Riverside is a national housing association with a large, diverse and dispersed workforce, colleagues working across offices, frontline services and communities throughout the UK. They came to WorkBuzz having previously used a competitor platform, where response rates had plateaued below 60% and survey insight felt generic and hard to act on. At the same time, Riverside was navigating a significant period of change: a recent merger had brought two organisational cultures together, and leadership needed to understand whether their values, captured in the Riverside Way, their people strategy and organisational plan, were genuinely landing with colleagues on the ground.
Response rates stuck below 60%, limiting the representativeness and credibility of results
Survey insight felt disconnected from strategic priorities, hard to translate into focused action
A recent merger meant two distinct organisational cultures needed to be understood and brought together
Leaders wanted to know whether the Riverside Way values were genuinely visible in everyday colleague experience
The organisation needed a listening approach that could evolve year on year, not repeat the same questions
“The credibility and professionalism WorkBuzz has brought to this has really felt game-changing for myself and my fellow leaders. This isn't just data, it's meaningful insight with real thinking behind it, particularly around our values, our culture, our behaviours. I felt more after reading my reports than I have in a long time. It's really helping us identify what we need to do more of, and what needs to happen less.”
— Sara Shanab, Executive Director for Corporate Services
| +70% Response rate (back-to-back record) |
+4pts Engagement score (above housing benchmark) |
Step Change Leadership confidence in insight & action |
✔ Back-to-back record response rates
Response rates exceeded 70%, a significant jump from below 60% on the previous platform, and achieved consecutively across survey cycles.
✔ Engagement up 4 percentage points
Riverside's engagement score rose by four points and now sits above the housing association benchmark, having previously been below it when they first started working with WorkBuzz.
✔ Step-change in leadership confidence
The executive team and Chief Officers described the insight as a 'complete step change', the clearest, most actionable data they had ever had from an engagement survey.
✔ Stronger action planning
Leaders at every level moved from vague intentions to focused, evidence-based action plans. Colleagues noticed the difference, reporting greater confidence in the survey as a genuine feedback channel.
✔ Cultural clarity post-merger
Behavioural questions gave leadership a clear picture of how the merged cultures were coming together, where values were landing, and where further focus was needed.
✔ Linking engagement to outcomes
Riverside is now mapping engagement data against customer and organisational performance metrics, beginning to quantify the commercial and social value of a more engaged workforce.
Continuing to evolve the question set, keeping key trending questions while introducing new areas aligned to the Riverside Way
Deepening the exploration of customer experience and how colleague engagement connects to customer outcomes
Using engagement data alongside organisational performance metrics to demonstrate the commercial and social value of listening
Strengthening the culture across all parts of the organisation, ensuring the Riverside Way reaches every colleague, however dispersed