Employee engagement just hit a five-year low. The Front Porch Test reveals what's missing: people don't need better systems, they need to be seen.
Here's a question I want you to sit with for a second.
If your employee went home tonight, and a neighbor asked them, "Hey, is it good over there?", would the answer come out easy? Honest? Or would there be a pause first?
That question comes from an Inc. article on Mitel's CEO, Matthew Robinson. And here's the part that got me, he didn't pull it from a leadership textbook or some consulting deck.
He pulled it from Matthew McConaughey's memoir, Greenlights.
McConaughey writes about growing up with a front porch.
The kind where neighbors actually stopped, actually talked, actually knew each other.
Robinson took that image and asked a harder question: what happened to the front porch at work?
Because most of us don't have one anymore.
We've got Slack. We've got email. We've got a hundred ways to be "reachable" and somehow fewer ways to actually be known.
Robinson calls it the Front Porch Test. And it's a good one.
His point is simple. We've spent years building culture decks, engagement surveys, mission statements on the wall.
Meanwhile, employee engagement just hit a five-year low. Something isn't adding up.
His answer: people don't experience culture through your values statement.
They experience it through the everyday stuff. How fast someone answers when they're stuck.
Whether a concern actually gets heard. Whether reaching a real person takes five minutes or five app switches.
He splits it into two kinds of workplaces.
Front-porch cultures, where people feel connected, even in passing. And back-porch cultures, where everyone's technically online, technically reachable, and somehow still alone.
I read that and thought, yes. Exactly that.
And then I thought about the piece underneath it.
Here's what I'd add.
We're not just craving good communication. We're craving to be seen.
Think about it in plain terms.
You can fix every broken tool, remove every unnecessary app, streamline every process, and still walk past someone in the hallway without really looking at them.
The systems can be perfect and the person can still feel like a ghost in their own workplace.
That's because underneath all of it, we're still just people.
Grown, working, paycheck-earning people who still want the same basic thing we wanted as kids on a real front porch: to be seen.
To be valued. To be heard. To belong somewhere.
Nobody outgrows that. We just get better at hiding that we still need it.
A leader can say all the right things in a town hall. The values can be printed and framed.
The mission statement can be beautiful. None of that is what makes someone stay.
What makes someone stay is smaller than that. It's a manager who remembers what they said last week.
A coworker who checks in without being asked. A five-minute conversation instead of a chain of cold messages when something's actually wrong.
Robinson's research backs this up too, nearly 8 in 10 people reach for an actual voice conversation the moment something urgent happens.
Not because voice is fancier. Because it's human. You can hear tone. You can hear that someone cares. A message thread can't do that.
So here's where I land.
The Front Porch Test is a good test. But I'd go one layer deeper.
It's not just "does this feel like a front porch." It's "does this person feel like someone actually looked up when they walked by."
Systems, structures, values, and purpose, those are what attract someone to your door.
Attention is what keeps them there.
Relationships are what keep them on the porch.
Inc.: Feature on Mitel CEO Matthew Robinson and the Front Porch Test
Matthew McConaughey: Greenlights (memoir)
What is the Front Porch Test at work?
The Front Porch Test, coined by Mitel CEO Matthew Robinson, asks whether an employee could honestly tell a neighbor their workplace is a good place, without hesitation. It's a plain-language measure of whether people feel seen and connected at work, not just technically reachable through Slack and email.
What is the difference between inclusion and belonging at work?
Inclusion is being invited into the room. Belonging is being seen once you're in it. Inclusion is structural, tied to policies and programs. Belonging is relational, tied to whether coworkers and managers actually notice you, remember what you said, and check in without being asked. Diverse employees often leave organizations with strong inclusion programs because belonging is missing.
Why is employee engagement at a five-year low?
Employee engagement is at a five-year low because organizations have invested heavily in tools, decks, and mission statements, but not in the everyday human moments that actually create belonging. People feel technically reachable and emotionally invisible. Engagement scores drop when workers stop believing anyone would notice if they walked past.
How do you know if your workplace has a belonging problem?
Signs of a belonging problem include employees who go quiet in meetings, a shift from "we" to "they" when people describe the company, urgent issues that live in Slack threads instead of five-minute conversations, and managers who can't recall what a direct report said last week. These are leading indicators that show up long before an engagement survey does.
What actually keeps employees on your team?
Values statements and mission decks attract people to the door. Systems and structures keep them functional. But what keeps them staying is smaller: a manager who remembers what they said, a coworker who checks in without being asked, a real conversation when something is wrong. Attention keeps people in the room. Relationships keep them on the porch.
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