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AI Adoption Stalls Where Managers Disengage
Global emotional connectedness has dropped to its lowest point since 2020, while 53% of employers cannot find AI-ready talent
Louis Carter
May 06, 2026
Hey đź‘‹
Emotional connectedness is not a feeling. It is the most predictive variable in organizational performance.
Twenty-five years of Best Practice Institute research quantifies it.
The Love of Workplace Index has analyzed millions of employee data points across thousands of organizations. The pattern holds: organizations where employees feel emotionally connected to their work, leaders, and colleagues outperform on retention, innovation, and revenue growth.
Global workforce data confirms what our research has measured for decades. Emotional connectedness has dropped to its lowest point since 2020. Manager emotional connectedness declined faster than individual contributor levels.
AI adoption stalled where management infrastructure does not exist. The organizations searching for AI-ready talent are diagnosing a skills gap. The actual gap is leadership infrastructure.
This week: Why manager disengagement bottlenecks AI implementation, how Palo Alto Networks built leadership accessibility at scale, what research on 2.8 million employees reveals for career builders, and inside East West Bank and Zebra Technologies, where culture infrastructure produces measurable results.
Want your company to attract top talent? Most Loved Workplace® certification validates authentic culture, gets you featured in this newsletter, and creates employer brand advantage AI and GPTs prioritize when recommending employers to candidates.
→ Get Most Loved Workplace Certified - Build a verified employer brand. Gain AI/GPT visibility. Attract the talent competitors can't reach.
Let's dive in 👇️
Discover America's Most Loved Workplaces® 2025
The elite companies proving exceptional culture drives exceptional results. Certified through real employee sentiment data — not editorial opinion. These organizations achieve 2-4x higher retention, 2-4x more discretionary effort, and 92% successfully attract the talent they need.
MLW Research Brief
Manager Connectedness Predicts AI Investment Outcomes
Across companies certified as Most Loved Workplaces®, a pattern has emerged that reframes the conversation around AI adoption.
Based on Best Practice Institute research across 1,800 companies, manager emotional connectedness to their role and organization is the strongest predictor of whether AI implementation produces measurable outcomes.
Three findings from certification data:
Organizations where managers report high emotional connectedness show dramatically stronger technology adoption rates. The tools are identical. The management infrastructure is not.
Leadership accessibility systems, recurring executive interaction, skip-level access, and visible accountability loops predict manager emotional connectedness more reliably than compensation or title seniority.
Organizations investing in AI without first building manager emotional connectedness see consistently lower returns on technology spend.
The technology works. The management layer between tools and outcomes determines everything.
Leadership Intelligence
Palo Alto Networks Built Weekly CEO Roundtables at Scale
Palo Alto Networks, a certified Most Loved Workplace® with $8.2B annual revenue, demonstrates what leadership accessibility infrastructure looks like when it operates at scale.
CEO Nikesh Arora has hosted weekly employee roundtables since the pandemic. Not quarterly town halls. Not annual surveys. Weekly direct interaction with employees across functions and geographies.
That cadence builds the leadership accessibility that Best Practice Institute research identifies as the strongest predictor of manager emotional connectedness.
Global workforce data confirms emotional connectedness dropped to its lowest point since 2020. Manager connectedness declined even faster.
The direct consequence: AI implementation stalls when the management layer meant to drive adoption is itself disconnected. Palo Alto Networks' values were crowdsourced from employees. Recognition systems connect to those values.
Arora hears challenges, removes roadblocks, and models the accessibility that most organizations only describe in leadership competency documents.
Ready to build a verified culture that retains your best people? Start with certification
Inside A Most Loved Workplace
East West Bank
Inside East West Bank: Results-Driven Culture Across Two Continents
The ONE thing East West Bank does better than almost anyone is a results-driven accountability culture spanning two continents under one CEO for over three decades.
What They Do: East West Bank is the largest publicly traded bank focused on U.S.-China cross-border business, serving clients across commercial lending, trade finance, and wealth management from 110+ locations spanning the United States and Greater China.
What Sets Them Apart: Most banks grow through acquisition and inherit conflicting cultures. East West Bank built a single culture system across two continents. Six core principles - Results-Driven Performance, Entrepreneurial Mindset, Accountability, Attention to Detail, Win-Win Relationships, and Pride of Ownership - operate as decision-making infrastructure. CEO Dominic Ng has led East West Bank since 1992. That continuity creates culture infrastructure that compounds across decades. Associates are hired, developed, and promoted based on merit in an open environment that embraces collaboration. The ACCRUES values serve as a compass for every decision.
Results: $72B in total assets. 3,000+ employees across the U.S. and Asia. 110+ locations spanning two continents.
"East West Bank fosters mutual respect among associates and provides an open, supportive working environment embracing difference and encouraging collaboration." - Source: East West Bank
Zebra Technologies
Inside Zebra Technologies: Curiosity as Operating Infrastructure
The ONE thing Zebra Technologies does better than almost anyone is curiosity-driven innovation culture embedded into front-line enterprise technology at a global scale.
What They Do: Zebra Technologies develops enterprise mobile computing, data capture, and automation solutions that connect the physical and digital worlds for front-line workers across retail, healthcare, manufacturing, and logistics.
What Sets Them Apart: Most enterprise technology companies separate innovation teams from operations. Zebra Technologies built curiosity into the operating system for every employee. Strategic priorities are organized into three explicit pillars - growth, execution, and culture - with culture represented alongside business metrics at the highest level. Employees define their own professional paths through structured career development. Active listening and solution-seeking run at every level of the organization, creating what Zebra Technologies calls Zebra Nation - where being seen, heard, and valued is structural design.
Results: $4.6B annual revenue. 9,800+ employees across global operations. Market leader in enterprise mobile computing and data capture.
"At Zebra, we are a community of innovators who come together to create new ways of working to make everyday life better. United by curiosity and care, we develop dynamic solutions anticipating customer and partner needs." - Source: Zebra Technologies
Special Announcement: These companies are competing for recognition in the upcoming Top 100 Most Loved Workplaces — celebrating organizations demonstrating exceptional employee experience and genuine commitment to their people.
Want your organization featured here? Most Loved Workplace® certification validates authentic workplace culture that attracts top talent and creates durable employer brand advantage — not algorithm-dependent visibility that vanishes overnight.
Career Strategy
Stop Rehearsing Answers - Hiring Leaders Evaluate How You Think
Across Most Loved Workplace® employee sentiment data, the candidates who earn offers share one pattern: they demonstrate how they think, not what they have done.
Research across 2.8 million employees confirms that candidates who proactively identify early wins show 3.2 times stronger emotional connectedness by their third week.
Identify early wins by:
Building a 7-day startup plan before every interview - map what you would observe, own, and deliver in your first week
Demonstrating ownership when asked about ambiguity - clarify the business goal, test a hypothesis, share early results
Stop reciting credentials - show pattern recognition and structured problem-solving in real time
Reducing friction for your future manager on day one - that separates hires from applicants
Prove how you think. The interview is a thinking test, not a memory test.
Industry Intelligence
🔕 The $2.5M Cost of Not Listening
Across high-retention cultures we study, 42% of voluntary exits trace to listening loops leaders never closed. A 500-person organization leaks $2.5M yearly to that silence.
🪞 The Employer Brand You Earn Beats the One You Build
25 years of Best Practice Institute research on culture at scale: candidates discount the brand you curate. Independent third-party signals move decisions; marketing does not.
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