New York, NY - June 10, 2025 - After nearly a decade of empirical research into the connection between employee identity and business outcomes, EMBER™ today unveils Collective Organizational Identification (COI™)—a groundbreaking scientific metric at the core of its proprietary performance system. COI™ captures the extent to which employees identify with their job, their company, and the brand they represent—as well as how individuals collectively see their success, values, and identity as intertwined with the company’s purpose and performance. Unlike traditional engagement metrics—which often fluctuate and lack predictive power—COI offers a stable, scientifically validated alternative that directly links workforce identity to brand and business outcomes.
Built on large-scale, IRB-approved study and real-world applications across sectors, COI powers the EMBER system, providing senior executives, HR leaders, and marketers with a scalable, high-impact replacement for outdated employee engagement surveys. As the first and only standardized methodology proven to connect workforce identity with key drivers such as revenue growth, brand strength, employee retention, and market performance, COI empowers organizations to harness the full potential of their human capital. This new way of understanding and measuring employee behavior and culture is redefining how companies measure, align, and activate their workforces.
Companies are leveraging COI to drive internal transformation, elevate leadership effectiveness, and connect employee alignment directly to business metrics. From reducing turnover and boosting brand advocacy to guiding M&A integration and optimizing marketing strategy, COI gives organizations a practical and predictive tool for unlocking sustainable growth. With real-world applications across industries—from finance and healthcare to tech and consumer goods—COI is helping leaders turn internal cohesion into external advantage, linking workforce identity to brand, business and market growth.
Over the past year, Jensen Partners, a global leader in executive search and talent intelligence for the alternative investment industry, has partnered with EMBER to explore how COI™ can inform the way leadership and talent are evaluated. Known for its data-driven approach, Jensen Partners now has access to EMBER’s proprietary COI™ data, offering a new layer of insight into cultural alignment, leadership potential, and organizational dynamics. With a specialized focus on distribution roles—one of the most complex and competitive segments in finance—the firm supports more than 60 top-tier investment firms annually and has placed over 265 senior professionals since 2019. In a sector where precision placement is critical, COI™ presents a powerful opportunity to expand strategic understanding of human behavior in the workplace.
“COI™ offers an entirely new lens for understanding human behavior in the workplace,” said Sasha Jensen, Founder and CEO of Jensen Partners. “Through our collaboration with EMBER, we now have access to data that reveals how individuals and teams align—culturally, commercially, and strategically. That kind of insight adds a valuable new dimension to how we think about leadership potential, recruitment strategy, and organizational fit. In a world where success hinges on precision, COI™ provides a meaningful advantage.”
“Companies have spent decades trying to fix a broken engagement system,” said Dr. Yasmeen Coning, Founder and Chief Insights Officer of EMBER. “COI™ changes the game. It gives leaders something they’ve never had before: a clear, evidence-based view into how aligned, activated, and market-ready their workforce really is at any given time. This isn’t about sentiment — it’s about identity. And it’s the most reliable path we’ve ever had to building sustainable performance from the inside out.” COI is built on six proprietary dimensions known as the Six Vital Signs of Organizational Health:
- Core Identity – Employees’ personal investment in their roles and organization
- Connected Leadership – Strength of relationships between managers and teams
- Aligned Ambition – Cohesion between company goals and employee aspirations
- Collective Drive – Shared motivation and momentum across teams
- Future Affinity – Employees’ long-term commitment to the organization
- Market Gravity – Internal perspective on the company’s external brand reputation
Unlike sentiment-based engagement metrics that fluctuate and lack predictive reliability, COI™ has been shown to:
- Explain 25% more variance in business outcomes such as brand health and financial performance compared to traditional engagement measures
- Outperform engagement in predicting brand differentiation, esteem, and customer satisfaction — turning internal alignment into measurable market outcomes
- Be associated with 15% higher revenue growth in organizations with high COI scores
- Increase employee brand advocacy by 40%, creating a more aligned, externally credible workforce
“As a professor of marketing, I’ve seen many measures and metrics come and go,” said Dr. Cristel Russell, Professor of Marketing at Pepperdine University and chair of the dissertation committee overseeing Dr. Coning’s COI™ research. “COI™ is not only rooted in rigorous science—it intersects marketing and organizational behavior in a novel and elegant way. It gives companies a new language and system to predict success—beyond what traditional engagement metrics were able to deliver before.” “What stood out most in reviewing the COI research was the level of methodological and statistical discipline,” said Dr. Paul Markowitz, Vice President of Customer Strategy at Bain & Company and a member of Dr. Coning’s dissertation committee. “The models weren’t just theoretically grounded—they were executed with a level of rigor that distinguishes them within applied business research. From a measurement science perspective, COI sets a new benchmark for validating constructs that bridge academic theory and real-world application.”
EMBER maintains a proprietary database spanning more than 25 industry sectors—including financial services, technology, healthcare, consumer goods, travel, automotive, and more—and features COI insights from leading global organizations such as Apple, Microsoft, Costco, Walmart, Google, Starbucks, and many more. These insights inform powerful benchmarks that help EMBER clients deepen internal cohesion, elevate leadership effectiveness, and align culture with brand performance and growth. As more firms recognize that employee identity is inseparable from brand reputation and market success, COI is emerging as the new standard for people-powered strategy.
About EMBER™
EMBER is an organizational strategy and performance system specializing in organizational behavior, brand and market growth, and workforce alignment. Built on a decade of empirical research, EMBER moves organizations beyond traditional employee engagement metrics by leveraging Collective Organizational Identification (COI)™—the most advanced and proven method and system for measuring, training, and enabling teams at scale across any and all industry sectors. As the first and only standardized approach in this space, COI is causally linked to driving both brand strength and revenue growth. Unlike conventional frameworks, EMBER provides a fully integrated methodology that connects leadership, culture, and brand strategy to build stronger, high-performing organizations from the inside out. Through data-driven insights, EMBER equips leaders with the knowledge and tools to create sustainable, market-leading companies and brands powered by COI. EMBER is the new standard for optimizing organizational performance, leveraging rich identification insights and its proven, proprietary methodology to enhance workforce cohesion, elevate brand impact, and drive financial growth.
Learn more at: www.emberinsight.com
About Jensen Partners
Jensen Partners is the largest executive search and advisory firm exclusively dedicated to global capital raising and capital formation. Founded in 2012, the award-winning firm specializes in placing top-performing capital formation, fundraising, and distribution professionals within the alternative asset management industry. A strategic partner to many of the world’s leading alternative asset Management and private markets firms, Jensen Partners provides clients with comprehensive human capital consulting, market intelligence, competitor compensation analysis, and organogram mapping of alternative distribution platforms. The firm’s proprietary database of over 35,000 investor-facing professionals, combined with a tech-enabled platform that leverages machine learning, AI, and a proprietary data stack, enables client partners to benchmark compensation trends, track human capital moves, and surface hidden talent patterns with unmatched precision.
Learn more at www.jensen-partners.com
Media Contact
Company Name: EMBER
Contact Person: Dr. Yasmeen Coning
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City: New York
Country: United States
Website: www.emberinsight.com