American Arbitration Association Elevates Employee Listening with One Connected Platform

The Challenge

Growing quickly in a remote, AI-enabled workplace   

American Arbitration Association keeps turnover low, at 7% overall and 4.5% voluntary, and nearly every job offer it makes is accepted. Low turnover still doesn’t mean low hiring. Headcount grew about 10% last year, with another 8% to 9% planned, which adds up to roughly 150 hires a year. Meanwhile, the American Arbitration Association has decommissioned a number of offices and most of its staff now work remotely. Many employees, especially those who joined during or after the pandemic, have never met in person, and leaders can no longer pick up how managers lead just by being in the room. 

Change fatigue and AI anxiety    

A century-old institution that is also launching AI products is bound to feel a lot of change at once. Employees told the American Arbitration Association that some changes feel rushed, that several initiatives land at the same time, and that they want more detail before things roll out. Like many organizations right now, the American Arbitration Association is also hearing anxiety about what AI means for the future of work. 

Developing managers and future leaders

American Arbitration Association promotes from within, so it has a lot of first-time managers who are learning to lead without the in-person mentoring earlier generations of managers had. Employees also said they don’t always have a clear line of sight to what a career looks like there. Promotions are frequent (17% of employees last year, against about 13% in a typical year), but younger employees in particular want things to move faster. At the same time, a meaningful number of executives and vice presidents are likely to retire over the next decade, which makes it important to have ready talent in place.

Until recently, succession planning at the American Arbitration Association was informal. Plans lived at the executive level, often on a spreadsheet, and the unwritten plan for many roles was simply “what if someone leaves?” That is a real risk at an organization where the work is so specialized. Roughly 80 to 85% of American Arbitration Association roles focus on arbitration and mediation, so talent can’t easily be hired externally.

“Many of the jobs that we have at American Arbitration Association are not things you can plug and play from external sources. Most of our talent is kind of homegrown.”

— Eric Dill, Senior Vice President & Chief People Officer, American Arbitration Association

The Solution: Choosing Quantum Workplace 

American Arbitration Association has been using engagement surveys for nearly a decade, first as the basis for the Nonprofit Times Best Places to Work program. When it came to Quantum Workplace, it added a second survey that it could customize more. It now runs three a year, and the team is still looking for the right rhythm. In Eric’s words, the goal is a “Goldilocks” cadence that hears employees without wearing them out. 

American Arbitration Association partnered with Quantum Workplace to modernize the full employee lifecycle and give leaders a continuous, insight-driven view of the employee experience. The program includes engagement, exit and new hire surveys, growth, which the American Arbitration Association adopted early to support career pathways and development; and Quantum’s tools for recognition, goals and 1:1s. Talent Reviews, Succession Planning and using Quantum’s AI tools to analyze the data followed. 

HR and executives can now explore the data on their own. Leaders can filter and slice results by team, tenure or other groups, and Smart Slices point out the demographics where a question’s scores differ the most. Keyword detection flags themes in open comments, and AI summarizes what employees said about a specific question, limited to the people each leader is responsible for. American Arbitration Association gives its executives their own access so they can look at their teams’ results. 

Employee data flows into Quantum from their HR system every night, so surveys, reports and succession plans always reflect current roles and reporting lines. 

The Results

American Arbitration Association now has a clear, regular read on how employees feel, from their first week through years of tenure, and the picture is a healthy one. Here is how it has played out.

Early warnings that let HR act in days  

New hire surveys at the one-week and 30-day marks surfaced a gap no one had seen: new employees were waiting too long for equipment because of a supply chain issue. HR partnered with the Information Systems department to fix it right away, instead of finding out weeks or months later. A team of hiring managers now watches over new hires from day one. The surveys also bring small misunderstandings to the surface early, which helps explain why newer employees remain positive. 

Engagement that holds steady, above the benchmarks   

Average agreement and the Engagement Index have held steady for three years, and they exceed external benchmarks. In a stretch when many industries have seen engagement dip, that steadiness stands out. American Arbitration Association also compares itself with the top quartile. Its results sit meaningfully above the top quartile for organizations of similar size and slightly above the top quartile for its industry, professional, scientific and technical services.

A few highlights from the most recent survey:

• 94% of employees feel accepted by their team, up 3 points from last year and a point shy of the top quartile.
• Intent to stay improved from last year. It is now in double digits above the industry average and 5 points above the top quartile.
• 3 of the 5 most improved items relate to employees’ immediate managers.
• Using strengths at work was the one item to show a meaningful positive shift.

Benchmarks also help them keep a good result in perspective. When one pay-related score slipped a few points from the year before, the first reaction was concern. Eric showed leaders how they compared with other Best Places to Work organizations, and the conversation changed.

