Human connection is crucial to your organisation and it’s not going to happen by chance, so what can you do about it?
Earlier articles in this series explored the importance of human connection in the workplace. Here, Adrian Furnham of the Norwegian Business School, Autumn Krauss of SAP SuccessFactors, and John Cooper of Thomas go on to consider what this means at an organisational scale. What steps can and, indeed, should organisations take in light of the evidence on the crucial role of human connection among those on whom their future depends?
For a very long time, academics, serious journalists, and investors have tried to pinpoint the characteristics of consistently high-performing organisations. They are interested in the (magic) key or formula which makes some businesses sustainably successful over time. They need to understand how, when, and why some organisations endure and thrive, while others experience boom and bust.
Over the years, a number of factors have been identified, only to fall out of favour when it is discovered they are less unique or important than others. But there is a “new kid on the block”. Well, not quite. In this instance, it has been around for decades, changing its label here and there. The difference is now there is both evidence and an explanation for how it works. And, of course, it is not wildly counterintuitive, as we have “sort of” known about it for some time. It is Human Connection (Cooper & Furnham, 2026).
In earlier articles, we set out the psychology of connection – why people need it, and why it sits upstream of engagement (Cooper & Furnham, 2026), and explored the Disconnection Dilemma, in which well-intentioned leaders try to build connection inside systems that increasingly undermine it (Cooper & Race, 2026). That article closed with a challenge: will organisations measure, build, and manage connection with the same rigour they apply to every other driver of performance? This final piece takes the organisational view and sets out what that rigour looks like.
Strategic capability
Being and feeling connected should no longer be viewed as a fortunate by-product of good leadership or culture, but as a strategic organisational capability that can be deliberately designed, measured, and managed. Connection, as we shall see, underpins commitment, engagement, and contribution. Our thesis is that human connection matters more – not less – in an AI-enabled world. And this increase in the importance of connectedness is happening at the same time as it’s being largely neglected, overlooked, and left to chance.
Work is being redesigned by default rather than deliberately. So, we suspect, is connection.
We know, of course, that AI is changing the world of work. As AI-enabled production and execution become cheaper, human value will migrate elsewhere. Future competitive advantage will require a portfolio of human contribution: creative thinkers, sceptics, quality guardians, risk spotters, and relationship builders. They need to be sourced, nurtured, and connected to each other. It will be a vitally important task for future organisational success.
Recent research by one of us (Krauss), along with colleagues at SAP’s Future of Work Research Lab, provides some insight into both how and how much work is indeed changing because of AI. Drawing on global data from 4,016 employees, they found that 88 per cent of employees say their job has changed in the past year because of AI, yet over half of those changes happened without meaningful guidance from a manager or the organisation (Park, 2026). Further, in another global sample of 2,718 employees, between 55 per cent and 70 per cent say they have had no clear guidance about how their work is expected to shift as a result of AI, and only 3 per cent feel fully prepared to embrace this new way of working (SAP SuccessFactors Future of Work Research Lab, 2026). Work, in short, is being redesigned by default rather than deliberately. So, we suspect, is connection.
What is connection?
In the first article in this series, we described connectedness as feeling emotionally close to, and meaningfully linked with, others. At the organisational level, connection reflects the quality of the relationships, trust, communication, and management conditions that shape how work gets done across teams. The central questions are how strongly people feel connected, and what causes and follows from that connection, or its absence.
Connection is increasingly linked to organisational performance, and to innovation, adaptability, resilience, customer experience, and retention.
