Wearing Culture Well: How Behavioural Insight Drove Inclusion, Engagement & Commercial Performance

60% lower stock loss in high-engagement stores

2x better sales conversion rates than low-engagement stores

Higher gross sales than the prior year

The Challenge

This global fashion brand had strong ambitions around people and culture but felt underserved by their previous engagement provider. Leadership described the partnership as "transactional", "rigid", and "disconnected from the brand’s cultural DNA".

With a new Director of People and Culture stepping in, they saw an opportunity to reset. The goal? To move beyond tick-box surveys and redefine employee listening as a strategic driver of inclusion, belonging, and performance.

What They Needed

More than just a vendor, they wanted a strategic partner to challenge, guide, and co-create with them. They were looking for a hands-on team of experts who could help uncover the human stories behind the data and embed insight into leadership behaviours that would scale quickly.

Our Approach

We began with a pulse survey that provided continuity while signaling a shift in strategy. The goal: pinpoint a maximum of two strategic priorities to anchor their next phase of engagement.

They emerged quickly:

• Strengthening an already progressive approach to inclusion with the ambition to become the most diverse and inclusive employer in their category.
• Improving leadership visibility and increasing the frequency of meaningful conversations between leaders and team members.

We worked with their People Team to co-design a pulse focused on the specific behaviours driving psychological safety and cultural belonging. Ahead of the launch, our People Science Director, Ryan Tahmassebi, delivered a keynote at the company’s global leadership summit, energising people leaders and preparing them to receive and act on the insight.

Key Insight

The data told a powerful story: where regular check-ins between leaders and employees were happening, 84% of words used to describe the culture were positive. Where those conversations weren’t taking place, the positivity dropped to 55%.

We also identified six leadership behaviours that correlated strongly with high engagement, inclusion, and cultural energy. These became a blueprint for leadership development, recruitment, and internal messaging around expectations.

Commercial Impact

By overlaying survey insights with store performance data, the brand was able to quantify the link between culture and commercial results:

• 60% lower stock loss in high-engagement stores
  
  
• 2x better sales conversion rates than low-engagement stores
  
  
• Higher gross sales than the prior year

This connected the dots clearly: when people feel heard, seen, and supported by strong leadership, the results show up on the bottom line.

The Outcome

The work created a wave of sustained momentum. Leaders began initiating more regular conversations. Cultural expectations were reframed. Perhaps most powerfully, the organisation finally had the behavioural evidence to back what it had always intuitively known: in a “business of feelings,” inclusion is performance.

What’s Next

Together, we’re now rolling out a lifecycle approach to listening—capturing insights at every touchpoint from onboarding through exit, enabling smarter interventions and deeper cultural alignment at scale.

Client Feedback

"The additional connections made by the People Science team have really impactful. Through the use of our internal data alongside the data from the surveys we had conducted this year, we have able to tell a clear story of why we are in the business of feelings, sending clear messages to our team on our expectations in this area.

There has been a real step change in our focus on engagement as a result. The collaboration has been really strong, we're looking forward to our second year with the People Science team!"