Heard but Not Seen: How a Mission-Driven Financial Firm Built Real Listening into Its Culture

But there was a real obstacle to getting honest answers: When a company conducts its own employee research internally, it introduces a credibility problem it often can’t see. Employees weigh their words. They consider attribution. They edit themselves, not because they’re dishonest, but because the channel doesn’t quite feel safe. The firm recognized this, and it was enough to prompt them to bring in an outside partner. They needed a trusted, independent third party who could give employees a genuinely protected space to say what they actually thought.

The Solution

The DRG designed and fielded a quantitative web-based survey that reached the firm’s entire employee population. The goal was to go beyond gathering data to build a listening program that employees would trust enough to participate in honestly.

That started before a single question was written. We conducted structured consultations with firm leadership to understand the business context, get a feel for internal hypotheses, and clarify how different departments would use the findings. These conversations shaped both the design of the survey and the framing of the engagement itself: the firm was identified as the research sponsor (transparent sponsorship encourages participation), while The DRG served as the independent research partner responsible for data collection, analysis, and confidential reporting.

Because the employee population was relatively small, participation rates mattered enormously. A low response rate could limit statistical confidence and undermine the credibility of whatever findings emerged. We recommended proactive pre-notification communications to signal organizational commitment to the process and to help employees understand how their responses would be handled. The result: an 80% participation rate that gave the findings real weight.

The survey itself covered the full range of factors that drive employee engagement: personal development and growth opportunities, management relationships, compensation and benefits, leadership communication, organizational culture, and DEI. Closed-ended questions provided measurable benchmarks; open-ended responses captured the nuance and perspectives that numbers alone can’t bring to light. Derived importance analysis – aka figuring out what actually drives behavior, not just what people say matters to them – let us peel back the layers of what employees rated lowest to identify which factors were most predictive of their overall satisfaction. This is a critical distinction when resources for improvement are finite.

We presented the firm with comprehensive findings, including an executive summary and opportunities for consideration, full data tables for stakeholders wanting to dig into the numbers, and a results-driven workshop to help leadership translate findings into organizational action.

The Wins

The research gave firm leadership something they hadn’t had before: an honest, evidence-based picture of where their culture was working and where it wasn’t, built on the kind of candor that only comes when employees trust the process.

Four findings shaped the path forward:

• Satisfaction had room to grow, and leadership was at the center of it. Employee sentiment reflected a reasonable foundation, but fell short of what leadership had anticipated. Among those less satisfied, the most commonly cited factors were a lack of direction and appreciation from leadership. The data pointed not at a cultural failure but at a communication one.
• Employees were a genuine strength, but the experience wasn’t fully supporting them. Peer relationships and employee commitment scored well and reflected real cultural health. The gap emerged in the attributes most correlated with overall satisfaction: supporting a healthy work/life balance and equipping people with the resources they need to succeed. Employees believed in the mission; the organization needed to better demonstrate it believed in them.
• Strategic clarity was missing at scale. Leadership communication around organizational direction scored lower across the board, and nearly half of employees couldn’t clearly articulate the firm’s core values. That kind of internal misalignment in a firm where mission is the differentiator carries meaningful risk. Employees wanted less ambiguity and more direct, consistent communication from management.
• Compensation was a consistent friction point. Ratings for pay and benefits fell below other areas, with employees specifically citing base pay competitiveness, 401K contributions, and dental and vision coverage. Whether the issue was the actual compensation package or how it was being communicated, the research identified it as a retention risk that needed to be addressed.

Based on these findings, The DRG identified three areas for the firm to prioritize: strengthening internal communication at every level, including articulating strategic direction and bringing employees into the process of defining and living organizational values; evaluating compensation against industry benchmarks and proactively communicating the full value of the package if it was already competitive; and addressing workload and stress concerns by understanding root causes and creating structural pathways to better work/life balance.

The greater impact of this work was less about any single finding and more about what the process itself created: a credible, protected channel that gave employees a real voice and gave leadership data they could act on with confidence. For a firm whose competitive advantage is its people and its mission, that foundation matters as much as the insights it produced.