Why This HR Leader Cut Surveys to Build Better Culture

Table of Contents

• Why Change an Existing Listening Strategy?
• Building Employee Trust in the Listening Process
• Communicating Change Consistently and Strategically
• How They Connected HR Initiatives to Business Objectives
• Enter the Rogue Surveys
• AI as an Accelerator
• Storytelling as a Critical People Analytics Skill
• Succession Planning as Leadership Discipline
• What Katie Would Change About Perceptions of the People Function

Siobhan Fagan: Hello everybody and welcome to today's episode of Three Dots. Siobhan Fagan here and today's guest is Katie Turner. She is an HR executive, but more importantly for today's conversation, she is Rework’s 2026 Workplace Culture Leader of the Year.

Katie, welcome to the show. I'm so glad you can join me.

Katie Turner: Thank you, I'm so glad I could be here.

Siobhan: Our judges were impressed by your application and I'm just really hoping that we could spend this time to dig into a little bit of the initiative that led to you winning this award and the thinking behind it. So if you're ready, let's just jump in.

Katie: Absolutely.

Siobhan: One of the things that you introduced was a unified people and culture framework. What were the origins of this — how did it align with the company's employee value proposition and the core behavioral expectations? Can you lay down the groundwork there?

Katie: The origins were about connection, simplicity and clarity. We had a lot of really strong elements in place with culture work, engagement data, leadership expectations. We had recognition programs, development and were already down the path of a robust employee listening strategy.

So our opportunity was connecting those pieces into a more consistent system that provided clarity and alignment across the org. The framework really pushed us to think through with our HR team, executive leadership and business leaders, How do we talk about culture and the employee experience in a simple way, but also in a consistent way?

That's where the employee value proposition came in. We developed it in 2025 to take a step back and say, Who are we? How do we want to communicate this to the organization? How do we make sure that we align our talent systems around it? And that all of the levers across the employee lifecycle are connected appropriately so the employees are getting consistent messaging and consistent experience about what's important at the organization.

Why Change an Existing Listening Strategy?

Siobhan: So you said that you already had a listening strategy in place, so you weren't starting from scratch. But you decided to change it. What was the catalyst for changing the strategy? As part of this decision, you reduced the number of internal surveys, which seems counterintuitive. A lot of people think you should be doing more of them. Can you walk us through that decision process?

Katie: It was really about signal quality, actionability and trust. We wanted a strategy that was structured enough to create enterprise insight, but also flexible enough to understand what was happening in the business in real-time. So not that annual event that launched a thousand disconnected action plans, which is kind of where we were in the past.

We took a step back and said, OK, let's really think about the moments that matter. How do we listen? It doesn't always have to be a structured survey approach. What are the channels we can use? Really being a bit more clear about the purpose and the owner and the path to action. The biggest part of it related to trust was saying if we're going to ask for feedback, we need to be really intentional about sharing the feedback that we received, what we were going to do with it, even if it's saying This is something we can't take action on right now, but this is what we are focused on.

So in 2025, when we acknowledged we had a ton of disconnected surveys, we looked to see if there was an opportunity to partner across the organization to identify some synergies and where we could combine some surveys. Do we really need all the surveys that we have from a cultural perspective? And if not, how do we make sure we're not missing an opportunity to gather meaningful feedback? And again, just ensuring that we're getting the right information to the right people at the right time so that it's truly meaningful.

Building Employee Trust in the Listening Process

Siobhan: You brought up a couple of points in there that I want come back around to. One was employee trust, because there is always that question when we have the ability to gather so much data. So how did you build employee trust around that data collection so they actually trusted that you were going to take it and put it into action?

Katie: There are a couple of different things that we did around trust. One was we were very transparent about the survey, the survey's purpose, thresholds that we used in order to be able to share results. But then if certain leaders didn't meet those thresholds, making sure that there's transparency all the way up to what those survey results were so that everybody was still getting something. That was a big part.

We also felt it was important to have transparency in the data. We were really clear and consistent about where we need to focus on locally, because the results might look different. And what might that look like as we focus more from an enterprise-wide perspective on the systematic type of things like talent systems, communications, change management.

Siobhan: Part of your initial response was the fact that you wanted to limit the number of surveys in order to take that action. I'm guessing that a certain amount of trust followed when employees saw you actually following through on the data collection, because that's where so many of these employee listening programs fall down, where they provide all this feedback and then it feels as if it’s going into a void. Is that the case?

Katie: You're spot on with that. When we were looking at the evolution — even within the organization of how to change this engagement survey approach to more of a listening strategy — we found that it was a little bit harder to make the shift for those that had been in the organization for a while, because there was this expectation that you have this robust action plan and that you create all these forums to take actions.

