How We Work Podcast

Preparing for Jobs That Don't Exist Yet

“The three things that employees want most are purpose, meaning, and gratitude.”

—Tim Mosley, Making Work Human

During the pandemic, I really enjoyed listening to Brene Brown as she started her foray into podcasting. She recorded this episode with Tim Mosley, the CEO of Workhuman. I was struck by his emotional intelligence and how he well he understood that in a work environment: “The three things that employees want most are purpose, meaning, and gratitude.”

In the podcast, he goes on to explain how his tech platform has really reinforced his understanding of positive work cultures. He explains:

We’ve been able to link the amount of gratitude that somebody receives in a year with a propensity to leave the company. So we know that even in high-tech Silicon Valley technology companies, all the way to oil and gas services industrial companies, once you get over five moments of thank-you moments in a year, your propensity to leave halves basically. It goes from 15% all the way down to 7%. And if you can get them up to 12 moments of thank you, thank-you moments in a year, it goes all the way down to 2%. So you’re basically keeping all of those people. And the ones that receive no thank-yous, which might not be anything to do with their work, it could be to do with the culture in that office, or the manager in that office, their propensity to leave is over 15%.

Again, if you missed this episode, I’d highly recommend it. I was blown away by these insights — how a small thank-you moment could drastically change the trajectory of someone’s career within a company.

Because I knew of this company from this particular episode, I was all the more thrilled to be asked to speak at the Workhuman conference. In addition to a keynote, workshop, and book signing, I was also invited onto their podcast called “How We Work.” Here’s the episode in full in case you’d like to listen in: