One year on: mission-purpose alignment is improving where organizations acted on the 2025 findings, and stagnant where they didn't.
One Year Later
The 2026 edition returns to the same partner organizations surveyed in 2025, plus a modest number of new additions, to see what a year actually changes. The headline finding: change was real, but concentrated. Organizations that used the 2025 report to redesign onboarding or introduce mid-tenure "reconnection" conversations saw measurable gains in purpose alignment among their longer-tenured staff. Organizations that read the report and changed nothing saw scores hold flat, not decline — belief doesn’t erode quickly, but it doesn’t repair itself either.
The Tenure Gap, Revisited
The 2025 finding that long-tenured staff had the weakest purpose alignment held again in 2026, but the gap narrowed meaningfully in institutions that ran structured mentorship or mid-career development conversations in the intervening year. Where that intervention didn’t happen, the tenure gap widened slightly, suggesting inaction is not neutral.
Sector Movement
Educational institutions showed the largest improvement of the three sectors, concentrated specifically among facility and support staff who had been included in updated culture and values training. Social enterprises showed the least aggregate movement, though enterprises that had reduced founder-dependency also reported the strongest purpose alignment gains — the two appear connected.
What We're Watching for 2027
We’re adding a question this cycle we didn’t ask in 2025: whether staff feel their organization’s stated mission has itself changed in the past year. Early responses suggest some of what looks like "purpose drift" is actually organizations quietly redefining their mission without saying so out loud. The 2027 edition will dig into that directly.