The Center for Creative Leadership, in a recent report entitled “The Space Between People”, puts it this way:
“Underlying much of this complexity is a common and costly assumption: that connection happens naturally. In a more layered, more distributed, more culturally diverse, and more disrupted world of work, it doesn’t. The conditions that once allowed relational infrastructure to develop as a byproduct of proximity, shared culture, and organizational stability no longer exist in the same way. Organizations must create a replacement.” (p. 5)
AI-driven work redesign makes this more urgent still. The recent SAP research referenced above endorses six shifts that organisations should make to both capitalise on AI value and enrich work for employees; from specialist to generalist; from static jobs to dynamic roles; from hierarchical “pyramid” organisational design to a flatter “diamond” structure; from measuring and rewarding output to focusing on impact; from centralised to decentralised decision-making; and from people management to self-leadership. Each is sensible and, if done well, can increase employee and organisational outcomes. For instance, employees perceived 77 per cent more autonomy when decision-making was decentralised to move closer to the work. But stable jobs, fixed teams, layers of management, and the manager as the hub of the team were also, quite by accident, where much connection came from. Remove these design characteristics and the connective tissue goes, too. Employees seem to know this. For example, in the case of moving from people management to self-leadership, employees indicated that they desire this shift the most but they also expressed concerns that this future state could be more stressful. They want more ownership of their work but, in the researchers’ words, they “do not want to feel abandoned”. Redesign can also strengthen connection, if it is done deliberately. In a flatter “diamond” design, employees reported 32 per cent stronger connection to the people their work ultimately serves, such as customers, than in a traditional pyramid.
Connection Intelligence
Just as individuals differ in how well they build and sustain relationships, organisations differ in how deliberately they create the conditions for connection. We call this organisational capability Connection Intelligence (CXI): an organisation’s capability to understand, design, and strengthen the conditions for human connection across its leadership practices, structures, and technology. This does not just mean having more ways to communicate electronically. More communication does not lead to more connection, indeed often the opposite; nor does using more collaboration tools (Cooper & Race, 2026).
Over the past few years, psychologists at Thomas have been building the foundations of CXI as a discipline: a validated measure of organisational connection, an AI-powered index that applies it at scale, a model of how connection becomes performance, and evidence linking connection to long-term business outcomes.
CXI starts with measurement. Engagement surveys tell organisations how people feel; they rarely explain why. Measuring connection directly – how strong it is, along which dimensions, and where it is missing – lets organisations diagnose causes rather than track symptoms, and see whether their interventions work.
AI itself strengthens the case for measurement. When AI can produce drafts, code, and analysis at near-zero cost, output becomes abundant and increasingly hard to tell apart. C-suite executives in the SAP study ranked the shift from output to impact as the most important for their business, and 75 per cent agreed that organisations can only succeed in the AI era if they reinvent how they measure, reward, and grow people. Among the signals of genuine impact the research points to are collaboration patterns to detect when an employee is achieving multiplicative impact through its positive effect on others. Connection data are exactly this kind of high-quality human signal. Captured well, and with consent, those signals belong in the systems where workforce decisions are made, alongside data on skills, performance, and pay.
There are now psychometric measures that assess connection within the organisational context. One, the Organisational Connection Measure developed by Thomas psychologists (Cuppello et al., 2026), assesses the six dimensions first introduced in this series:
Appreciation defined as fair reward for the work completed; feeling as though efforts are acknowledged and appreciated and achievements celebrated. (Typical question: I feel valued for my work by my colleagues and peers.)
Cohesion defined as positive social relationships; individuals working together effectively towards the same goals; support for one another. (Typical question: I work in a friendly and inclusive atmosphere.)
Contribution defined as access to resources required to be effective in role; clear expectations and autonomy to manage work and time. (Typical question: I have access to the information I need to perform my job effectively.)
Belonging defined as satisfaction and fulfilment with job role and alignment to wider goals, values, and success. (Typical question: I am proud to be a member of my team.)
Trust defined as confidence in decision-making processes; feeling as though the work environment is a safe space for communication and that all voices matter. (Typical question: I can rely on the promises and commitments made by my superiors.)
Well-being defined as healthy work-life balance; ability to manage stress and pressure effectively without it having a negative impact on health or performance. (Typical question: My job promotes a sense of balance and wellbeing in my life.)
Because these dimensions are measured through individual responses, they can be combined to describe connection within a team, a department, or an organisation as a whole. People can feel strongly connected to their team and still feel disconnected from the wider organisation, so measuring at more than one level matters. The performance analysis below uses the organisational level.
