In this episode, Bob Fox talks with Dr. Yasmeen Coning, founder of Ember, about why engagement, the metric most companies lean on, may be too sentiment-driven to actually predict revenue, retention, or performance.
The real driver, she argues, is something deeper: collective organizational identification, or how strongly people connect their work to their own self-concept.
Yasmeen breaks down the science behind identification, how it differs from engagement, and how Ember’s Workplace Identification Score (WIS) is helping leaders design offices, operating models, and hybrid work patterns around actual human behavior instead of guesswork. As Yasmeen puts it: “Workforce is the new workplace.”
In this episode:
- Why employee happiness and engagement don’t reliably translate into better business outcomes
- How collective organizational identification connects work to self-concept
- Engagement as sentiment vs. identification as a stable behavioral signal
- How strategy, culture, and identification work together as a stack
- Ember’s six core factors: core identity, connected leadership, collective drive, aligned, ambition, future affinity, market gravity
- The Workplace Identification Score (WIS) and how it informs workplace design
- How workplace data shapes collaboration areas, innovation spaces, and office consolidation
- Why identity-based measurement can support diversity by recognizing the whole person
- The first question every headquarters planning team should ask
Credits:
- Created & Directed By Bob Fox
- Produced By Work Design Studios
