Robertshaw: Where it began
Robertshaw is a global manufacturing company with approximately 4,500 employees across the United States, Mexico, Europe, China, India, Thailand and Canada; building components used in appliances, heating and refrigeration equipment found in homes and businesses worldwide.
With roughly 80% of its workforce in frontline manufacturing roles - many without company email or daily access to a laptop - Robertshaw needed a real listening program that could connect with every employee, regardless of location, language or role.
- Robertshaw had 4,000+ employees across 14 locations, with roughly 80% in frontline manufacturing roles.
- Surveys were difficult to run because many employees lacked company email or daily laptop access.
- Engagement score improved from 7.5 to 8.7 over three years. CultureMonkey helped Robertshaw launch QR-based, multilingual, mobile-first surveys across 9 languages.
- 249 managers received self-serve dashboards to review engagement data and act on it.
- eNPS grew from 9.21 to 38.11, and actively disengaged employees dropped from 11.1% to 3.2%.
Hear it from Robertshaw: A 3-year engagement transformation
Watch how Robertshaw improved frontline employee engagement with CultureMonkey
Why did Robertshaw need a better frontline employee engagement strategy?
No scalable way to reach frontline employees
Before CultureMonkey, Robertshaw relied on manual survey coordination at each site. HR teams had to physically group workers and guide them through paper-based or desktop-based surveys. At larger plants, this process took weeks and interrupted manufacturing workflows.
Surveys in a single language for a multilingual workforce
Robertshaw operated across 14 locations with employees speaking up to 9 different languages. Running surveys mainly in English meant parts of the workforce were excluded from the listening process from the start.
No framework to connect feedback to action
The company had never run a structured engagement program before. In the baseline year, Communication scored 6.5, Recognition scored 7.0, and 11.1% of employees were actively disengaged. Leaders were not yet equipped with a repeatable process for interpreting feedback or driving local action.
Complex workforce data with duplicate records
Employee records included duplicate IDs across different sites, which made routing survey responses accurately more difficult. Without adaptation, data quality and reporting confidence would have suffered.
How did Robertshaw improve frontline employee engagement at scale?
Mobile-first, self-serve survey access for frontline workers
CultureMonkey helped Robertshaw move from guided participation to self-serve participation. QR code surveys, intranet screen integrations, and email-based distribution gave the frontline workforce more flexible access. Break-room kiosks and scannable codes reduced disruption and made participation easier during the workday.
Multilingual surveys across nine languages
To support a global workforce, Robertshaw rolled out surveys in 9 languages across all 14 locations. Employees could respond in the language they were most comfortable using, which made feedback collection more inclusive and more representative.
Custom solutions for complex workforce data
To handle duplicate records across sites, CultureMonkey created a location-based dropdown within QR code surveys. By combining site selection with employee ID, Robertshaw could route responses more accurately and preserve confidence in the data.
The problem CultureMonkey solves is getting to a mostly frontline workforce in nine different languages — half a dozen of which aren't common. It makes it really easy, so we can spend more of our time getting to the output that actually matters: comments, feedback, ratings, and scores — that's where the insights are.
Heather Kane — Change Management & Employee Engagement Lead, Robertshaw
249 managers equipped with self-serve dashboards
Robertshaw rolled out manager dashboards to 249 leaders, giving them direct access to team-level engagement data, driver performance, and improvement opportunities. Over time, engagement language became part of daily management conversations, which signaled stronger adoption for organizational success.
What results did Robertshaw achieve with CultureMonkey?
Engagement score rose from 7.5 to 8.7 over three years
A sustained +1.2 point improvement — 83% of employees are now classified as highly engaged.
eNPS quadrupled - from 9.21 to 38.11
Promoters grew from 1,622 to 2,057, while detractors were nearly halved from 1,230 to 654.
Actively disengaged employees dropped from 11.1% to 3.2%
A 71% reduction - from more than 1 in 10 employees to fewer than 1 in 30.
Manager scores nearly doubled
Managers rated 8+ by their teams grew from ~40% to over 84%, with particularly strong gains in Mexico.
Every single engagement driver improved - every year
All 10 drivers in CultureMonkey's RESPECT™ framework showed consistent year-over-year improvement, with Communication gaining the most at +1.9 points.
Build a culture that listens when it matters most
See how CultureMonkey helps global teams listen, act, and improve engagement at scale.
