Put connection on your to-do list (at work)

We spend too much time at work to not have great relationships with our colleagues.

It’s true. We spend more waking hours at work than we do almost anywhere else. For individual contributors, a majority of those hours are spent completing tasks or projects. Even when projects aren’t collaborative, interactions with coworkers are going to be sprinkled in throughout the day – conversations in hallways, quick Slack DMs, heartfelt discussions over coffee or tea.

With so much time spent with colleagues, those relationships are bound to impact people’s lives.

When employees are asked what’s going well or what they love about their company, the answer is often “the people.” Our peers deeply shape our experience at work – it’s that simple.

But does time really deepen connection?

One of the assumptions we had going into researching connection at work was that time is an instrument of that connection. In other words, the longer you know someone or work with someone, the more connected you’d probably feel to them. And perhaps, building on that, the longer the relationships have been in place, the more psychologically safe you would feel, right? Wouldn’t it be easier to take a risk amongst people you’ve worked with for years?

It stands to reason that comfort and safety would deepen with familiarity and tenure, but surprisingly, our research revealed the opposite: Psychological safety declines the longer employees stay at a company.

I’m shook. I’m shook and troubled by this insight, especially given how strong the relationship is between psychological safety and sustainable high performance. This insight suggests something important is being overlooked in how we cultivate relationships at work.

Where are companies missing the mark?

As we started exploring possible explanations for this counterintuitive insight, several possibilities came to mind. There’s learned helplessness (a psychological concept and state originally theorized by positive psychologist Martin Seligman), which is a state of mind that people can fall into after repeated failed attempts to enact some kind of change. In the context of a workplace, maybe they try over and over to innovate a product or process, only to have their ideas tabled. Over time, their willingness to put forward an idea wanes.

Or perhaps, we thought, the psychological safety decline over time and tenure had to do with the relational part of psychological safety? Perhaps open conversation, the aspect of psychological safety that has to do with a collective perception that it is safe to share one’s thoughts, ideas, concerns, and mistakes with others, has something to do with it? We looked into that next.

Connecting often doesn’t necessarily translate to high-quality relationships at work.

During the pandemic, most people worked from home. We were suddenly seeing only the top half of people on video calls, while figuring out how to co-work with partners, kids, and pets in the house. Coworkers were farther apart from each other physically, but had a virtual window into each other's homes.

As we all navigated a 'new' remote world, we faced a fresh set of barriers to connection. People adapted in varying ways. Some quickly embraced things like virtual bingo and online lunch hangs. Others put their heads down and managed to get the work done, but spent any extra minute corralling kids or doing chores. It was a weird time for connection at work.

In 2020, two in five employees were unsatisfied with how much quality time they were spending with coworkers. That, of course, left 61% of employees who said they were satisfied.

Over the last few years, as the way we work together has somewhat settled (be it in hybrid, in-office, and/or remote workplaces), employee perception of how often they get to spend time together has improved.

Now, 71% of employees report feeling satisfied with how often they’re spending quality time with colleagues. So it seems that the frequency is enough for most people. However, though it is a high figure, employee favorability when it comes to the quality of team-based relationships is trending down.

It’s great that nine of every ten employees feel good about their relationship with their team. We are happy about that. But a 1% point drop year over year since 2020 is less than ideal, even with the high figure.

It is odd that satisfaction with frequency of connection (how often) is going up at the same time that quality of connection is going down. But it also could explain why we see the drop in psychological safety as tenure increases.

High quantity doesn’t automatically mean high quality. For psychological safety, perhaps the same rule applies. Spending more time around people doesn’t mean you’ll feel a deeper connection. Frequent team meetings over time doesn’t automatically fuel open conversation.

Passive connection ain't it.

It’s not enough to put people together and hope they’ll develop connections. We have to proactively nurture the conditions that keep people curious, included, and willing to share.

When we dug deeper into the data, we uncovered another concerning trend: Since 2020, employees have increasingly felt the need to hide parts of themselves at work.

These might look like subtle changes, but the data spans millions of employees across the globe. More than one in four employees today don’t feel like they can express their true feelings at work. Are businesses made better by employees who hold back or those who share their ideas? [That was rhetorical – of course it is the latter].

