Meet Ben Eastment, Principal Consultant at Xref Engage

Have you ever wondered what a Workplace Psychologist does? How does a ‘Great Place to Work’ succeed? What makes employees want to go to work each day? 

Join us as we meet Ben Eastment, a Principal Consultant with Xref Engage. Ben shares how he came to work with some large and diverse organisations to improve employee engagement and satisfaction.

Becoming a Principal Consultant at Xref Engage

Ben’s role as a Principal Consultant, is to work with Xref Engage customers to design and run employee surveys. Ben works closely with each organisation to uncover their objectives and curate a survey that asks questions to reveal insightful results. 

Once results are returned, Ben assists his customers to understand and act on the results. 

In his 15 years with Xref Engage, Ben has helped hundreds of organisations. Ben has run multiple surveys for many of his clients, showcasing his strong ability to manage relationships and retain customers. Such retention has led Ben to see positive change throughout the years at many of the organisations he supports. 

With a team of experts like Ben, Xref Engage supports organisations in conducting data-driven surveys to uncover the voice of their people. Employee feedback helps drive real organisational change, improving company culture, leadership, and service quality. 

Ben also played a pivotal role in overseeing how Xref Engage’s technology developed and has been developing the capabilities of AI when analysing survey responses. 

Ben’s work with AI resulted in him playing a pivotal role in Xref’s Employee Voice Report which asked 40,000 workers in Australia and New Zealand what they love about their organisation—and what could be better.

The Employee Voice report uses AI-driven text analysis from Xref Engage Employee Engagement surveys and the expertise of Xref Engage's internal workplace psychologists. 

The free report highlights top strengths, key priorities for improvement, and industry-specific insights of workplaces in 2024. 

Success, challenges and opportunities as a Principal Consultant

Success as a Principal Consultant for Xref Engage means maintaining a balance between delivering valuable survey insights for clients, acquiring new clients, and continuously improving the product and platform. 

Ben has recently been working with AI to deliver a report analysing all the written feedback from all survey respondents in 2024. 

“When you run a survey with a large organisation, you might get thousands of text comments back from people talking about the organisation's strengths and areas of improvement. Sometimes, a comment could be an entire essay. So, the challenge has always been what to do with that.

Now, with the help of AI, we have a process that summarises the key points of all written feedback, and we can offer recommendations based on that.”

The most challenging part of Ben’s job is ensuring he and a potential customer are always on the same page, and that Ben is clear that the specific approach Xref Engage is proposing is right for the client. 

Sometimes, a change in management or priorities affects organisational objectives 

To overcome this challenge, Ben suggests, “In meetings make sure you have enough time and have very open conversations. Once you ensure you know what the client wants, you can focus on the features of our product that will offer the best results.” 

Offering value

Ben and the team at Xref Engage offer one-on-one guidance when creating and sending your employee engagement survey. 

It’s essential to ask the right employee engagement survey questions. Neutral questions will increase response rates and increase trust in what your organisation is trying to achieve. 

Ben builds relationships with each of his clients, sometimes talking them through really challenging survey results or joining in on their successes. 

“A lot of clients feel like friends. We've had so many conversations. There are lots and lots of bits of expertise and advice that we can give along the way. Our surveys are tailored so we can hold our client’s hand as we walk them through the entire process from start to finish.”

When offering value to Xref Engage customers, Ben explains, “It’s all the insights and expertise that we provide throughout the project.”

Some insights are provided at the beginning of a survey, when designing questions. 

It’s important that employees understand what your survey is trying to achieve, especially if your organisation is trying to improve working conditions. Encouraging employees to participate in the survey is the first step in making your people feel valued. 

Other expertise comes into play when a survey is completed.

“There’s the big stuff around the actions to take and recommendations to implement based on results, but there are also the little pieces of advice that come from experience. For example, how best to roll out the project or how to handle a particularly awkward piece of feedback. Those things are highly valued by our point of contact and the person running things at the client end.”

Providing recommendations

The Xref Engage team provides recommendations after a survey is completed, based on the survey results. 

Ben explains that when you dive into the data, you may see 10 issues for example, but where he and the team are able to provide recommendations, they may be able to give guidance around what areas will provide the most value.  

Ben explains, “We may say, for example, don't try to fix all 10. In fact, don't worry about these three over here. They really don't make that much difference to people. But instead, it’s these ones over here that seem to be making the most difference for your people.” 

Providing recommendations is challenging because every organisation is different, which is why the Xref Engage team looks into the survey results specifically. 

“We explore with each organisation which areas are going to offer the biggest bang for your buck. This will sometimes vary from team to team inside one organisation. It’s not simply a one-size-fits-all, blanket approach to fixing challenges for organisational improvement.” 