Book a demo3-Year over-time analysis
The transformation at the driver level is remarkable. Communication — the lowest-scoring driver in 2024 at 6.5 — improved by nearly two full points to 8.4 after Robertshaw launched an auto-translating intranet and built a dedicated feedback-loop communication model. Recognition climbed from 7.0 to 8.3 as managers used dashboards to identify and act on specific gaps.
From day one, the CultureMonkey team adapted the platform's functionality and got creative to help us overcome challenges unique to our business — and they didn't just help us launch a survey, they helped us think through how to truly engage managers and people leaders.
Heather Kane — Change Management & Employee Engagement Lead, Robertshaw
The bottom line: In three years, Robertshaw went from no engagement program to a score of 8.7, quadrupled its eNPS, cut active disengagement by 71%, and improved every single driver — every single year. They built more than a survey program. They built a listening culture.
Close the gap between what employees feel and what leaders know
Book a DemoMy name is Heather Kane. I'm based in the Chicago land area and I lead change management and employee engagement for our company called Robertshaw. We're a global manufacturing company with about 4,500 employees around the world. We build components used in appliances, heating, and refrigeration equipment — so you probably have some of our products in your home or business.
And so how is it that you personally support the workforce?
About 80% of our workforce is in a manufacturing role, so many of them don't have company email or access to a laptop during the day. Three years ago I was tasked with finding a solution for how we start a real listening program — a way to connect with all employees so we didn't have to rely on a waterfall approach from 400 managers and supervisors trickling down to 4,000 other people and just hoping it worked out.
When evaluating employee engagement survey vendors and feedback tools, what differentiated CultureMonkey and made it the right choice for Robertshaw?
Workforce access was just the biggest thing. Many people assume most employees have email or access to a laptop, and that just isn't the case in a manufacturing environment. Mobile access and the use of QR codes really helped us get to frontline employees very easily.
The analytics were also easy for leaders to understand — the company had never had this before. Working with the CultureMonkey team to evolve that has been incredible. They've been so supportive in helping us not just launch a survey, but think about how to engage managers and people leaders to really understand what they're seeing.
From day one, CultureMonkey adapted the platform's functionality and got creative with services to help us overcome unique business challenges and keep those conversations going.
Robertshaw operates across multiple countries with a large blue-collar workforce. What challenges did that create in running engagement surveys and consolidating feedback across all those locations?
That has been a journey. The first part was just having translations — the first year we had to provide our own, but now there are built-in translations, which is huge. Being able to capture results across different survey versions was really helpful for getting targeted information, and CultureMonkey made it easier to give leaders more specific, focused insights on what they should be addressing.
And the simplification of access for employees was massive. We don't have a large HR organisation. At every site, HR used to have to pull groups of 5 to 10 employees off the line just to answer 35 survey questions. At one of our sites with 1,400 frontline workers — divide that by groups of 10 — it was just an enormous amount of work.
This year we got HR fully on board with QR codes, intranet screens, and break room kiosks. People are now accustomed to sharing feedback on their own terms, and that self-serve aspect drastically reduced the time every HR team member was putting in at every plant location — and made the whole process far less disruptive to manufacturing.
Have you had any really cool feedback — people saying they love this new system?
Honestly, this whole listening program has had a massive impact. We've run five surveys — three annual and two pulse. There was improvement from year one to year two, but scores felt stagnant at the pulse stage. Then this last survey the numbers just shot up. The goal was set very high and I wasn't sure we'd hit it — but we did.
Because we weren't just focused on pushing out a survey anymore, we moved beyond teaching every manager how to read a heat map. The feedback we're getting now is incredible. When I summarised our top five themes for the first time ever, one of them was "proud to work here." That's extraordinary.
We got over 900 comments this year. Manager scores jumped dramatically — last year around 40% of managers scored an eight or higher; this year it's over 84%. That means most of my employees are working for someone they classify as a good manager. And the concerted efforts at key sites — especially in Mexico — are really showing results.
Since implementing CultureMonkey's Pulse Survey tools alongside annual engagement surveys, how has your approach to employee listening evolved?
Pulse surveys felt pretty stagnant six months in. We had to figure out why managers were taking action but employees weren't seeing it. That led us to some really incredible changes — we launched an intranet with screens, now auto-translating, so we can push content out broadly.
