Atlantic Union Bank Grows Its Survey Population 65% Through Two Acquisitions and Sustains 84% Engagement by Treating Listening as a Culture Management System
- 1,840 → 3,045 eligible survey population in one year, with 25%+ of respondents coming from two acquisitions completed in the prior 18 months, and enterprise engagement holding at 84%
- 300 teammates trained as internal customer-support volunteers during technology conversion, replacing an outsourced call center model and reinforcing ownership culture
- 266 open-ended responses from acquired teammates analyzed and translated into a structured, time-bound integration action plan
The most powerful thing we heard is, ‘You listened. You leveraged this information and did something with it.' That reaffirmed their commitment to the combined organization and boosted retention in the long term. The lessons learned from our listening strategy have literally been written into our playbook for future state M&A.
What Was the Opportunity?
AUB entered its December 2025 survey cycle after a period of compressed, high-stakes change. Two acquisitions in 18 months had expanded the workforce by approximately 50% and introduced a large segment of teammates who were new to AUB’s culture, systems, and leadership expectations. By the time the survey launched, more than 25% of respondents came from the two acquired organizations (Sandy Spring at 21%, American National at 6%).
The Sandy Spring acquisition closed in April 2025, but the legal close was only the starting point. Between April and November 2025, AUB managed a structured integration runway leading to the major customer-account and technology conversion. Every day in that window created moments that could either strengthen belonging or erode trust, particularly for teammates new to the organization and frontline teams supporting customers through the transition.
Leadership identified two non-negotiables: preserve the relational culture that existing teammates valued, and strengthen market-oriented behaviours (clarity, prioritization, execution discipline) that leaders viewed as essential for AUB’s next phase. The data confirmed both strength and risk. Enterprise engagement and culture descriptors held consistently across legacy and acquired populations, reducing the likelihood of two cultures forming side by side. But acquired teammate results revealed scepticism about enterprise direction even when local commitment remained high. Confidence that feedback leads to change dropped 7 points. Only about two-thirds of teammates felt involved in decisions that affect their work. AUB treated these signals as early warnings for belonging, trust, and retention.
What Was the Solution?
AUB used its Perceptyx listening program as a culture management system across the full integration lifecycle, connecting people experience data to integration decisions and operational readiness.
Onboarding as a Culture Practice at Scale
Because the Sandy Spring acquisition grew the organization by approximately 50% at once, AUB resourced onboarding accordingly. The CHRO organization assigned a dedicated HR Change Management Consultant and tapped both AUB and legacy Sandy Spring teammates as culture and change champions to support daily navigation and reduce friction. Beginning the day after close, new teammates had access to live “office hours” for high-frequency practical questions (first paycheck in the new system, timekeeping, system access), weekly systems trainings for approximately six weeks, and a Microsoft Teams channel for always-available Q&A and peer support. Leader feedback on the approach was described as overwhelmingly positive.
Translating Open-Ended Feedback into a Time-Bound Action Plan
AUB analyzed post-merger integration feedback in depth, including 266 open-ended responses from Sandy Spring teammates specifically about the integration experience. Leaders used those themes to build a structured action plan focused on four areas: clearer messaging on direction and decisions, faster resolution of process and system pain points, increased leadership visibility and two-way communication, and practical leader tools to strengthen inclusion in day-to-day decisions.
Balancing Relational Culture with Market Execution
Leaders used culture results to align expectations across the combined organization: protect connection and care while adding clarity, prioritization, and execution discipline. This framing helped leaders avoid a false tradeoff between supporting people and driving performance. AUB also established an internal M&A benchmark through two PMI Pulse surveys (2024 and 2025) with both managed and self-service approaches, creating a foundational metric to inform and strengthen future acquisition integrations.
Operational Readiness as a Belonging Strategy
To protect teammate confidence and customer trust through the November 2025 technology conversion, AUB ran two full mock conversion events in a nonproduction environment and fed learnings back into vendor planning between events. The bank completed pre-work (network upgrades, hardware replacements) in advance to avoid a single “big bang” moment of disruption.
300 Internal Volunteers Replace an Outsourced Call Centre
Rather than outsourcing post-conversion customer support, AUB created an in-house model and trained 300 teammates who don’t normally answer customer calls to provide support after the conversion. Senior leaders, including the COO, participated in training alongside frontline teammates. Volunteers could work from home and received cash bonuses for signing up. Call volume was lower than expected, and most volunteers returned to their regular roles within a week. The experience reinforced ownership, service pride, and the relational culture through direct customer-facing action.
What Was the Impact?
Enterprise engagement held at 84% through 65% survey population growth. The eligible survey population grew from 1,840 in 2024 to 3,045 in 2025. More than a quarter of respondents came from organizations acquired within the previous 18 months. Despite this scale of change, 84% of surveyed Teammates reported being engaged, indicating that culture was actively managed rather than left to absorb the impact of growth.
Cultural consistency across legacy and acquired populations. Enterprise engagement and culture descriptors held consistently across both legacy AUB and acquired teammate segments. This reduced the formation of parallel cultures, one of the most common and difficult-to-reverse outcomes of large acquisitions.
Belonging foundations remained strong. Manager respectful treatment held at 93% favourable. Well-being indicators remained at 74–78% favourable. These anchors provided stability for teammates navigating new structures, policies, and technology.
