Michelin Achieves 100% Manager Action Commitment Across 132,000 Employees
- 100% of managers committed to at least one action based on team feedback
- 93% survey participation
- 84% engagement
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?
For several years, Michelin anchored employee listening in an annual global engagement survey provided by another vendor. While this approach provided valuable insights, it also revealed important limitations as the organization's transformation agenda accelerated.
Listening had become a once-a-year event. Employees and managers increasingly perceived the survey as a discrete moment rather than a continuous strategic capability. The annual cadence couldn't keep pace with the speed of organizational change.
Managers struggled to translate insights into action. Despite receiving results, managers and HR teams found it difficult to consistently convert survey data into clear, sustained follow-through. Many felt overwhelmed by data without clear guidance on priorities.
The platform couldn't support global complexity. With 132,000 employees across multiple regions, cultures, languages, and employment models — including affiliates outside Michelin's primary digital infrastructure — the organization needed better segmentation, faster reporting, and stronger governance than the legacy system could provide.
Listening data and internal feedback highlighted what managers needed: simpler access, clearer dashboards, and more support to act. Leaders recognized that manager effectiveness was a critical driver of engagement, retention, and performance but lacked a scalable way to support it.
The business case was direct: engagement, leadership quality, and employee voice were linked to retention, safety, productivity, and transformation readiness. Michelin needed to move beyond measurement toward activation and follow-through.
What Was the Solution?
Michelin selected Perceptyx as its new global partner to build a comprehensive employee listening ecosystem spanning the annual engagement survey, global exit surveys, and candidate experience surveys.
Global rollout at enterprise scale. The implementation covered 132,000 employees worldwide, including affiliates and entities outside Michelin's primary digital domain. Single Sign-On (SSO) and employee ID-based logic simplified access while strengthening data integrity.
Dashboards designed for action. Customized dashboards and presentation-ready reports enabled managers to understand results and discuss them effectively with their teams. Clear confidentiality thresholds ensured trust and compliance across regions.
Action planning embedded in the platform. Rather than treating action planning as a separate HR process, Michelin embedded AI-Assisted Action Planning and Nudges directly in the platform, thereby shifting focus from insight delivery to sustained behavior change. Managers were positioned as owners of action, not just recipients of results.
Extensive enablement infrastructure. More than 3,850 managers received training worldwide. A network of 400+ local coordinators, supported by a newly structured Regional Coordinators model, ensured consistent adoption across geographies. HR and PDP (People Development Partner) teams were equipped to coach, support, and follow up with managers.
Communication reinforced the shift: action planning was framed as a leadership responsibility, and team discussions became a core leadership practice rather than an optional exercise.
What Was the Impact?
Michelin's transition transformed employee listening from a measurement exercise into a leadership-driven, action-oriented system.
100% manager action commitment. Every manager using the platform committed to at least one concrete action based on their team's feedback, with follow-up planned over six months. AI-driven insights, recommended priorities, and Nudges supported managers in maintaining momentum between surveys.
Stronger feedback culture. Managers reported feeling guided rather than overwhelmed. As one Regional Coordinator observed: "For the first time, managers didn't just receive results — they felt guided. The platform helped them focus, commit, and follow up, instead of feeling overwhelmed by data."
Improved manager enablement. HR and PDP teams reported greater ability to support managers effectively, with aggregated insights helping identify common leadership themes and capability gaps. Data now informs leadership development priorities and ongoing transformation initiatives.
Platform adoption exceeded expectations. SSO integration, comprehensive training, and the coordinator network drove strong adoption across regions. Engagement scores and participation rates are monitored globally, with action plan activation and follow-through tracked through the platform.
Leadership accountability strengthened. By embedding listening and action into the manager role, Michelin reinforced leadership effectiveness at scale. Team discussions became more structured, with visible follow-up replacing sporadic engagement with results.
Michelin continues expanding its listening ecosystem with pulse checks and lifecycle surveys, building on the foundation established through this transformation.
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.”