The Situation

This client operates power generation facilities across North America, and like much of the energy sector, they'd been navigating significant change: a Voluntary Departure Program, organizational restructuring, geographic expansion into new markets, and the cultural complexity that comes with all of it. They chose to run a company-wide engagement survey in the middle of that turbulence — which took courage, because the results were going to reflect a workforce that had been through a lot.

CultureC was brought in to help make sense of what the data revealed and give leadership a clear path forward.

The Challenge

The organization was dealing with multiple fault lines at once. Long-tenured employees — including many in the 6+ and 10+ year cohorts — were among the least engaged, carrying the weight of recent disruptions and a growing sense of disconnection from senior leadership. Employees in legacy geographic locations felt increasingly peripheral as the company shifted its strategic focus. And at the center of it all: only 32% of employees believed action would actually be taken as a result of the survey — the lowest-scoring item in the entire data set.

The data was clear. The question was what to do with it.

The Approach

CultureC conducted three structured deep-dive conversations: an internal review with the People team, a CEO debrief, and a strategic advisory session with external consultants. This wasn't about running through a slide deck — it was about helping leadership actually understand the story in the data and feel ready to act on it.

The engagement benchmarked results against 70+ North American utilities — nearly one million data points — to provide meaningful context for what was performing well and where the organization was falling short. From that foundation, CultureC developed a focused set of strategic recommendations tailored to the realities of the company's situation.

Key priorities included a CEO-led communication strategy to directly address regional belonging and organizational narrative, manager enablement to activate the one population employees already trusted, targeted support for the VP layer who were stretched thin and influential, and a concrete action plan to close the credibility gap on follow-through before the next survey cycle.

The Outcome

The CEO came out of the debrief with a clear-eyed view of the data — including some results that surprised him — and a grounded plan for what to prioritize. The 72% participation rate on a survey conducted mid-restructuring was itself a meaningful signal: even in a difficult moment, employees were willing to speak.

The strategic recommendations gave the leadership team a realistic timeline (6 months to stabilize, 18–24 months for cultural recovery) and specific, owned commitments to communicate to the organization.

The Bigger Picture

The hardest time to listen is when you're afraid of what you might hear. This organization ran their survey anyway — and got the honest picture they needed. The work wasn't about making the numbers look better. It was about giving leadership the clarity to lead through disruption with integrity, and giving employees evidence that their voices were worth something.

That kind of trust takes time to rebuild. But it has to start somewhere.