Why Mosaic partnered with Great Place To Work
In 2019, Mosaic was at an impasse. “We weren’t innovating. Our service lines were stagnating. We had really high turnover and low morale — a very textbook plateau,” says Jessica Fuller, VP of people & culture consulting with Mosaic.
At the time, Mosaic was using a net promoter score to measure employee engagement, but with no other feedback beyond that, it was hard to assess how employees really felt about the organization. Mosaic realized they needed more data through more robust surveys.
Within two years, Mosaic had started to turn things around. Their action planning became more data-driven, and in 2021, they earned Great Place To Work Certification™.
Challenge
Connecting the employee experience to KPIs
Mosaic’s people team suspected that their turnover rate was hurting the company’s bottom line. Not just the hard costs of background checks, job postings, and lost revenue, but also the soft costs of interviewer time and manager training time.
They just needed the data to prove it.
After partnering with Great Place To Work, Mosaic’s retention rate did pick up. But between 2021 and 2024, the company saw a huge jump in staffing, growing from just 70 employees to 250 and increasing its retention rate from around 75% to 88%.
While these are great leaps, Mosaic wanted to dig deeper into what they meant. What kind of impact did the employee experience have on the company’s business performance? Were these tangible metrics? And would those numbers justify further investment?
Solution
Correlational analysis between Trust Index scores and business success
Using four years’ worth of data, Mosaic ran regression tests, plotting their Trust Index scores against employee retention, revenue, and client satisfaction.
The tests identified survey scores as a leading indicator of turnover. And since Mosaic is a consulting business that heavily depends on the employee-client relationship, high turnover comes at a significant cost.
“If an employee is joining, there’s a ramp-up period. They’re not 100% billable on day one,” says Jessica. “If they’re leaving, they start to ramp down, and there’s a revenue gap.”
Beyond that, there are also the costs of conducting background checks, certification requirements, and the time for recruiters to find and interview candidates.
Once Mosaic’s team ran the numbers, they realized that at one point, they were spending 120% of a person’s annual salary in turnover. With a team of just 100 people, Mosaic was losing about $5 million.
However, as their Trust Index scores increased, so too did their retention rate. And as retention went up, client satisfaction followed suit.
Outcome
A cost savings of $2 million per year
Mosaic’s number-crunching revealed a shocking savings. By continuously investing in the employee experience and regularly surveying employees, Mosaic was now saving $2 million in turnover costs.
Not only that, but client satisfaction jumped from roughly 50% to over 70%, with the data clearly showing a correlation to employee retention.
“The longer you have people on your team, the deeper their expertise is going to be. But when you have high turnover, they’re not spending time to develop that expertise,” says Jessica. “Once they have that expertise, they’re able to get better deals and we’re able to get higher value.”
Thanks to the data, Mosaic was able to justify the costs of further investing in the employee experience, such as by creating clearer career paths that would give employees even more incentive to stay.