What ends up happening is you're moving a thousand ships in very small increments vs. saying, Let's take a step back and understand what is a signal versus what may not be a priority, because we don't understand the context around what's causing the spike right now. Let's really be thoughtful about what we're seeing, what we're hearing, not just through surveys, but also through all these other unstructured forums or feedback loops that we have, so it could be more intentional and focus on what matters most to the employees.

And again, trying to ensure that we were taking a localized approach, because the experience that leaders and coworkers create for each other is so important in the day to day. We wanted to make sure that we didn't let that get lost in the enterprise-wide focuses.

We helped our leaders understand the difference between, Here are the things that we're seeing in your results and here are tools and resources to help you work with your teams on either maintaining what they're saying is great. But we also don't want to lose sight of, Here are some opportunities, org-wide, where we could think a little bit differently about recognition systems, talent management — the larger group type of efforts, community investment, things like that, so that we're hitting it from top and bottom.

Communicating Change Consistently and Strategically

Siobhan: So obviously you're communicating with the managers about the sort of behavior that they should reinforce or potentially change to improve the results. How did you go about communicating with employees so that they were getting consistent messaging around the values and the expectations around this cultural change?

Katie: I would say many different channels and different forums. Our HR team was instrumental in this. So the first step is making sure we're aligned as an HR team so that we are speaking consistently about the results we are seeing and then also making sure that we are equipping our HR team with tools and resources to help our employees and leaders understand the results in a consistent way.

Our executive team was also instrumental, so it wasn't an HR-owned effort. They were championing the reason for the listening strategy. They were sharing the results — it wasn't HR sharing the results. Our executive leadership team were the ones sharing Here's what we're focusing on.

And in the background we’re thinking about how do we take this and make sure that our total rewards team has the right insight to understand how they might want to either reinforce behaviors or things they might do differently or just a new strategy. We really hit it from all different areas.

The other things we did was create tools and resources, toolkits, talking points, so that business leaders could speak to their employees. We highly encouraged them to take certain action by just communicating results first and talking about it and then involving their teams in saying, What do we do as a result of what we're seeing or what we're hearing?

Siobhan: I want to touch on that executive involvement that you received because that is something that every HR leader wants to see. I'm curious how your initiative, because part of this was that you introduced a people analytics team where there hadn't been one before; you had an executive engagement and culture forum. So how did that help you secure that stronger executive sponsorship for your initiatives?

Katie: Great question. In short, I think that analytics helped us see the system. The forum helped leaders move the system.

So with the people analytics, it really moved us from the conversation of opinions and anecdotes to stronger decision intelligence. We built dashboards and reporting that made it easier to see trends, compare signals and understand where issues were local vs. enterprise-wide, emerging or systematic. That's where we're trying to help our leaders really understand the difference.

The Executive Engagement and Cultural Forum helped us translate insight into action. It created a place for those leaders of key employee experience levers to come together, look across the organization, talk about opportunities for synergies, identify where there might be friction points between certain employee levers within their areas. And then really determine where coordinated action might be beneficial.

2025 was the first year to launch it. We saw a lot of great movement by introducing that larger cultural forum for the executive team. They were excited and in fact, we kept it small to start and several were raising their hands saying, How do we get more involved? We want to be part of this.

How They Connected HR Initiatives to Business Objectives

Siobhan: That's a great sign. So it sounds as if part of this, with the creation of those dashboards, was that you were drawing a very clear line between the initiatives you were doing and the performance goals that the company had. How did you and your team work that out? And how did you decide to create those dashboards and make those connections clearer for the executives?

Katie: Connecting the dots was really important. We spent a lot of time understanding the multi-year business objectives that we had with growth efficiency, leadership continuity, our capability needs, and organizational agility or change ability to move with change. Practically for us it was, OK, what does that look like for how we evolve our performance management approach?

We launched an effort to overhaul performance management, launched an effort to improve our job architecture and role clarity based on feedback that we're getting around career development opportunities and need for workforce planning. And then also creating stronger HR governance so that our investment decisions could be more prioritized and sequenced with the business strategy so everyone felt good about where we were investing.

Again, HR's role was really critical to enabling, but the business ownership was instrumental in moving us forward and ensuring that we were able to draw those connections and that we were able to help our employees see how everything was connected.

Enter the Rogue Surveys

Siobhan: Everything sounds like it's smooth going, but did you hit any pockets of resistance along the way? I mean, was there anything that you had to overcome and how did you go through that?

