The Employees Who Hold Everything Together
- Regina Dyerly, SHRBP, PHR
- 3 hours ago
- 3 min read
The Employees Who Hold Everything Together: Why “Glue” Employees Matter More Than You Think
By:
Regina Dyerly, sHRBP, PHR
Partner / Chief Operating Officer | Vida HR
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Sales closed. Projects delivered. Hours billed. Tickets resolved.
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.
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.
Ask questions like:
Who helps you succeed?
Who do you go to when things get stuck?
Who makes sure the team works well together?
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.
First, they burn out. They are often carrying emotional labor, coordination work, and informal leadership on top of their actual jobs.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 GlueSome employees quietly hold teams together. This quarter:
Why it matters:Glue work fuels collaboration, retention, and real performance. |
The Employees Who Hold Everything Together
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