To influence workplace culture, leaders first need to understand it. Our research-led approach provides deep insights into how employees perceive their workplace, how they feel and how those perceptions influence behaviour, productivity and satisfaction.
While every organisation's culture is unique, it can be profiled to make sense of an otherwise complex landscape. Some organisational culture profiles are agile, flexible and familiar with rapid environmental changes, whereas other profiles suggest consistency and strict standards of behaviour. Understanding your organisational culture’s strengths and areas for growth assists to create targeted strategies and development opportunities to effectively and genuinely engage and support your workforce.
We go beyond culture to explore climate, mind set and behaviour – measuring trust, fairness, innovation, resilience, optimism and organisational citizenship behaviours – providing a complete view of how your people experience and shape your workplace.
How it works
Customised Surveys
We work closely with your leadership team to customise the survey based on your organisation’s needs. Some partners prefer a comprehensive overview, while others focus on key areas. Our tools are flexible, scalable, and designed to fit your context.
Live Survey Period with Real Time Tracking
The survey stays open for an agreed period to maximise participation. Real-time participation tracking enables us to support you with strategies to maximise response rates and representativeness to ensure the best result.
Clear Reporting and Actionable Insights
Once closed, we analyse your data and prepare a clear and detailed report that outlines your organisation's culture, climate and benchmarks (where feasible). We include practical recommendations and can present key findings to your executive team to support understanding and implementation. Additionally, we can generate a concise report for staff that is easy to digest, reduces administrative workload and highlights leadership’s commitment to taking action on key findings. View sample report.
Optional Add-ons: Focus Groups and Coaching
For organisations wanting to explore their cultural insights and themes in more depth, we offer focus groups and tailored coaching workshops delivered by our experience and qualified organisational facilitators.
Why Partner with UniSA?
- Independent and research-driven – underpinned by academic rigour, ethical protocols, and 30+ years of cultural benchmarking experience.
- No additional training required – our reports are designed to be clear, actionable, accessible and ready to use; no certification or proprietary frameworks required to interpret your results.
- Continuously evolving – our approach is refined through ongoing research, client feedback, and UniSA’s commitment to continuous improvement and lifelong learning
- Customised and collaborative – every project is tailored around your organisation’s needs, values, strategy, and people.
- Benchmarking where available – see how you compare to similar organisations to uncover strengths and prioritise action.
- A practical alternative to commercial consultancy – our model delivers credible, cost-effective insights grounded in both academic and real-world application
Hear what our clients had to say
'We have been working with the UniSA’s CERM PI team for the past 3 years now. They have been coordinating our organisational culture and staff satisfaction surveys and are fantastic to work with. We also engaged them to facilitate a series of focus groups in 2023. The survey process has been seamless from our perspective and we have had a great response rate each year. We are in the process of preparing our year 3 survey. The team are incredibly supportive of our needs and take a professional approach to their research. The results we are getting across our organisation are also really encouraging. Thanks to the collaborative approach we have been able to ask our people what they want our leadership team to do differently. In the past 2 years we have introduced a number of really positive initiatives about communication with our field-based staff, improved our cross-organisational decision making, and have implemented a new staff wellness and wellbeing program. None of this would have happened without the feedback from our people, which we would not have been able to get without the people at CERM-PI.'
Mark Irvin
Manager People and Governance
Bega Valley Shire Council
Over the past four years, we've had the pleasure of partnering with the UniSA’s CERM PI team. They've spearheaded our efforts in understanding our organisational culture, dynamics and staff morale through surveys, and their collaboration and support has been invaluable. Thanks to this collaborative effort, we've been able to directly address our workforce's concerns and preferences, and implemented various initiatives, such as our Wellbeing program. Being able to benchmark our results with other Local Authorities has provided us valuable context to prioritise initiatives that will address areas that are seen as below the benchmark average.
In addition to survey coordination, we enlisted CERM PI’s expertise to conduct a program evaluation of a leadership course staff were put through, which provided us with a solid evidence base for its value and future undertaking
Roberto Bria
Chief Executive Officer
City of Holdfast Bay
UniSA Confidentiality Statement
In accordance with University requirements, data will be managed in a confidential manner, stored according to UniSA's confidentiality and ethics protocols, accessible only to members of the research team for a minimum of 5 years. All data remains strictly confidential throughout the processes. No facility’s performance data is identified during the benchmarking process.
