CIOT and ATT: Achieving 90% engagement through purpose

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Background

The Chartered Institute of Taxation (CIOT) and the Association of Taxation Technicians (ATT) operate as two connected charities with a shared mission: to promote the understanding and practice of tax in the UK.

Their work spans a broad spectrum, from guiding tax professionals through rigorous qualifications to working with government on crucial tax policy issues, including advocating for people who might otherwise be overlooked, such as those who are digitally excluded, older or visually impaired.

Employee engagement is woven into the fabric of CIOT and ATT. There is a strong culture of listening and action, where new initiatives and changes are developed with staff input. This collaborative approach ensures employees feel a sense of ownership over the organisation’s direction, reinforcing their commitment to its mission.

Working with People Insight has helped CIOT and ATT strengthen this culture with clearer survey insight, independent and confidential feedback, manager dashboards and expert support. The result is an employee listening approach that helps leaders understand what employees are experiencing and where action should be focused.

The history of surveys at CIOT-ATT

Before partnering with People Insight, CIOT and ATT worked with another employee survey provider for several years. However, they regularly review suppliers to ensure the best balance of cost, service and usability.

When looking at the market, they wanted a platform that offered a cost-effective combination of actionable insights, robust question sets and continuity with their previous approach.

One of the key advantages of People Insight for CIOT and ATT has been the ability to tailor survey questions and collaborate on refining them to suit their specific needs. This consultative approach has ensured the organisation gathers meaningful data that directly informs action.

Beyond question design, the People Insight platform itself has played a crucial role in the evolution of CIOT and ATT’s employee listening strategy. The introduction of results dashboards for managers has enabled local leaders to review results more easily and decide how best to take action, while the independent and confidential nature of the surveys has reassured employees about transparency and anonymity.

More recently, CIOT and ATT has explored the use of Prism, our AI functionality within the platform, particularly for summarising open-text responses. While still in its early stages, the functionality has provided a valuable, unbiased way to analyse qualitative feedback quickly, offering an additional layer of insight alongside manual review.

Together, these elements helped CIOT and ATT move from survey measurement to a more confident, continuous listening approach.

CIOT and ATT’s 2024 survey in focus

CIOT had a standout 2024 survey, achieving an employee engagement score of 90% and a robust response rate of 84%. These results earned the organisation People Insight’s Outstanding Workplace Award for the second consecutive year.

This achievement is especially impressive considering the survey programme is internally driven by three CIOT and ATT HR colleagues, who manage both pre-survey and post-survey work, as well as communications throughout the year.

Rather than viewing engagement as an annual loop that resets each year, CIOT and ATT sees it as an ongoing journey of continuous improvement.

People Insight supports that journey by giving the team a clear structure for listening, reporting and action. The platform makes results easier to access and interpret, while the wider partnership helps CIOT and ATT keep employee voice connected to decision-making throughout the year.

The 2024 results show that employees are not only engaged, but also willing to take part in the process. High response rates and high engagement together suggest that employees trust the survey, understand its purpose and believe their feedback will be used constructively.

Purpose at the core, strategy on the horizon

Beyond engagement, the survey highlighted particularly strong results in key areas such as job meaning and impact, line management and inclusion. Employees reported a deep sense of purpose in their roles and felt that their managers were not only fostering good working relationships, but were actively invested in their professional growth and wellbeing.

These are important strengths to protect. A high engagement score does not mean an organisation should stop listening. In fact, high-performing organisations need just as much clarity about what is working well as they do about where improvement is needed.

For CIOT and ATT, People Insight’s reporting helps make those strengths visible. Leaders can see where purpose, inclusion and management support are landing well, while also identifying areas where clearer communication or further action could strengthen the employee experience.

Alongside these positive results, the organisation has identified a key focus for improvement in 2025: enhancing employees’ understanding of the organisation’s strategy and direction.

While employees have a clear grasp of their own roles, there is an opportunity to provide more visibility into the broader business model, the inner workings of the charity sector and the top-level strategic decisions that shape their work.