Integration risk surfaced and acted on early. Through engagement profile analysis and the 266 open-ended responses from Sandy Spring teammates, AUB identified scepticism about enterprise direction among acquired teammates and a 7-point decline in confidence that feedback leads to change. These were translated into a structured, time-bound action plan rather than deferred to the next survey cycle.
Conversion weekend reinforced the culture. The 300-teammate volunteer model replaced an outsourced call centre approach that leaders found did not match AUB’s service expectations. Customers gave strong marks for the post-conversion experience. The model demonstrated that protecting culture and executing operationally are the same work rather than competing priorities.
Intent to stay declined only 2 points. A 2-point decline in intent to stay during a period of back-to-back acquisitions, major technology conversion, and 50% workforce expansion is modest. AUB elevated clarity, follow-through, and leader connection as the primary levers to protect belonging and commitment through the next integration phase.
Asset growth from $24.6B to $37.6B. The bank grew by $13 billion in assets in one year, completed the “Golden Crescent” franchise vision from Baltimore through Washington D.C. to Hampton Roads, and earned its third consecutive national Top Workplace designation.
By employing a listening strategy and leveraging a platform that gives you objective data, it’s invaluable to informing your people strategy,” says Miller.
The Impact
Improvements in employee engagement, retention, and leadership support
The employee listening strategy delivered significant benefits:
Discovery of Engagement Hotspots: The data revealed previously unanticipated issues across different business units that leadership had assumed would be more insulated from M&A activity. “We thought our people challenges, such as retention, were only in our wholesale banks, but the reality is they were in our frontline and branches as well,” notes Miller. This insight allowed for more targeted action planning and interventions.
Identification of Cultural Misalignments: The surveys exposed important differences in how each organization interpreted the bank’s core values. While both banks considered themselves people-centric, their practical approaches differed significantly. “[Some of the people from American National Bank] perceived us to be more process-oriented... they really didn’t understand why we had all these ‘hoops’ to jump through,” explains Miller. “They saw that as an example of, ‘Hey, we can be flexible and nimble when we need to service a customer.’ But for us, it was like, ‘Wow, that’s a really risky proposition.’ We leveraged the data and insights to then go and have conversations with those leaders and action plan around it.” Subsequent surveying showed that this “values gap” had indeed narrowed.
Acceleration of Technology Investments: Insights from the survey revealed significant technology gaps that negatively impacted productivity and employee experience. For example, American National Bank, the acquired institution, had implemented innovative tools like DocuSign to streamline loan administration. However, these capabilities were lost during the transition to Atlantic Union Bank, creating frustration among employees. “For your job to be easy, and then to come to Atlantic Union Bank and have the thing that makes it easy go away... that degrades the experience all the more,” explains Miller. This degradation in the employee experience also risked reduced productivity and retention.
Recognizing this as an acute pain point, Atlantic Union Bank acted swiftly. They worked cross-functionally with their technology and operations teams to reprioritize the DocuSign project within their existing roadmap. This decision was driven by the understanding that reinstating such tools was essential for retaining talent and improving engagement. The initiative had a meaningful impact on teammate work experience, engagement, and retention. “The most powerful thing we heard is, ‘You listened. You leveraged this information and did something with it. That reaffirmed the commitment to the combined organization and retention in the long term,’” says Miller.
Expansion of Leadership Visibility: Listening data showed that new markets without an existing Atlantic Union leadership presence struggled more during the transition. “It felt like the blind were leading the blind,” says Miller. This led to a strategic change in their integration approach, ensuring the physical presence and accessibility of legacy leadership in new markets.
Lessons for the Future
Improvements in employee engagement, retention, and leadership support
The insights gained have now become part of Atlantic Union Bank’s M&A playbook, directly informing their approach to future growth. “The lessons learned from our listening strategy have literally been written into our playbook for future state M&A,” Miller explains.
The impact extends beyond immediate integration concerns. The data now informs executive goal-setting and accountability measures as well, with leaders being evaluated on their contribution to successful integration outcomes. “Senior and executive leadership has a responsibility to support the success of the integration,” says Miller. “Thanks to Perceptyx’s platform, we can measure engagement, where we see hotspots, where we’re seeing risk to retention, and where we’re seeing far-reaching positive impacts.”
Senior and executive leadership has a responsibility to support the success of the integration,” says Miller. “Thanks to Perceptyx’s platform, we can measure engagement, where we see hotspots, where we’re seeing risk to retention, and where we’re seeing far-reaching positive impacts.
Looking ahead, Atlantic Union Bank continues to refine its employee listening strategy, particularly as it manages the challenges of back-to-back acquisitions. “Merger fatigue is real,” acknowledges Miller. “We have to prioritize our investment in time to ensure that we are not losing momentum around teammate engagement and actioning on the insights we had, amid a lot of different distractions. In the instance of back-to-back mergers, we have to be mindful of the future integration but also continue attending to the teammates who have joined in the not-so-distant past.”
Objective data has been instrumental in helping the company interpret feedback and insights, explains Miller: “It is imperative to run pulse surveys during a merger and respond to that data before going into the next merger.” This approach provides valuable lessons learned as they prepare for their next acquisition. Another focus area for Atlantic Union Bank moving forward is leveraging features that support action planning: “[Perceptyx has] made [action planning] so easy, it’s so seamless.”