The data suggest the following model. In it, connection drives engagement through building trust and a feeling of safety. It is “upstream” of engagement, which is measured by many organisations. Engagement relates to both “hard” and “soft”, behavioural and psychological, outcomes in an organisation. The relationship is not one-way. As the model shows, engagement in turn reinforces trust and safety, so connection can set off virtuous circles, and its absence vicious ones. But engagement is the consequence of the experience of feeling connected.
The C-model sets out the proposed pathway in four steps. Connection comes first: people who feel they belong, are appreciated, and can trust those around them. That builds commitment, shown as discretionary effort, a willingness to give more than the role requires. Commitment becomes contribution when people apply their capability to the work that matters. And contribution, added up across the organisation, shows as commercial impact – measurable value. Culture, engagement, and performance are best read as effects; connection is where the model locates the cause.
The Evidence: Connection as the Competitive Advantage in the Age of AI
Connection is consistently associated with organisational performance, and the evidence is growing.
Psychologists recently revealed some important data. Using the Thomas AI-powered Connection Index, they analysed over 25 million workforce and organisational datapoints across 170 FTSE 250 companies over a five-year period (2021–2025). They compared connection levels, aggregated to the organisational level, against key performance measures, including compound annual growth rate (CAGR) and total shareholder return (TSR), to examine whether connection is associated with long-term business outcomes. We refer to this relationship as the Connection Performance (CP) Effect.
There were essentially four important results:
Connection is associated with execution consistency: Organisational connection demonstrated a statistically significant positive relationship with long-term performance. All business people recognise that there are all sorts of short-term highs and lows, but it is the long-term effects that are important.
Measurable impact on growth: Connection explained over 5 per cent of variance in CAGR and over 3 per cent in TSR, reflecting a meaningful advantage in complex market systems.
Substantial growth gap: Companies in the top quartile of connection scores achieved average five-year growth of +4.9 per cent, compared to –3.9 per cent for those in the bottom quartile, representing an 8.8 percentage point difference.
Key drivers of connection: The strongest relationships with performance were found for three of the six dimensions of the Organisational Connection Measure: Belonging (most influential), Appreciation, and Trust.
Independent work points the same way. The Center for Creative Leadership’s analysis of relational infrastructure and SAP’s research on AI-driven work redesign both conclude that connection can no longer be left to chance.
Of course, we need to replicate these findings in different contexts and countries, particularly as workforce, work, and organisational dynamics change with AI adoption. It is not easy data to obtain and analyse but fundamental to our case. Three questions stand out: whether the relationship holds across countries and sectors; whether improvements in connection are followed by improvements in performance over time; and which interventions move connection most. We would welcome working on them with academic and organisational partners. Organisations that build Connection Intelligence – measuring connection and designing for it – are likely to be better placed over the long term. Maintaining and improving connection is a serious business advantage.
How do Organisations Deliberately Build and Sustain Connection at Scale?
Most of us have worked in poorly connected or disconnected organisations. Sometimes we do not even feel connected to other team members, let alone people in our department or the organisation as a whole. This can occur for various reasons: we work (technically) remotely; we are seldom included in team meetings; we never have non-work, or out-of-work, activities together; it is not valued or modelled by the top team. In the previous article we called this the Disconnection Dilemma: leaders trying to build connection inside systems that increasingly undermine it (Cooper & Race, 2026). The question here is what organisations can do about it.
Some organisations hope people will connect naturally. The military does not: its training is designed to build the mutual understanding and trust on which a unit’s effectiveness, and sometimes its survival, depends. Most organisations are not armies, but the principle carries over. Connection has to be designed in, and AI-driven work redesign, which removes many of the structures that used to create it by default, makes that more urgent. Four levers matter most: leadership routines, team design, organisational networks, and technology.