The advice organisations receive from their surveys is targeted to the type of people they're trying to improve things for.

The granular level of detailed feedback is what makes Xref Engage surveys so powerful. 

“The challenge is acting on it,” Ben explains. “Particularly in a large organisation. While each area of a workplace certainly has things in common, everyone will have a slightly different set of priorities that they want the business to fix.”

Implementing an action plan based on survey results shows your people you are serious about creating a culture of improvement. A strong employee engagement strategy can lead to increased productivity and a more positive employee sentiment. 

Executives are human too

Xref Engage surveys aren’t always about company-wide engagement questionnaires. Ben talks about the Leadership 360 surveys Xref Engage offers. 

Leadership 360 surveys involve a confidential one-on-one discussion between Ben and the person the survey was focusing on. Ben is lucky to speak with some very senior people who spend a couple of hours discussing their strengths, weaknesses, and challenges. 

Ben shares that Leadership 360 surveys provide a huge amount of insight into the organisation. 

“The Leadership 360 surveys show you that at the end of the day, CEOs and Executives are human too. A CEO of a 5000-person organisation still gets anxious when they're up on stage, or perhaps they don’t want to deal with a difficult problem. These surveys put the ‘humanness’ back into it.” 

Stand out customers

Ben has worked with hundreds of customers during his tenure with Xref Engage. 

Ben finds problem-solving rewarding, whether it's finding a solution to a complex problem, figuring out how best to meet a client's needs, or devising a tech solution to a particular set of data.

“I enjoy constantly seeing new people and finding new ways of doing things. When you see the difference we can make to organisations and people’s lives. When you’ve worked with a client over multiple projects and see their results improve, it’s a great feeling.

We spend so much of our lives at work, it’s great to be able to make such a significant difference for people and the performance of the company at the same time.”

Being able to walk into those organisations, Ben says you can feel the improved culture, the moment you walk through the door. Ben explains that it's nice to see positive organisational change and to feel that he has been a part of making that happen.

One standout customer is CQUniversity. Ben finds their success and increased employee engagement fulfilling because they have improved their survey results over the years Ben has worked with them. 

“When we first started working with CQUniversity, their employee engagement results weren't great. However, over 10 years, we have run many employee engagement surveys with them. We saw changes in strategy and initiatives, and when they ran their last survey with us, the results showed that CQUniversity was looking like a fantastic place to work.

The results had come so far - they'd won an Xref Engage Change Challenge Award and a Best Workplace Award.”

Another stand-out customer Ben shares is Hannover Re, a global reinsurer service. 

“They’re the only client I know that will see 99% of staff responding favourably on a survey item, and be more concerned about  the 1% that weren’t!”

Recent trends in survey results

Ben shared with us what his customers are currently revealing when measuring employee engagement using an Xref Engage Employee Engagement survey.

The most common challenges for organisations are:

• leadership, 
• career opportunities, 
• involvement in decision-making, and 
• breaking down silos. 

Ben has found that employees are currently focusing a lot more on pay and benefits, which is increasingly relevant given the current economic conditions. The other area of focus for many employees is remote work or hybrid work to achieve work-life balance. 

Wrapping up

Ben’s thirst for variety has seen him work with a wide range of organisations across industries and of varying sizes. This has given him an appreciation for what makes employees tick. 

Happy workers feel motivated to contribute to organisational success. Ben thrives and feels a sense of pride watching an organisation implement actionable insights to become a Change Champion or Best Workplace. 

Xref Engage gives people a voice with customised engagement surveys coupled with expert advice from workplace psychologists like Ben Eastment. The survey feedback can result in clear recommendations for insightful change. 

About Ben Eastment

Ben is a registered workplace psychologist with an Honours Degree in Psychology and a Masters degree in Organisational Psychology from the University of New South Wales (specialising in assessment of organisational culture and change management).

He has over 10 years of experience leading a diverse range of engagement, lifecycle, service quality, and leadership surveys for government, private, and not-for-profit organisations, following on from a previous career in the NSW Government. 

He has worked closely with many Universities across Australia and New Zealand, developing university-specific survey projects and indicators. He has also worked individually with key University leaders to develop their own performance and manage their departments. 

Ben has led many of Xref Engage’s largest and most complex survey projects, including the NSW People Matters Survey (which surveyed the entire NSW public service) and IDP Education (which covered offices across more than 30 countries). 

He has also presented research at the Industrial and Organisational Psychology Conference, CPA Congress, and NFP HR Forums. He has been an invited speaker at various industry and private events, such as the CQUni Leadership Forum, TEFMA Directors’ Forum, and MAFC Risk Culture Forum.