Emerson Drives Performance Review Completion from 54% to 99% Across 73k Employees by Redesigning Its Performance Management Process and Using Pulse Surveys
- 54% → 99% performance review completion rate in one year, driven by a synchronized process linking reviews to compensation timing in Workday
- 90%+ of employees reported having meaningful goal-setting conversations with their managers
- Manager accountability and feedback sentiment increased an average of 10 points from 2023 to 2025
When CEOs talk about cultural compatibility during mergers, it can often be overstated. There are invariably going to be differences in cultures, regardless of similarity.
What Was the Opportunity?
As Emerson accelerated its growth strategy, one foundational barrier became clear: performance management was inconsistent and ineffective across the organization. The process varied widely by leader and business unit. In 2024, only 54% of performance reviews were completed, making it difficult to reinforce behaviors, drive accountability, and connect recognition to results.
Without a common model, employees lacked clarity on expectations and connection to enterprise goals. Managers were not consistently equipped to hold effective performance conversations or link individual goals to strategy. This fragmented approach limited Emerson’s ability to scale talent, maintain accountability, and support its growth ambitions during a period of significant portfolio transformation.
What Was the Solution?
Emerson launched a comprehensive Performance Management Process Refresh designed to create a unified, accountable experience for all salaried employees. The refresh addressed process consistency, manager capability, system alignment, and real-time feedback through four reinforcing components.
Enterprise-Wide Process Standardization
Emerson reset the performance management process with clear steps, consistent timelines, and universal expectations. Guidance was created to help employees connect their individual goals to broader organizational priorities, strengthening line-of-sight to Emerson’s purpose and strategy.
Structured Feedback and Manager Training
Feedback and coaching checkpoints were embedded as non-negotiable touchpoints throughout the year, shifting from documentation to dialogue. Emerson delivered a comprehensive training suite for managers covering system training, performance philosophy and principles, best practices and soft-skills learning, and realistic case studies modeling strong conversations. The training was designed to build both confidence and capability around the new expectations.
Compensation-Linked Accountability
Emerson synchronized the salary planning cycle, Workday system workflows, and performance review timeline into a single integrated process. This alignment became the most powerful accountability mechanism in the refresh: performance discussions had to occur in order for pay decisions to proceed. The structural coupling made review completion a prerequisite rather than a recommendation.
Pulse Surveys for Real-Time Adjustment
Emerson conducted pulse surveys through Perceptyx throughout the refresh period to understand employee and manager sentiment, identify friction points in the new process, and make adjustments in real time. Instead of waiting until the next annual survey to assess how the rollout landed, the pulse approach gave the team a continuous feedback loop on the change itself.
What Was the Impact?
Performance review completion surged from 54% to 99%. By the end of 2025, 99% of performance reviews were completed across the enterprise, up from 54% in 2024. The 45-percentage-point gain in a single year reflects the combined effect of process standardization, manager training, and the compensation-linked accountability mechanism that made reviews a structural prerequisite for pay decisions.
90%+ of employees reported meaningful goal-setting conversations. More than 90% of employees reported having meaningful goal-setting conversations with their managers, creating clarity and alignment for the year. Employees indicated they could better see how their work contributes to organizational goals, with purpose connection improving year over year.
Manager accountability sentiment increased 10 points. Sentiment around manager accountability and ability to give performance feedback increased by an average of 10 points from 2023 to 2025, measured through Perceptyx surveys. This two-year trend reflects genuine capability building, not just compliance with the new process.
Consistent follow-through across all business units. The synchronization of system processes and compensation created consistent follow-through across all business units, eliminating the wide variation that had characterized the previous approach. Units that had previously been outliers in completion rates converged toward the enterprise standard.
Pulse surveys enabled mid-course corrections. The pulse surveys conducted during the rollout allowed Emerson to identify specific friction points and adjust the process in real time, rather than discovering issues months later in the annual survey cycle. This feedback loop gave the refresh team operational agility that a traditional launch-and-measure approach would not have provided.
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.”