The Situation

When this mid-size insurance company came to CultureC, they hadn't run an employee engagement survey since 2017. Eight years is a long time in any organization — and a lot had changed. They'd navigated the pandemic, shifted to a hybrid work model, and welcomed a new president with a genuine commitment to culture. Leadership knew something important: they couldn't lead the company they were becoming without actually listening to the people in it.

But they weren't just looking for a survey. They'd been down that road before, and it hadn't left them with much to show for it. Past efforts produced data that felt shaped more by the desire to look good than a real commitment to hearing the truth. What they wanted this time was different — honest feedback, a thoughtful process, and a clear path to action.

The Challenge

The stakes were higher than they appeared from the outside. Survey fatigue was a real concern — employees had seen feedback cycles come and go without meaningful follow-through, and some had stopped believing it would be any different this time. The org also lacked a clear framework for what a listening program should look like, how to define success, or how to turn results into something the business could act on.

Layered on top of that: a leadership team in transition, a workforce spread across HQ, hybrid, and remote settings, and a dedicated culture team that needed stronger infrastructure to do their best work. The conditions were right for real change, but only if the foundation was built carefully.

The Approach

CultureC came in as a strategic partner — not to run a survey, but to design a listening program worth believing in.

That started with helping the team select the right platform and build the survey with intention: the right questions, the right framing, and a clear organizational commitment to do something with what they heard. We worked closely with their internal team to establish goals, set up the infrastructure, and prepare the organization for honest participation.

Once the survey closed, the real work began. Within two weeks, we completed a full analysis and built an executive summary that didn't just report numbers — it told a story. We ran individual deep-dives with each officer, presenting department-level findings in a way leaders could actually use. From there, we helped develop a cascading communication strategy: from the president's all-hands message down to manager discussion guides and employee-facing materials.

The final phase was action planning — facilitated sessions with leadership to identify specific, owned commitments tied directly to what employees had said.

The Outcome

The results spoke clearly. The organization achieved an 88% participation rate — rare for a first survey after years of silence. Engagement favorability came in at 88%, placing the company 9 points above the U.S. Top 25% benchmark and 13 points above the industry average.

Beyond the headline numbers: 97% of employees said they'd recommend the company as a place to work, 90% saw themselves staying for two or more years, and confidence in senior leadership hit 92% — Culture Amp's top global predictor of engagement.

Engagement scores increased 7 points and intent-to-stay metrics rose 9 points following the action planning cycle.

The Bigger Picture

What made this work wasn't the survey. It was the commitment underneath it — a leadership team willing to hear the truth and a process designed to make that truth actionable. This organization didn't just get results. They got a listening program they can build on, and employees who now have evidence that their voices matter.

That's what the difference between a survey and a culture shift looks like in practice.