THE MEANING OF THORNS:

According to the 2018 World Value Index (created by enso, where I work) , nationally representative research we conduct each year, only 14% of Americans strongly agree that the values of their employer match their own. Another 28% say they somewhat agree, meaning a majority of Americans are spending the majority of their productive lives in environments they don't fully believe in. There's not a huge variation between different types of people: higher income people, men, and younger people recorded a little higher than others, but none of the 20 population segments we looked at exceeded 25% strong agreement with their employer's values. This finding lines up with other research that suggests a chronic disconnect between people and their employers: Gallup found 85% of workers globally are not engaged in their work.

Some people find this unsurprising. "Working for a paycheck" is deeply ingrained in culture and the reality of many job-but it should shock us. It's not a stretch to imagine that people operating in an environment that does not reflect their values are not bringing the best of themselves-or anything like it-to work.

With an industrial revolution mindset, perhaps this doesn't matter: in the pin factory, labor was a commodity, and fostering employees' enthusiastic belief in the company was less important than establishing good production processes that made people effective at functional tasks. 

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