Connection is linked to performance.

In this study, we didn’t overlook the business case; that is always important. When we looked at the odds ratios by survey item and performance rating, we found that several connection-related items altered the likelihood of high performance ratings for employees. The data clearly shows that meaningful connections directly correlate to performance outcomes:

So, feeling connected to a manager, teams, and coworkers is important for business and the bottom line. And that wasn’t even the most direct link we found.

It turns out that belonging isn’t the fuzzy survey item people often think it is.

When we looked at employee experience data of companies listed on the Inc. 5000 (and thus high-revenue growth), we found 12 items with a significant relationship to revenue growth during year 2 of 3-year-growth.

Belonging, a byproduct of connection, was one of those items. Belonging has a strong relationship with 3-year revenue growth.

How people feel at work matters. What they feel comfortable saying and doing matters even more.

Where do we go from here?

If feeling valued, connected, and psychologically safe are hidden engines of high performance, and belonging shows such a strong relationship to revenue growth, how can leaders shape their work cultures to enable them?

It begins by creating spaces where authentic connections can flourish. Employee connection requires intentional action, thoughtful conversations, vulnerability, and genuine human-to-human interaction. These things can be fostered remotely, but they have to be nurtured and facilitated.

Leaders don’t have to be relationship experts, but they do need the courage to model openness and create safe spaces for dialogue. Facilitating conversations that encourage vulnerability and authentic sharing starts with leaders modeling those behaviors, themselves.

Here’s the hopeful takeaway:

Investing in authentic human connections at work makes people feel more seen and valued, directly influencing high performance. While optimizing processes and systems will undoubtedly improve performance as well, creating environments where genuine relationships can thrive is a critical lever that’s often overlooked.

Prioritizing the relationships we build, nurture, and protect every day can significantly amplify the impact of other organizational efforts.

Plus… bringing it back to the personal lens. Connecting with others feels good. We’re wired for connection, and the hours we spend at work can be made truly meaningful by intentionally deepening our connections with each other.

Transform relationships at work

Esther Perel joined Culture Amp as an external advisor in February 2024, and together we launched “Where should we begin? At work,” a revolutionary card game to transform workplace relationships

Learn more

Tangible actions leaders and managers can take today

Facilitating more connection at work is less about distributing platitudes about “one-ness,” and more about creating spaces, literal and metaphorical, where people can show up fully, feel valued, and build mutual trust.

1. Start with modeling truth-telling: Leaders can acknowledge that no one is perfect at this. Share your own stories. Vulnerability from those in authority cracks the ice and gives others permission to be authentic.
2. Design for small moments: Connection doesn’t happen only in high-priced offsites. It happens in 5-minute check-ins, quick hallway chats, or a “what’s on your mind” question at the start of a meeting. Even if you think you’re “too busy” for those moments, find time for them.
3. Create shared rituals: A weekly team retrospective could be enough. Try “appreciation rounds,” where each person names one thing a colleague did that week that helped them. Or rotate “micro-presentations” about hobbies, letting people reveal facets of themselves outside work.
4. Encourage cross-pollination: When people stay siloed, they stop relating. Introduce cross-functional pairings, letting the engineer meet the salesperson without an agenda beyond “get to know each other.” Different perspectives build empathy.
5. Measure what matters: If you only track productivity, you may not notice when cracks form in interpersonal bonds. Include questions in your engagement surveys about feeling valued and respected.

A tool to spark authentic conversations

We know that creating moments of connection from scratch can be challenging. That’s why, at Culture Amp, we partnered with Esther Perel to develop a conversation and relational tool – a deck of cards designed to help teams break through interpersonal inertia.

Each card poses a simple prompt that goes beyond simple icebreakers. They’re invitations to connect.

Teams can use them in many ways:

• 1-on-1s: Replace the typical “How was your weekend?” with a prompt that fosters deeper discovery.
• Team check-ins: Start with a card question to move beyond project updates and into personal connection.
• Cross-functional meetups: Use the Where Should We Begin? At Work card game to help people who’ve never worked together find common ground.

The goal is to give teams a concrete mechanism to lean into authenticity and get to know each other on a deeper level. When we create time to see each other as people, relationships form naturally.