The Employees Who Hold Everything Together
Discover the vital role of The Employees Who Hold Everything Together. Learn how these unsung heroes boost team success and cohesion.
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MARCH 2026
TABLE OF CONTENTS
TABLE OF CONTENTS
TABLE OF CONTENTS
TABLE OF CONTENTS
TABLE OF CONTENTS
REGISTER NOW!
- This course is offered for free to all Vida HR Clients -
If a key employee left tomorrow, what would break first?
This fast-paced 30-minute Power Session is designed for leaders who do not have time for theory. We will dive directly into the practical steps needed to protect your operations from unexpected departures.
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What to Expect
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Learn the reality of unexpected departures
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Identify your critical roles & "key person" risks
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Learn two practical succession frameworks (for lean and scaled teams)
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Learn the four steps every organization needs
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Leave with a simple, 30-day action plan you can implement immediately
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No complicated models. No binders that sit on shelves. Just clear, practical continuity planning you can use right away.
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Make sure the baton never hits the ground.
Employee Appreciation Day
Friday, March 6
Employee Appreciation Day is Friday, March 6. It is a meaningful opportunity to pause and recognize the people who drive your organization forward every day.
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Recognition does not have to be elaborate to be effective. A thoughtful note, a team lunch, public acknowledgment, flexible time off, or a small token of appreciation can reinforce engagement and strengthen culture.
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To make it easy and engaging, we have created a fun “March Mix-Up” Trivia activity that you can host with your team. If you would like a ready-to-use trivia set to incorporate into your day, email hr@vidahr.com to request it.
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Consistent recognition supports morale, retention, and performance. Even small gestures can have lasting impact.
The Employees Who Hold Everything Together
Why “Glue” Employees Matter More Than You Think
Most organizations know how to recognize stars. They close the biggest deals, ship the most code, or lead the most visible initiatives. Their work is easy to point to, easy to measure, and easy to reward.
What is harder to see, and far more costly to overlook, are the people who quietly hold the organization together.
Behavioral scientist Jon Levy calls them glue employees. They are not always the loudest voice in the room or the person with the most impressive title. Yet without them, teams fragment, collaboration slows, and performance quietly erodes.
What Is a Glue Employee?
Glue employees multiply the effectiveness of others.
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They anticipate needs before they are stated. They notice when someone is being overlooked. They connect dots across teams that are operating in silos. They step in to smooth friction, clarify misunderstandings, and keep work moving forward, often without being asked and rarely seeking credit.
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They “lead from behind,” making it possible for others to shine while ensuring the team succeeds as a whole.
Their impact tends to show up not in individual metrics, but in how well the group functions: trust is higher, meetings are more productive, new employees ramp faster, and conflicts are resolved before they escalate.
The Power of Small Interventions
Glue work is rarely dramatic. It is subtle and human.
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It might look like noticing a new hire who is quiet in meetings and finding a way to surface their ideas. Or privately coaching a colleague before a difficult conversation. Or flagging a misalignment between departments before it turns into a costly mistake.
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These are small interventions, but they have outsized impact. They make teams feel safer, more inclusive, and more capable. Over time, they compound.
Why Glue Employees Are So Hard to Spot
Most performance systems are built to measure outputs, not connective tissue.
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Sales closed. Projects delivered. Hours billed. Tickets resolved.
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Glue work does not fit neatly into those categories. It happens between tasks, inside conversations, in moments of emotional intelligence and situational awareness. As a result, it often goes unrecognized, not because leaders do not value it, but because they are not measuring it.
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Ironically, many glue employees become invisible precisely because things are working smoothly.
How to Identify Glue on Your Team
One of the simplest ways to identify glue employees is also the most underused: ask.
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Questions like:
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Who helps you succeed?
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Who do you go to when things get stuck?
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Who makes sure the team works well together?
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Who creates space for quieter voices?
Patterns emerge quickly.
​Glue employees may not hold the most senior roles. They might be analysts, coordinators, engineers, HR professionals, or long-tenured employees who understand how the organization really works. Their value is relational, not positional.
The Risk of Ignoring Glue
When glue employees are consistently overlooked, two things happen.
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First, they burn out. They are often carrying emotional labor, coordination work, and informal leadership on top of their actual jobs.
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Second, organizations lose them. And when glue leaves, leaders are often surprised by how much breaks all at once, because no one realized how much was being held together behind the scenes.
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This is one reason the departure of a “quiet” employee can feel disproportionately disruptive.
Rethinking Recognition and Reward
If organizations want collaboration, they have to reward it.
That does not mean abandoning individual performance standards. It means expanding what counts as performance.
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Leaders can start by incorporating peer feedback into reviews. They can explicitly ask who helped others succeed, who reduced friction, who strengthened the team. They can recognize glue behaviors in meetings, newsletters, or awards and not as soft skills, but as core business contributors.
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Compensation and advancement should reflect this as well. When rewards only go to individual standouts, organizations unintentionally incentivize competition over collaboration. When team outcomes matter, people share information, support one another, and perform better together.
The Competitive Advantage Hiding in Plain Sight
Glue employees are not a nice-to-have. They are a strategic advantage.
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They are the reason teams scale, cultures hold, and talent stays. Organizations that learn to recognize, protect, and reward glue work unlock something powerful: collective intelligence.
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The most successful teams are not built solely on stars. They are built on people who make everyone else better, and quietly ensure the whole thing does not come apart.
Leadership Tip: Don’t Miss the Glue
Some employees quietly hold teams together.
This quarter:
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Ask who helps others succeed
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Call out collaboration and trust-building
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Include glue work in performance conversations
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Watch for overload and burnout
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Reward team outcomes, not just individual wins
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Why it matters:
Glue work fuels collaboration, retention, and real performance.
QUESTION:
An employee of mine slipped and hurt his back while out at a vendor’s workplace. Does our company workers' comp policy have to cover him, or is that the vendor’s responsibility?
Who's workers' comp policy covers injuries on a different companies property?
Answer:
It is the employer’s responsibility to submit a worker’s compensation claim for any injury their employee sustained while working.
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Long Answer
A rare question with a definitive answer! While your first thought may be to think the vendor’s policy – the accident did occur in their workplace – that’s not the case. Worker’s compensation is to cover on the job injuries. This isn’t limited to injuries within your own place of business, it’s for any injury an employee might have sustained while conducting work, regardless of the location. That means, if the employee is out meeting vendors as part of their job, any injury sustained while doing so could be seen as a workplace injury. Of course, the employee filing a worker’s comp claim would still have to prove the injury was related to their employment.​
So if an employee gets hurt while on the job, even outside of your workplace, it’s your responsibility as an employer to file a worker’s compensation claim. But if somehow this is a regular occurrence, maybe consider asking your vendor to meet online.
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