenge for hybrid and remote employees. Best practice is that these team members should try to spend two to four days a month in the office. Connection can be made remotely by scheduling video conference time for a happy hours or other socializing, but this is less fluid and less natural than hanging out in person.

The quality of social connections is vitally important, at work and outside of work. Great, so how good are your social connections? Let's see, compared to what? To how much my dog loves me?

The value of social connections comes from evolutionarily old parts of the human brain, well outside of our conscious awareness. This means asking people to rate their social connections is a fool's errand. And, asking them to do this on an hourly or more frequent basis is only going to frustrate them.

Enter Immersion. Immersion's proprietary metrics capture the value that people get from collaborating with team members by passively applying algorithms to data from a smartwatch app. Immersion's measures are based on more than 20 years of published scientific research from Immersion's founder Dr. Paul J. Zak's lab, and accurately measure the quality of social connections minute by minute. These data allow Immersion's subscribers to pivot team organization to improve productivity and job satisfaction. Connected employees are a superorganism that drives organizational goals forward and they love doing it. Teams need goals, and reaching goals with those with whom one is connected makes reaching them a joy.

Joy at work, who who have thunk it? Immersion subscribers have shown can be done and is the foundation for sustained growth. The first step is accurate measurement. You can start measuring Immersion in 5 minutes--what do you have to lose? Nothing but the unhappiness and turnover you now see.