⚡ TL;DR
- Cerence AI achieved an 86% survey participation rate across 15+ countries on their first CultureMonkey engagement survey.
- The overall engagement score reached 8.0, with 73.9% of employees classified as highly engaged.
- Surveys ran in 30+ languages - employees chose their preferred language at response time, not at survey creation.
- New hires scored 10% higher in engagement than employees with 5+ years of tenure, surfacing a long-term retention risk.
- An 18% engagement score gap was identified between top-performing Asian locations and lower-scoring European offices.
Why Cerence AI needed a new employee engagement platform
Cerence AI's HR leadership could not build a credible, organization-wide listening program on a platform that failed at multilingual delivery, offered inadequate support, and lacked the reporting infrastructure needed to drive manager-level action.
A survey platform that couldn't support 20+ languages
Glint offered no scalable multilingual capability, leaving non-English-speaking employees across 15+ countries unable to respond in their primary language - undermining the quality of data the HR team could act on.
Support that blocked execution, not enabled it
Complex reporting asks and configuration requirements went unresolved with Glint, preventing HR from delivering timely, decision-ready data to executives and people managers.
No Workday integration, no unified employee data
Without a Workday integration, employee data had to be managed outside the survey platform entirely, creating manual overhead and breaking the link between HR systems and listening data.
Reporting that couldn't go below the surface
The previous reporting structure couldn't slice results by manager, tenure band, or designation - making it impossible to move from company-wide scores to the team-level insights that drive meaningful action plans.
How Cerence AI ran its first global engagement survey on CultureMonkey
CultureMonkey gave Cerence AI's HR team the multilingual infrastructure, manager tooling, and delivery precision needed to run a credible, organization-wide listening program across 15+ countries for the first time.
Surveys authored once, delivered in 30+ languages
Built in English and translated into 30+ languages - including Chinese, Hindi, Korean, Arabic, and German - with each respondent choosing their preferred language at response time. This meant the survey intent was preserved in every language, not just literally translated.
“I am able to create things in English with the question sets and instructions. And CultureMonkey is able to translate that accordingly - not just a translation you might get on Google, but one that is actually utilized in each language, understood as the question is intended to be understood. And that is done by the employee choosing the language that they would like to take that survey in, which is a really big difference maker.”
Action plans built for every manager
Managers were equipped with action plan suggestions tied directly to their team's lowest-scoring drivers, reducing dependency on HR for post-survey follow-through and enabling faster, more targeted interventions.
Anonymity-preserving reminders across multiple channels
Targeted only non-completers across email, QR codes, and Microsoft Teams, protecting respondent anonymity while sustaining participation throughout the 18-day survey window.
Reporting granular enough for manager-level action
Results were delivered segmented by business unit, team, location, manager, designation, and tenure - enabling precise interventions rather than reliance on company-wide averages.
“CultureMonkey's platform gave us a venue to do that, as well as for utilizing some AI knowledge within the platform to suggest some action plans that may work for them. And that was very helpful to us so that we were not trying to reinvent the wheel for our managers.”
Workday integration unifying HRMS and survey data
Cerence AI's Workday HRMS was connected directly to CultureMonkey, syncing employee data into the survey platform and eliminating the manual data management overhead that had previously burdened the HR team.
Run your first organization-wide engagement survey in 120+ languages
CultureMonkey's multilingual survey infrastructure lets your employees respond in their preferred language - with zero manual translation overhead for your HR team.
What results did Cerence AI achieve with CultureMonkey?
New hires 10% more engaged than long-tenured employees
Cerence AI identified a 10% engagement score gap between employees under one year of tenure and those beyond five years - surfacing a long-term retention risk that future survey cycles can track and address before it compounds.
Uncovering an 18% regional engagement gap globally
CultureMonkey's granular reporting surfaced an 18% engagement score gap between top-performing Asian locations and lower-scoring European offices - giving regional HR leads precise, data-backed starting points for intervention rather than broad assumptions.
What global technology companies can learn about scaling employee engagement
Cerence AI's experience demonstrates that global technology companies don't need to accept low participation or shallow data as the cost of operating across languages and time zones. With the right infrastructure - multilingual delivery, automated HRMS sync, and manager-level reporting - an organization-wide listening program becomes operationally feasible at any scale. The 86% participation rate Cerence AI achieved on its first survey wasn't the result of luck; it was the result of removing every barrier between an employee and their ability to respond honestly, in their own language, on their preferred channel.
| Topic | What you'll learn | Applicable to |
|---|---|---|
| Multilingual survey design | How to deploy one survey across 20+ languages without managing separate links, communications, or reminder schedules | HR teams at multinational organizations |
| Employee-controlled language selection | Why letting employees choose their survey language - rather than assigning by location - produces more authentic data | CHROs at globally distributed companies |
| Manager enablement post-survey | How AI-suggested action plans reduce the interpretation burden on people managers and improve follow-through | HRBPs and L&D teams |
| Enterprise email deliverability | Why corporate firewall configuration must be resolved before launch - and how to partner with IT to whitelist survey domains | HR operations teams at large enterprises |
| Building a first baseline | Why a first-cycle survey on a new platform is strategically valuable even without prior benchmarks - when the right granularity is captured | Any org switching engagement platforms |
| Focused action over broad intervention | Why committing to 1-2 drivers per cycle - with named owners - produces better outcomes than addressing everything at once | HR leaders managing post-survey action planning |
Running engagement surveys across regions and languages?
See how CultureMonkey helps global HR teams capture reliable, organization-wide feedback - without added operational overhead.