The Watercooler Never Went Away. It Just Got a Streaming Subscription.

Before the meeting starts. During the walk to the parking garage. In the Teams or Slack chat that was supposed to be about something else entirely. Pop culture finds its way into the workday constantly, and most of us barely notice it happening. Dexian partnered with Attest to survey 250 working professionals about that. Turns out, the data is more interesting than small talk.

The Data Confirms What You Already Suspected

Think about the last time you walked into a Monday morning meeting. Chances are, someone mentioned the game. Someone else had thoughts about whatever dropped on Netflix over the weekend. Maybe the Oscars came up, or a reality show twist that apparently shocked everyone except you because you still haven’t watched it.

That’s not coincidence. Our recent survey found that 92% of employees had a pop-culture conversation at work in the past month alone. The Super Bowl dominated at 61%, which makes sense given the timing, but it wasn’t just sports. TV shows came in at 51%, movies at 46%, and even reality TV and awards shows, the categories people are most likely to keep quiet about in professional settings, each showed up in more than a quarter of workplaces. This isn’t one shared cultural moment pulling everyone in temporarily. It’s a steady, ongoing current running through the workday whether leaders notice it or not.

And people aren’t just passively absorbing culture and accidentally bringing it to work. They’re actively preparing. More than half of the professionals we surveyed, 55%, said they’ve looked up a trending topic specifically to keep up with a workplace conversation. They heard a reference they didn’t catch, and instead of letting it go, they went and figured it out so they could be part of it next time. Pop culture opens opportunities for people to feel like they belong. And belonging, as most leaders will tell you, doesn’t come from an onboarding deck.

Bonding Happens Before the Work Does

Two-thirds of employees said that shared pop-culture references help them find common ground with colleagues they don’t know well. Consider what it actually takes to build trust with someone you’ve never worked with before. Normally it requires time, repeated interaction, and a few moments where you both happen to reveal something real about yourselves. A shared cultural reference can shortcut all of that. For a new hire navigating an unfamiliar team, or a remote employee trying to build presence from a distance, that shortcut might be the difference between feeling like an outsider for six months and feeling like part of the team in six weeks.

The data bears that out. Nearly three-quarters of employees (72%) agreed that keeping up with pop culture improves team bonding and connection, and a nearly identical share said the same about relationship-building overall. What’s striking about those numbers is how consistent they are across the workforce, not concentrated in one role or demographic, but broadly felt. And 67% said pop culture supports inclusion and belonging specifically. Belonging isn’t just about being invited into the room. It’s about having something to say once you’re there. Shared references lower the social stakes of a new conversation and create an opening that formal introductions rarely do.

The effect holds beyond internal teams. Over half of respondents, 53%, said keeping up with pop culture improves client rapport. Reading that context badly is worse than not trying at all, so the lower number makes sense. But when it fits, a casual reference to a big game or a shared reaction to something everyone saw last week can do more for a client relationship in the first five minutes than a polished deck does in the first hour. It signals that you’re a person, not just a vendor, that you’re paying attention to the same world they’re living in. In a business where trust is the product as much as anything else, that signal matters.

So, What Do You Actually Do with a Meme?

Nobody is suggesting you open your next all-hands with a Survivor recap. Forcing a reference that doesn’t land is its own kind of awkward. But the informal moments that tend to get cut in the name of efficiency, the two minutes before a call officially starts, the sidebar that has nothing to do with the project, the group chat that goes briefly off-topic, those moments are doing something real.

The teams that let those moments breathe tend to know each other better, collaborate more naturally, and build the kind of trust that doesn’t show up on a project timeline. The data just caught up to what good managers already knew.

Dexian partnered with Attest, a leading consumer insights platform, to survey 250 working professionals on February 6, 2026 about the influence of pop culture in the workplace, including how often pop-culture topics arise at work, whether employees engage with trending topics to participate in workplace conversations, and how these touchpoints influence collaboration and connection with colleagues and clients.