1. Leadership behaviours and routines. These need to occur at every level. Leaders need to be given education and training in the psychology of connectedness, such as how to form and maintain an integrated team. They need to know how to connect with people who are “not very much like them”; to share and to support; to place emphasis on interpersonal understanding; and to bring the organisation together. Employees agree. When asked what would help them adapt to AI-driven changes in their work and organisation, employees in the SAP research cited manager support (44 per cent), followed by training and the chance to work with other teams (27 per cent), and clear communication (20 per cent). Managers matter enormously here: Thomas research reported in the previous article found that manager availability, support, and ability to create connection within the team explain almost 60 per cent of the variation in employee connection (Cooper & Race, 2026). But mattering is not the same as being the hub. Another study by the Future of Work Research Lab, investigating the future of people management in the age of AI, suggests that organisations have an opportunity to recalibrate the relationship between employees and managers. Rather than expecting managers to be employees’ primary source of social and emotional connection, organisations can move toward a healthier, more productive dynamic in which managers cultivate trust, shape team culture, and create the conditions for connection among colleagues (Gibbard, 2026).
A “jolly away-day” will not do it. Connection does not happen by chance, particularly in big organisations with highly diverse work populations. Savvy managers know both the psychology of connectedness and its value.
2. Team design and practices: Teamwork does not occur by chance. There are team processes and procedures that foster (or prevent) connectedness. People need to understand what they are, how they work, and when they should be implemented.
People need to understand what they are, how they work, and when they should be implemented.
This is more than completing a questionnaire on team types. It is about understanding team dynamics. One organisation had a simple but effective strategy: on the last Friday of every month, the team had to leave the office but stay together till 1700. They could do anything they liked. They all reported how they took some time to understand each other’s preferences, but when they did, how much fun they had. Their relationships changed phenomenally: in short, they became fully connected. Morale and engagement improved significantly, turnover dropped, and revenues increased.
3. Organisational networks: Connectedness is about interpersonal networks, with nurturing connectedness at the heart of networking. People with bigger and better functional networks inside and outside the organisation tend to do better for themselves and their team. Understanding and exploiting social networks at work are increasingly important for employees’ success. This is demonstrated by the prominence of social network position as predictor of various work-related outcomes, including job acquisition, leader effectiveness, job attitudes, and performance. Organisational social networks are potentially a source of considerable advantage: employees benefit from occupying advantageous network positions, providing access to valuable information and knowledge, career sponsorship, and social support. Organisational network analysis (ONA), introduced in the first article in this series, makes this informal structure visible. Used alongside survey-based measures, it supports a practical cycle. Diagnose: map where connections are dense, thin or bottlenecked, and who the key connectors are. Design: aim interventions at the gaps, for example cross-team projects, bringing new joiners into networks, or protecting connectors who are overloaded. Evaluate: map again over time to see whether the network, and connection scores, have changed. Network data should be gathered transparently and with consent, or it risks damaging the trust it is meant to measure.
4. Technology as an enabler. As we argued in the previous article in this series, one should not infer that we are psychologically well connected because we are all so well electronically connected. The trick is understanding how and which technology facilitates vs suppresses connectedness. This may differ as a function of personality and task, but it is essential for preserving and promoting connectedness. As an example, people are increasingly willing to turn to AI for support, advice, and even a kind of companionship. In SAP research examining the role of AI agents in the future of work, one in three employees expressed a preference to work with an AI agent over a human colleague (with performance assumed to be equal). Further, in that same study, 30 per cent of employees would prefer having an AI agent listen when they’re stressed or frustrated instead of turning to a human colleague (SAP SuccessFactors Future of Work Research Lab, 2025). The Future of Work Research Lab’s point of view on these findings is that they likely offer more insight into the current unfortunate state of human connection at work than AI’s capabilities. In this instance, SAP favours a future in which AI is treated as a fit-for-purpose “toolmate” with clear boundaries rather than an anthropomorphised teammate, so that working with AI does not crowd out the opportunity for and necessity of human connection at work. AI can also be put to work for connection rather than against it. Used well, it can help colleagues understand one another’s working styles and preferences far faster than hybrid work otherwise allows, recreating some of the “getting to know you” that once happened by default, and it can alert leaders early to teams where connection is weakening. This is where the pioneers of Connection Intelligence are now focusing.