Katie: With any change, there is a little bit of resistance, especially when there's been a way of doing things for a longer period of time. I also think sometimes if you think about the legacy thinking about surveys, there's a want to get defensive about survey results versus saying this is helping inform us about some opportunities.

A big part of what we were trying to make sure we did is acknowledge this is just one piece of information. It is not the only thing that's informing where we should focus. So let's make sure we have all of the right information so we can make an informed decision. Context matters, right?

There are times we went back and forth about, If we do a survey during this time, right after performance management discussions, or right after bonus hits, or something's going on externally that might impact how our employees are feeling. We said we'd be OK with that, because if we're doing these enough and we understand the full system, then we understand the context and we can leverage the feedback appropriately versus overreacting to one signal. Versus saying, this is our strategy because here is what's giving us the right information.

Siobhan: Yeah, I love that. The approach where it's This is the only signal isn’t the only answer to what's going on and is never going to give you the full picture. And so even though you had reduced the amount of surveys, you were actually expanding the signals you were taking in, just diversifying them.

Katie: Yes, we jokingly called them rogue surveys. It was working across other departments that were doing surveys as well and saying, let's sit down and let's look at what we're trying to go after and might there be an opportunity to combine or are we able to even get the information you need through this survey, whether it's the annual survey or some sort of pulse survey.

Siobhan Fagan: That shows that you're developing these really strong business partnerships throughout the organization, which again is an end goal for so many HR teams. They don't want to be seen as this isolated function. They want to be working cross-functionally. Can you talk a little bit about how you identified these different teams and how you managed to open up those doors to work with them?

Katie: It first started with survey results in 2024, where the employees were signaling we had a greater opportunity to either continue doing great things in that space, or there were some opportunities that were causing some friction or frustration in the experience. That's where we said, Let's start with these five or six areas that the employees are saying are the most important.

We also looked externally at what other organizations were saying were the most important for their organizations because of what was coming down the pipe. We started small and said, OK, might we look at how we can do some things a little bit differently here.

AI as an Accelerator

Siobhan: As part of this, I know that AI was part of what you used to enable the personalized learning that you delivered as a result of this. You also used it to do some of the collection of data as well. Can you talk about that a little bit, about where you drew the lines in terms of how you were going to use it and how you wouldn't?

Katie: We thought of AI as an accelerator, not an architect, and that the strategy was still human-centered. So the AI work that we did in 2025 was more practical, emerging and intentionally governed. It was not to replace human judgment. It was to help us with speed, relevance and pattern recognition in the employee experience, but still had human oversight.

One important area you mentioned was that we used AI to help us with sentiment analysis and to detect some of the trends in the open text feedback. It really shortened the window we needed to ask the organization to give us before we could give them the trend analysis. It helped us understand themes. It helped us double check between the quantitative and the qualitative pieces. It made it easier for us to understand the sentiment patterns.

And again, I mentioned the timeliness. We were able to turn a higher quality of sentiment insight to the organization in a fraction of time. The other piece is it helped us a little bit with signaling attrition risks ahead of departure. It wasn't saying that this group is going to definitively leave the organization, but saying here are some things we're starting to see that you might want to look into. So more of those flags and look into some root causes. It was more about the potential intervention we might want to consider versus saying, This group is gone, they're going to leave.

Other places we used it was learning, recognition and communication. We've been integrating AI tools to help us in those spaces. And so it was a connector for us as well. We're looking at how can we personalize the experience? Part of what we were trying to do is make sure those leaders felt like their results were personalized to them, the targeted messaging, more efficient communication development. We used AI for some of that. We also used AI a bit with the follow-ups. But again, the judgment, the privacy, the governance all remained human-centered.

Storytelling as a Critical People Analytics Skill

Siobhan: You mentioned the attrition risks and how you approached that, that you could actually see this, but you were very cautious with what you did with that information. And I'm wondering, because we do have these capabilities, we are able to collect so many different signals, is there a metric or a signal that we can measure that you think HR leaders should resist acting on? And if so, why?

Katie: What I would say is context matters. So not acting on one particular data, but being able to take a step back and look at the trend analysis and context. Storytelling becomes really important in the people analytics team. Standing that up was crucial for us this year and helped us bring even better insights to tell the story. Here's what we're seeing, here's why we're saying we don't think we need to do anything at this point, but we're going to keep a pulse on it. Here are some things that are starting to emerge that you wouldn't think you need to look at based on the past, but because of the context, we do think that they're a higher priority.