Since much of this thinking is distilled into projects and tasks by the time it reaches employees, CIOT and ATT aims to bridge that gap, ensuring staff feel just as connected to the organisation’s long-term vision as they do to their day-to-day work.

This is where an effective employee listening programme becomes especially useful. Survey insight helps leaders identify where understanding is strong, where communication needs to be clearer and how employees experience the connection between their day-to-day work and the wider mission.

What’s next: The future of employee listening at CIOT and ATT

CIOT and ATT is looking to expand and refine its employee listening strategy, ensuring it remains engaging, inclusive and action driven.

Key priorities include:

• Expanding the application of team-based feedback and action planning to ensure leaders and managers receive well-rounded insights and live change support.
• Adopting a more video-centric communications approach for survey updates, engagement summaries and action plan progress reports to maximise engagement and inclusion.
• Widening the range of voices actively championing employee listening, beyond senior leaders or HR.
• Making charity-wide action planning more collaborative across the workforce, rather than a top-down process.
• Applying AI to enrich communications and understanding.

People Insight is well placed to support this next stage. Manager dashboards can strengthen team-based ownership. Prism can help summarise open comments and surface useful themes more quickly. Consultancy and communications support can help CIOT and ATT keep the listening programme inclusive, practical and visible.

The focus is not simply to collect more feedback. It is to keep improving how feedback is understood, shared and acted on.

Measuring success: what matters most

CIOT and ATT’s high engagement scores are not just feel-good numbers. They directly correlate with strong organisational outcomes, including:

• Low sickness absence rates. Compared to other organisations, CIOT and ATT sees significantly lower levels of absenteeism, with a sickness absence rate of 1.88%. This suggests employees feel supported, motivated and well at work.
• Low employee turnover. Retention rates at CIOT and ATT are far better than averages in their sector. The organisation secured an impressive 95% retention rate in the last year, indicating that employees feel valued, have strong workplace relationships and see a future within the organisation.

These outcomes show why engagement insight is valuable beyond the HR team. When people feel connected to purpose, supported by managers and included in decisions, that can influence wellbeing, retention and organisational performance.

People Insight helps organisations make these connections clearer. By combining engagement scores, benchmarks, comment insight and action planning, leaders can better understand how the employee experience is linked to wider outcomes.

For CIOT and ATT, the data provides both confidence and direction. It confirms that core cultural strengths are having a real impact, while also showing where further action can support long-term success.

Employee listening as a catalyst for change

CIOT and ATT’s journey with employee listening has been one of continuous evolution, trust-building and action-driven engagement.

Their approach is deeper than a tick-box survey. It fosters openness and keeps employees at the heart of decisions.

With the support of People Insight’s platform, CIOT and ATT has developed a strategy that not only drives engagement but ensures it remains a continuous cycle of improvement. People Insight’s tools have enabled the organisation to turn engagement metrics into actionable insights, helping maintain momentum and focus throughout the year.

The strength of this partnership lies in the combination of technology and service. The platform provides accessible reporting, dashboards, confidentiality and Prism-supported analysis. People Insight’s expert support helps CIOT and ATT interpret feedback, refine questions and think carefully about how to act.

This means employee listening is not just a metric for CIOT and ATT. It is a mindset that fuels ongoing success.

Listen to your people and drive meaningful change

Organising an employee survey helps you measure what matters most, uncover the real drivers of engagement and turn insights into action.

By listening closely to your employees, you can improve the everyday experience at work, strengthen your culture and boost performance across the board.

People Insight can help you build an employee listening programme that is clear, confidential and action focused. Our platform gives you accessible dashboards, benchmarks and comment insight. Prism helps summarise feedback and identify themes. Our consultants help you refine your survey, interpret results and focus action where it will make the biggest difference.

We can support you with:

• Employee surveys
• Employee engagement surveys
• Survey question design
• Confidential survey delivery
• Manager dashboards
• Comment analysis
• Prism-supported insight
• Action planning
• Survey communications
• Employee listening strategy

Get in touch today to get started and run an employee survey. Lay the foundation for a more connected, motivated and high-performing organisation.

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