We realised employees weren't connecting the dots between "I gave feedback last year" and the actions taken since then. So we built a communication pillar — a model that says: here's your feedback, here are the actions taken, here's what you should be seeing. That was a key discovery.
If we had only run annuals, I genuinely don't think we'd have achieved these results. It took multiple survey cycles to see the trend, identify case study sites, and then watch those sites take structured action and see vastly improved results. It just takes time for people to believe the numbers — and the stories behind them give us so much more credibility when presenting to senior executives.
With participation consistently above 85%, what do you believe drives strong employee trust and engagement in the survey process?
A big part was anonymity and privacy. From the very first survey there was so much concern around that, and we've definitely honed in on it — people are clearly trusting it now, and they're starting to see the impact of changes in their daily work life.
Leaders can now see the results of taking action — not just in the engagement score, but in other parts of the business. They know what levers they can pull. I remember a high leader in Mexico who was lukewarm about the whole thing. I asked what he wanted to see, he gave me a couple of ideas in 10 minutes, I made them happen, and the next survey his team's numbers improved dramatically. Now he's the one chasing me down for data.
When we first started I had to hound people to look at results. Now leaders are proactively asking. The issues are no longer about getting people to do it or believe the results — we're having real conversations about what the data means and what to do next. Even my executive presentations have changed: far less data-heavy, far more story-driven, because I'm no longer having to prove the programme is valid.
How have the analytics, manager-level reports, and translated feedback helped leadership identify trends and take action across regions?
We started out pretty unsophisticated with this type of data. CultureMonkey sends us a full file with both original language and translated language. We parse it into different groups — comments about safety, for example, go not just to the site manager but also to the environmental health and safety team so problems can be attacked from multiple directions.
Now people use the word "driver" on their own — it's part of the everyday language, not just my vocabulary. They understand what it means, they know the questions, they care about specific areas. People want to know how to dive deeper and do comparisons, and the self-serve drill-down capabilities in CultureMonkey are there for them when they're ready.
Every presentation I do now, the comments are front and centre. Leaders want to hear the stories — which location, which job function — whether good or bad. It's just been really fun to present because they're genuinely engaged with it.
If you were recommending CultureMonkey to another organisation evaluating employee feedback tools, what problem would you say it solves best?
The problem it solves is getting to a mostly frontline workforce in nine different languages — half a dozen of which are not common languages. It makes that genuinely easy, so we spend more of our time on the output: the comments, feedback, ratings, and scores — because that's where we derive insights and take actual action.
Choosing CultureMonkey was a mix of having a tool that was accessible from the start, while still having a powerful analytics layer behind it. And I just can't say enough about the team. From day one they've done some crazy creative things with us — all-right-let's-figure-that-out moments we'd never tried before. That loyalty and partnership is huge for me. I know I can rely on CultureMonkey for whatever comes next.
Talk to me a little bit about your relationship with the team — what has it been like to have a teammate in this huge organisation?
It has been huge. I lost someone on my team who was running point on a lot of this, so being down on resources made the partnership even more critical. The tool itself isn't hard to use — but if I'm not in it every day, I'm not as comfortable as someone who is. They've always taken that lift off. In theory I could do a lot of it myself, but they just say "don't worry, we'll handle that, it'll take us five minutes."
They get on calls with me in my time zone whenever I need them. If someone's in the Chicago area, we meet in person. It's really just been like brainstorming with a colleague — how can we do that, what's the ultimate goal, how can we approach this. I don't think they've ever told me no for anything. We've always figured something out.
Is there anything I didn't ask today that you really wanted to make sure you conveyed?
The other piece is that it's actually a great value. We were an unsophisticated organisation when it came to engagement data and surveys, so having a tool that's size-adjustable for where you are in your journey was critical. People suggested we look at a Gallup survey and I said: A, we don't have the budget, and B, we couldn't handle that level of complexity. CultureMonkey had all the stuff we needed to run effective surveys without raising more questions than it answered.
Add in the partnership from day one, the thinking about global audiences, and just being there on call — it wasn't a hard decision to make. They're definitely the right partner for us. Honestly, I didn't know if we'd outgrow it, but we're not. They're growing with us. Our organisation is evolving and CultureMonkey's platform and product offering is evolving — so we're growing together.