Cultivating Alignment and Growth: ACE Harnesses Employee Survey Insights for Data-Driven Decision Making

Headquarters: Indianapolis, IN

Employees: 500-999

Industry: College/University

Objectives

Use data to identify improvement opportunities, drive decision making, facilitate communication, and strengthen employer brand

Solutions

Workplace Survey, Insights, Employer Branding, Pulse

Results

A more effective employee performance review process, better recruitment, organizational growth, and alignment

The American College of Education (ACE) is an accredited online college specializing in high-quality, affordable programs in education, business, leadership, healthcare, and nursing. The multi-year Top Workplaces winner uses the Energage Platform to identify improvement opportunities, monitor progress, and lead organization-wide data-driven conversations.

“Energage takes us and our employee engagement to the next level. I love drilling into the data and being able to see year-over-year growth. It also helped us uncover problems in our employee experience that we otherwise wouldn’t have been aware of.”

Natalie Pelham
Vice President of HR at American College of Education

“As the Chief Marketing Officer, it’s amazing to have access to the Energage branding tools and a stronger connection with our HR team. I do a lot of data analysis within my marketing role, and the Energage Platform helps us tell our story. The Energage Platform also allows us to identify challenges and celebrate things we are doing well.

It allows for more bidirectional conversations, which are key for growth and performance management. Plus, these HR tools give all our leaders the quantitative and qualitative components necessary for informed decision making within their departments.”

William Liu
Chief Marketing Officer at American College of Education

Robust survey data helps ACE identify opportunities for growth

We’re so impressed with the robust data from the Workplace Survey and how Insights enables us to drill down into different demographics, such as department, tenure, salary band, and seniority. We’re able to look at the data and pull reports instantaneously. We use Insights and Pulse to identify opportunities for improvement, create employee focus groups, and keep an eye on progress.

Energage Platform takes engagement and alignment to the next level

The Platform has taken our workplace communications and employee engagement to the next level. Its tools help us have data-driven conversations with everyone, from front-line employees to Board members. Unlike other survey providers, the Energage Platform helps us drill into the data and filter it in many helpful and unique ways. 

Employee engagement data drives recruitment and performance management

The Workplace Survey gives us the right infrastructure to have good, bidirectional conversations with team members and managers, making sure the information goes in both directions. Being able to have Top Workplaces recognition is great as a byproduct, but it’s not why we do it. We choose the Energage Platform because it helps us solve human capital issues like teacher recruitment, retention, and performance management.

Surveying isn’t just something we do once a year. We use the Workplace Survey as a starting point, then we refine, iterate, and really lean into specific topics with the Pulse Surveys. ACE values continuous improvement aspect and innovative flexibility. The Energage platform and the data it provides give us the ability to drill down into different departments and teams, saving the marketing and HR teams a lot of time.

What employees are saying:

“Words cannot express how wonderful it is that ACE embraced feedback from everyone and worked hard to create a more streamlined, user friendly system! Thank you so much for once again listening to us and being a leadership team that truly wants to create an environment where we all love to work! You rock!”

Sally
Employee at American College of Education

Survey insights reveal bottleneck in employee performance review system

The first year we participated in the Workplace Survey, Insights data showed that our employees didn’t find value in their performance management process. That data encouraged ACE to host three different focus group sessions and provided leadership with the right tools to lead those conversations. Our leaders realized they needed to replace the old employee performance review system. Now, we have a more effective process. Our employees helped us to develop that. We would never have been able to dig into that problem without Insights and the data it provides.

Employer branding offers credibility to ACE’s talent recruitment process

Employer Branding is an impressive tool, especially the backend of it. It helps our marketing team pull comments, core values, and other downloadable graphics for branding. You click a few buttons, and there’s a great graphic to spice up your recruiting pages. It’s user friendly, and reduces our number of creative marketing requests, saving us all time. Plus, using feedback straight from employees is much more convincing. It improves our employer brand and recruitment efforts.

ACE leaders plan on using Energage products for years to come

The deliverables, data visualization tools, and executive reports that Insights generates helps us administer important conversations with our executive team. It has been a game changer for getting everyone on board and showing results quickly. We plan to keep using those tools as often as possible.

We also plan to increase survey frequency for part-time ACE employees. We currently survey them every other year, but we plan to increase that to annually and include all adjuncts. We already have an excellent analytics team, but Insights is so robust that we want to use the two together.

“The deliverables, data visualization tools, and executive reports that Insights generates helps us administer important conversations with our executive team. It has been a game changer for getting everyone on board and showing results quickly. We plan to keep using those tools as often as possible.”

Natalie Pelham
Vice President of HR at American College of Education

“Energage takes us and our employee engagement to the next level. I love seeing our year-over-year growth. It also helped us uncover problems in our employee experience that we otherwise wouldn’t have been aware of. The deliverables, data visualization tools, and executive reports that Insights generates helps us administer important conversations with our executive team. It has been a game changer for getting everyone on board and showing results quickly. We plan to keep using those tools as often as possible.

Natalie Pelham
Vice President of HR at American College of Education

ACE's recent Top Workplaces awards