(From Business Wire) -- New research is revealing a startling portrait of the American worker. The findings come from a nationwide survey of over 1,000 working adults conducted in February and March 2011 by the research firm Ipsos on behalf of Kenexa, a global provider of business solutions for human resources, and from the most recent Kenexa High Performance Institute WorkTrends Annual Report.

"This is eye-opening research," said Rudy Karsan, Kenexa's CEO, "and it says clearly that the employees who will see success in our recovering economy are the ones who think of the organizations where they work as 'We,' not 'They'."

The February/March 2011 poll said that 72% of working Americans refer to the organizations where they work as "We." Only 20% refer to their organization as "They."

Karsan is co-author (with Kevin Kruse) of the recently published New York Times bestseller entitled WE: How to Increase Performance and Profits Through Full Engagement.

The 2008 Kenexa Research Institute WorkTrends Report, for example, concluded that the top 25% of corporations as measured by employee engagement saw 5-year total shareholder return (TSR) of 18%. The bottom 25% of corporations as measured by employee engagement saw an approximately 4% negative 5-year TSR for the same period. (Kenexa bases its measurement of "engagement" on four components: "satisfaction," "advocacy," "retention," and "pride".)

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