The nuanced drivers behind a global issue

A global technology organisation surveyed its 40,000 employees, collecting open-text responses identifying workplace inhibitors. Their external survey tool determined that 20% of respondents had expressed 'internal processes' as a key inhibitor.

The organisation needed clarification on what this actually meant, where to prioritise action, and what solutions could address the underlying issues.

Treehouse Analytics received the open-text responses flagged as 'internal process', along with operating-site data for each respondent. After analysis, we identified four underlying issues within this cohort.

Understanding the data: one-third of responses had been incorrectly categorised as process-related. The analysis revealed the actual topics being raised and their inhibiting factors - issues the organisation could quickly address. For the remaining responses, we broke down and identified the key issue threads that made up the catch-all term of 'process issues', and uncovered proposed employee solutions.

Prioritisation: by linking issue threads back to respondent records, we created inhibitor profiles showing which problems occurred most frequently, and where. The clearer issue definitions then enabled specific initiatives and targeted messaging based on employee feedback.