Rewiring the Organisation
Most organisations are now redesigning work for AI: rethinking roles, workflows, decision rights, and structures. That is rare. For once, it is not business as usual, and the organisation’s formal architecture is open to change.
The risk is that this redesign is done for the technology alone. As the research above suggests, the structures being removed – stable jobs, fixed teams, management layers, the manager as the team’s hub – were also where much connection quietly came from. Redesign the formal wiring without redesigning the social wiring, and organisations may gain digital capacity while losing the human capacity that turns it into value.
The alternative is to treat the organisation as a social system as well as a technical one, and to design for connection deliberately while the structures are open. That means measuring connection alongside productivity, building routines that let managers create connection between colleagues rather than carry it themselves, using network data to see where redesign has cut important ties, and setting clear boundaries so that AI is a toolmate rather than a substitute for colleagues. It also means boards and investors treating connection as a leading indicator, reported alongside the lagging measures of engagement, turnover, and financial results.
If the call to action is to treat connection as a strategic lever for organisational transformation and performance, then who should own this mandate? The SAP research sketches four possible futures for the people function in an AI-native enterprise. One, the “human and cultural steward”, puts sustaining trust, cohesion, and human performance through continuous disruption at the centre of HR’s role, with culture built inherently into organisational, leadership, and work design rather than delivered through perks and standalone engagement initiatives. In this context, connection is arguably a key component of the people agenda, and the broader business’s strategic imperatives, in the future of work.
Across this series, we have argued that connection is a basic human need (Cooper & Furnham, 2026); that modern organisations, often without meaning to, are eroding it (Cooper & Race, 2026); and, here, that it can be measured, built, and managed as an organisational capability. In an AI-enabled world, where output is abundant and easy to copy, the quality of connection between people may be one of the few advantages that is hard to replicate.
Professor Adrian Furnhambelieves he is a well-connected organisational psychologist currently at the Norwegian Business School.
Dr. Autumn Kraussis Chief Scientist at SAP SuccessFactors, where she leads the Future of Work Research Lab. The Lab is a team of organisational scientists and applied psychologists who study emerging workforce and organisational dynamics, with a particular focus on how AI is reshaping work, HR, and HR technology. Under her leadership, the Lab conducts original global research and produces evidence-based insights that inform SAP SuccessFactors’ product strategy and provide market and customer thought leadership on the future of work.
John Cooper is Chair of the Thomas Science Advisory Board and Chief Connection Officer at Thomas, a multi-award-winning business which is pioneering AI to enable better human connection. He’s focused on advancing the understanding and application of connection as a driver of organisational performance and health.
References
1. Center for Creative Leadership (2026). “The Space Between People”.
2. Cooper, J., & Furnham, A. (2026). “The Psychology of Connection and Connectedness”. The European Business Review, May–June, 8–11.
3. Cooper, J., & Race, M-C. (2026). “The Disconnection Dilemma: Why Leaders and Managers Struggle to Build Connection in Modern Workplaces”. The European Business Review, September-October, 76–82.
4. Cuppello, S. , Tatlow, M. , Semmelink, D.S. , Kalar, J. , Mhlanga, N. , du Plessis, E. and Victor, J. (2026) “Measuring Connection at Work: Development and Validation of the Organisational Connection Measure”. Psychology, 17, 452-76.
8. SAP SuccessFactors Future of Work Research Lab (2026). “The future of work we should build: Predictions for how AI will change jobs, organizations, and HR”. SAP.
9. Thomas International (2026). “The Connection Performance effect: Making the human drivers of long-term performance visible”. In Where AI and People Intersect. https://connection-human-value.thomas.co/
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Professor Adrian Furnham believes he is a well-connected organisational psychologist currently at the Norwegian Business School.
