Solenis Achieves 99.8% Manager Action Plan Completion and $4.7M in Turnover Cost Avoidance Post-Acquisition
- 99.8% of people managers submitted a Culture Action Plan
- $4.7 million in estimated turnover cost avoidance from teams led by high-performing managers
- $175 million in projected global efficiency gains from senior leadership capstone projects
- 9% increase in internal promotions
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?
When Solenis acquired Diversey Holdings in 2023, the company's headcount jumped from approximately 6,500 to 16,500 employees. The 2024 global culture survey, conducted through Perceptyx, revealed that this rapid integration had created uneven manager effectiveness across regions and business units.
The data showed measurable disparities. Overall satisfaction levels varied by geography, with Europe and North America scoring lower than other regions. Despite "Manager Relationship" appearing as an organizational strength, several manager-specific survey items had declined year over year, including clarity of expectations and employees' sense of feeling respected. The correlation between employee intent to stay and satisfaction with one's manager had also strengthened compared to the prior year, meaning manager quality was becoming a bigger factor in retention decisions.
The survey also surfaced pressure on managers themselves. Women in leadership at the director level and above reported significantly lower manageable-stress scores, and frontline and mid-level managers were carrying the weight of supporting teams while navigating integration-related process changes, new systems, and shifting expectations. Employees in lower-scoring regions reported less stability and clarity from leadership, while those most involved in the integration cited inconsistent communication, unclear expectations, and process complexity as barriers to doing their jobs effectively.
Because engagement, well-being, and retention all traced back to the manager experience, Solenis recognized this as a critical intervention point during a period of major organizational change.
What Was the Solution?
Solenis built a multi-layered response that started with accountability and extended into targeted leadership development at every level.
Culture Action Planning as a Leadership Expectation. The most immediate action was elevating Culture Action Planning from an optional exercise to a required leadership behavior. Solenis trained all people managers on how to interpret their team's culture survey results, identify themes, and facilitate psychologically safe conversations with employees. Every people manager was required to develop and submit a Culture Action Plan through the Perceptyx platform, directly tied to their team-level data. Managers with a Manager Index score below 3.5 received additional review support to ensure plan quality. The result: 99.8% of people managers submitted a plan.
GEMstone: Equipping Frontline Managers. To address the uneven manager support surfaced in the data, Solenis launched GEMstone, a foundational leadership development program for first- and second-line people managers. The program targeted the specific gaps the survey identified: communication clarity, expectation-setting, and team support during organizational change.
DirectImpact and DirectImpact+: Strengthening the Director Layer. Because confidence in the integration and strategic direction had emerged as a key opportunity area, Solenis expanded development offerings for directors. DirectImpact+ included capstone projects built directly from culture survey insights and bottom-scoring items, turning leadership training into operational problem-solving.
WERise: Addressing the Women-in-Leadership Gap. The survey data showing significantly lower well-being and higher stress among women at the director level and above prompted a specific response: WERise, a nine-month executive development program focused on identity, confidence, and resilience. The program earned a perfect 5.0/5.0 satisfaction rating from participants.
Scaling a Global Learning Culture. Beyond targeted programs, Solenis embedded continuous learning as a company-wide expectation through its Grow with Solenis initiative, expanding access to Workday Learning, Coursera, GoFluent, and internally developed LEAD sessions. The organization delivered over 1.6 million learning hours, and 86% of employees met their annual learning goal.
The executive team reinforced the survey-to-action cycle through town halls, direct participation in development programs, and visible oversight of action planning progress and Manager Index improvements. Managers also facilitated employee-led team conversations to define what each culture survey item meant for their specific team and what actions would make the most difference.
What Was the Impact?
Perceptyx data showed a direct relationship between leadership training and employee outcomes. Employees whose managers participated in development programs reported +3 points higher engagement, +5 points higher clarity of future vision and direction, +3 points higher fairness in performance management, +3 points higher support, communication, and collaboration, and +4 points higher awareness of growth and development opportunities versus employees under untrained managers. Managers who attended leadership programs were significantly more likely to be rated as top-quartile leaders by their teams, while managers who did not attend were more likely to fall into the bottom quartile.
Leadership participation in training increased from 43% to 55% year over year. The graduation rate across all programs reached 86%, and the internal promotion rate rose 9% year over year, reflecting stronger bench strength and succession readiness.
Teams led by high-performing managers generated an estimated $4.7 million in turnover cost avoidance. Capstone projects from the DirectImpact+ program, built from culture survey insights and bottom-scoring items, are projected to deliver $175 million in global efficiency and process improvement value through reduced administrative friction, enhanced commercial execution, and increased selling time.
The WERise program produced some of the strongest qualitative feedback in company history. One participant shared the following during the final session: "For the first time in my career, I saw myself as a leader, and my cohort saw it too." Other participants described breakthroughs in self-confidence, reduced imposter syndrome, and a lasting sense of professional community.
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.”