The people analytics group getting more into the predictive analysis piece was really important for us. But I would say all metrics are important. I'm a big fan of data. I think where we tend to potentially err is on the side of knee-jerk versus saying, let's understand the signals and then let's form a strategy while also finding the balance between what real-time things need to be acted on. What do we need to do with that real-time information that's coming our way? And then how do we make sure that we are also thinking long-term strategically about it?

Siobhan: Your answer speaks to the approach that you used with AI, where it can speed things along exponentially, but you have that human judgment in every part — that's where the storytelling comes in. That's where the additional context comes in. And that's how you actually prioritize where you're taking action or not.

Succession Planning as Leadership Discipline

Siobhan: One part of your application which the judges recognized was the really strong efforts you made in succession planning. We're recording this on April 27th. We just had the announcement of the new Apple CEO coming in and people noted it was part of a thoughtful long-term succession planning process.

Can you talk a little bit about your approach to succession planning and what that looked like in practice?

Katie: In practice, it meant moving succession from an annual event to more of a leadership discipline. Wwe talked about it with our leaders, we overhauled our performance management system, starting in ‘24, going into ‘25, which included succession. We talked about where do we need to understand what our talent pipeline looks like and where can we say it's OK to not focus because it's not a key priority.

So we created stronger visibility into potential readiness, successor depth and risk for key talent — and not just at the very top of the house. But we drew a line in the sand where we said, At this level we have to understand our leadership pipeline. And we've got to really understand key factors from the risk perspective, but also potential perspective with the succession. It included leadership assessments, talent reviews and calibration, development planning. We really did some work around consistency, around language and expectations, which ties back into that career architecture. Are we all aligned on what we're saying this level should be bringing to the table and then that next level? Because if we're not, then we're not gonna be aligned with what succession looks like.

We also worked on cross-functional mobility opportunities so that we were building more enterprise leaders earlier on and not just more vertical leadership.

Siobhan: Sometimes what comes up with succession planning is the inevitable disappointment because there's only so many roles that people can get. Do you have any advice or do you have any sort of tactics for mitigating that in the process?

Katie: A lot of the work our organization was doing was to say, Do we really think about what structure we need in order to get the work done? And then, What talent do we need in order to enable that structure versus saying that person's really great, let's promote them because they're a SME.

I think that a lot of organizations, you promote for retention and you promote for expertise. And we had an opportunity to evolve to what does that ecosystem look like? We worked on organizational hygiene, our job architecture, leadership expectations, performance management, and then talked about what are our expectations of you as a leader here, regardless of where you sit in the organization, which helped with consistency.

What Katie Would Change About Perceptions of the People Function

Siobhan: I have a final question for you: if you could change one thing about how business leaders look at the people function, not the practices, not the tools, but sort of the underlying assumptions about what the people function is, what would you change and why?

Katie: There are a lot of organizations that view people work as separate from business performance. And HR is often viewed as a function that supports engagement and communication, employee relation issues, talent processes, sometimes really administrative things. They matter, but they're not the full story.

At its best, the people function helps an organization answer critical business questions. Do we have the right leadership capacity to execute the strategy? Is our structure helping or slowing performance? Are we investing in the right capabilities? And are employees clear on what matters? So I would say HR should have a seat at the table. People's strategy is business strategy and sometimes it's not viewed that way.

Siobhan: Clearly your application succeeded in that way because that's why we're talking today. Katie, I really appreciate this time. Is there anything that we didn't cover that you want to touch on, either on your application or how you're feeling about the HR function today?

Katie: You asked a lot of really great questions. A couple of parting key points that we've talked about and I think are really important for other organizations to think about:  

• Culture work has to be structured but not rigid.
• The business needs enough discipline to act and enough flexibility to hear what is actually happening.
• We don't want one big event launched with a thousand ships.
• A listening system is much better when it produces insights more frequently with stronger accountability.
• HR is an architect and an integrator, but the work only matters if the leaders across the business own it with HR.
• Data gives us a signal, but storytelling is really important to help leaders understand the meaning and it helps them with accountability, turning it into action.
• One last thing I would say is the employee experience is shaped locally, but enterprise patterns require enterprise ownership that's top down, bottom up. That's really important. I think sometimes it's one or the other versus saying it needs to be both in order for us to either maintain a really great culture or enhance the culture and get the culture we're going after.

Siobhan: That's a great synopsis of a lot of things we touched on. I love the employee experience starts locally, but also needs that executive. It's an ongoing tension around where where it lives, who's guiding it — and it's got to be both working in tandem. So thank you again, Katie. Congratulations again on your recognition. Very well deserved. I really appreciate your time today.

Katie: Thank you, appreciate your time.