Commonality, Equality, and Cohesion: the research behind the philosophy

From my vantage point as a CEO, I’ve seen countless strategies rise and fall in popularity as business leaders aim for thriving workplaces. But what really works? What effectively improves employee engagement and sense of belonging?

Insperity has a values-based, culture-driven, people-centric approach called Commonality, Equality, and Cohesion (CEC). My goal for every Insperity employee is to feel connected and appreciated as a natural outcome of their workplace interactions. I was curious to see if the data would prove our approach to be an effective strategy for enhancing employee engagement, so I set out to research our approach and evaluate its effectiveness.

To begin, I connected with my friend and business partner Dr. Eli Jones. Eli is a professor, scholar, and the former Dean of Mays Business School at his alma mater, Texas A&M University. He is also a member of Insperity’s Board of Directors. With his mission to bridge academia and business, I knew partnering with Eli to do this research made sense.

“This was an opportunity for me to work with a company that I care deeply about…(Insperity is) an HR company. We have to get this right. Because if we could get this right, really figure this out, then there will be others that will follow if we’re a leader here,” Eli said.

Eli and I realized that every business wants people who can identify with the values of an organization. Does our philosophy, CEC, move the needle in this space?

We began by identifying four separate outcomes of particular interest to business owners and leaders – team creativity, collaborative culture, alignment of values and individual discretionary effort – and we measured the effectiveness of both CEC and DEI programs from this standpoint.

First, we conducted focus groups of working professionals, ranging in age from 22 to 65, to gain qualitative data. This group represented different business sectors including energy, healthcare, entrepreneurship, technology, and financial services.

Then, we conducted a customized survey of Insperity employees to gain quantitative data. With a total sample size of 1,999 participants, we knew we had a strong enough representation to reach conclusions. We asked questions that allowed us to measure each of the four business outcomes stated above.

After a rigorous statistical and peer-reviewed analysis, we were able to take our data and look at the relationships between CEC, DEI and a sense of belonging.

The results pointed us to these key findings:

CEC drives a sense of belonging:

  • Statistically, CEC drives a strong sense of belonging and positively impacts all four identified business outcomes.
  • There is a significant relationship between DEI and a sense of belonging. This connection is dramatically enhanced when you add CEC.

CEC and DEI are two sides of the same coin:

  •  These concepts do not exist in a vacuum. They are two sides of the same coin – they relate to each other and influence outcomes together.
  • When you weave values-based DEI and CEC into the fabric of a company at every stage of the employee lifecycle, your culture will benefit from increased energy, speed of execution, and improved financial results.

The research validated our original premise that the ideas of CEC are strong drivers of team creativity, collaborative culture, alignment of values and individual discretionary effort. This work is central to Insperity’s mission of helping businesses succeed so communities prosper.

However, I also believe the framework of our values-based, culture-driven, people-centric CEC philosophy is a great place to start for all workplaces. It’s proven to make an impact on a business’ bottom line and employees’ sense of belonging – and Insperity is just the start.

Learn more about this philosophy in my new book, which I co-authored with Eli: Making Differences Work – A New Values Based, Culture Driven, People Centric Approach to Achieving Commonality, Equality, Cohesion, and Business Performance.

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