According to Gary Baker, to be a market leader and a company with a bright future, you need an organisational overarching purpose.

Deloitte’s Core Beliefs and Culture Survey and HBR’s The Business Case for Purpose Report are just two of the many research studies noting the benefits for a higher purpose-driven company:

  • Increases employee engagement, providing a sense of meaning and fulfillment
  • Positively impacts on performance and better financial outcomes
  • Increases innovation and transformational change and helps employees to persevere through challenging situations
  • Helps companies with their strategy and streamlined decision-making to support new business development efforts
  • Helps an organisation contribute to societal wellbeing and a more sustainable world
  • Help brand recognition, drive positive brand changes and increases customer loyalty
  • Helps attract and retain purpose-oriented employees
  • Increases willingness of teams to collaborate across functional and product boundaries
  • Provides a fresh outlook for performance evaluations and employee recognition programs

These results happen because organisations do better when everyone is rowing in the same direction. It also is why the predominant characteristics of an organisation with higher purpose are: focus, clarity, motivation and fulfillment. 

Research confirms that employees are drawn to companies with a defined purpose— and that sense of shared purpose also helps drive better business performance and results. A further Deloitte study found that purpose-driven companies are more confident for the future.



 “The survey results strongly suggest that focusing on purpose, rather than profits, builds business confidence,” says Punit Renjen, chairman of Deloitte LLP. “This finding underscores the significant impact a culture of purpose can play in fostering a thriving business. Profits can be mercurial, but purpose is not.”

shared purpose leads to sustainable organisation performance


Purpose brings profit.

According to Elizabeth Davis, Founding Partner, Carol Cone ON PURPOSE, purpose, an organization’s aspirational reason for being beyond profits, is creating an impact on hiring, retaining talent and an organization’s bottom line.

Companies that embrace shared purpose in their hiring, retention and organizational strategies will be the winners and future leaders of tomorrow.

Connecting employees with purpose brings measurable business impact.

Research from the E.Y. Beacon Institute and Harvard Business School shows that companies that lead with purpose are more likely to be profitable.

Imperative’s research findings reveal that the correlation of satisfaction at work and purpose orientation was consistent in virtually every country and industry studied.


Increasing awareness that companies need to operate for a higher purpose stretches beyond making money and boosting shareholder value.

According to Matt Zimmer, CEO of Flash Global, management must make passion a clear priority for the organization. A company with happy, engaged employees is more than a great place to work.

HBR and Gallup research reveal that it’s also more profitable and successful: positive work cultures are more productive, and “hidden costs” of low workforce engagement include reduced productivity, higher absenteeism, more employee errors, increased healthcare costs, staff turnover, and lower stock prices.

Company financial results are demonstrating a strong sense of shared purpose is a valuable asset that when is nurtured by leadership enhances the value of a company.

In their book, “Corporate Culture and Performance”, John Kotter and James Heskett found that purpose-driven businesses with shared-values-based cultures enjoy 400% higher revenues, 700% greater job growth, 1,200% higher stock prices, and significantly faster profit performance, as compared to companies in similar industries that were focused on profit alone.



And has also been confirmed by the connection between employee trust and financial-performance.

The shared sense of purpose enables distributed leadership, which has been shown to increase team performance.

According to Gary Baker, shared purpose is the overarching reason for why a company does what it does. The inspirational driver that defines and drives all organizational activities — innovation, creativity, policy, structure, culture, communication, processes, as well as performance, growth and change.

A strong sense of shared purpose, authentic and aligned with a company’s business strategy, mission, vision, and values, enables collaborative engagement with a business’s stakeholders: employees, customers, communities, vendors and regulatory agencies.

It’s that collaborative engagement that ultimately impacts a company’s bottom line and increases job satisfaction