“When I showed them that all the other companies were hovering around 70, we were significantly above other Best Places to Work, not to mention all other companies, and so I was able to get in front of that big, long discussion.”

— Eric Dill, Senior Vice President & Chief People Officer, American Arbitration Association

Insight leaders can use to be precise   

Because Quantum Workplace breaks survey results down by business unit, tenure and manager status, American Arbitration Association can see where an issue sits instead of treating it company-wide. Concerns tend to cluster in one or two divisions or pay grades, so action can be targeted and they can dig into what is happening in those teams. The same data shows a familiar tenure curve, with new hires most positive and a dip around years three to nine, and a gap in the middle where managers want more support and recognition. Both inform where HR focuses next: keeping people connected through those middle years and closing the support gap for managers.

Data in leaders’ hands  

Before, HR often played the role of interpreter. Executives would ask Eric to drill down on their teams, and he didn’t always have the time. With their own access and a Quantum-led walkthrough, leaders can explore their results themselves and bring their own questions.

“I don’t have to be the voice of the data. Leaders can kind of go in and look for themselves.”

— Eric Dill, Senior Vice President & Chief People Officer, American Arbitration Association

Using AI to work smarter  

American Arbitration Association doesn’t just talk about AI with employees; it uses it inside HR. The team used generative AI to rewrite and standardize job descriptions, a project that once took years and an outside tool. That clean-up made it quick to load job profiles and competencies into Growth. An AAA-built chatbot now answers first-level policy and benefits questions around the clock, so HR can spend its time on the harder conversations. And every employee can take a generative AI certificate course that ends with a capstone project, which has already produced practical ideas from within HR itself. 

A coaching culture and a stronger talent pipeline 

American Arbitration Association replaced outdated review processes with continuous performance practices. Weekly 1:1s capture feedback and action items, goals are tracked, and recognition posts celebrate wins. In a single month this summer, colleagues posted 66 peer recognitions, and HR uses the feature to share winners of American Arbitration Association Pride Award with the whole company. More than 700 annual and mid-year reviews now run through the platform. Leaders value how simple it is.

“As a manager, everything is in one place — my goals, my updates, my team’s development. Quantum Workplace keeps me organized and makes end-of-year reflection so much easier.”

— Anne Losada, Assistant Vice President of People Strategy & Enablement, American Arbitration Association

Focus on growth and development 

In surveys, people said they wanted a tool to help them plan their careers, and they responded by adopting Growth early, giving employees tailored development plans, real-time coaching suggestions and clear career pathways.

Growth supports the same goal from the employee side. American Arbitration Association joined as an early adopter because it sees career development as a way to keep people, and as a way to prepare the workforce for what AI and technology will change about their jobs. Employees choose how much to use it.

“Growth is a retention lever, we tend to grow a lot of our employees internally, which is a good thing.”

— Eric Dill, Senior Vice President & Chief People Officer, American Arbitration Association

They tested Growth with a pilot group of about 20 colleagues first. Most who answered the follow-up survey agreed or strongly agreed that it was easy to use, and the job explorer was a favorite, because it lets people see other roles across the organization and what it takes to grow into them. With competencies mapped to about 190 job profiles, this opened up Growth to all employees, timing the launch after mid-year reviews, so career conversations with managers were still fresh.

Succession planning and talent reviews 

Recent survey data showed the need for deeper succession planning, so they expanded their rollout of Talent Review and Succession Planning. Leaders can now identify future talent, assess readiness, spot potential flight risks and build a leadership pipeline.  

American Arbitration Association’s board set a corporate goal to focus on employee development and succession planning, and Quantum Workplace gave the HR team the tools to act on it. The team defined about 70 critical roles and loaded them into Talent Review and Succession Planning, where each role shows its current leader, ready-now candidates and people to watch for the future. 

Because the succession plan builds on talent reviews, the work leaders already do to assess performance and potential feeds directly into who is ready for what. For many roles, that is the first formal plan they had. 

They started with a pilot. HR asked for nominations for specific positions, then asked the supervisors of the nominated employees to complete talent review forms. The pilot ran over the summer, and the team has since moved on to the next phase. 

Building the next century on what employees say   

Quantum Workplace gives American Arbitration Association’s people strategy the same qualities as the organization itself: modern, agile, data-informed and focused on the future. They continues to receive wide recognition as a best-in-class employer, keeps strong participation in its benefits and retirement programs, and maintains solid retention.

Looking ahead, they are rolling out an organization-wide change management program, continuing to hire for resilience and adaptability, building out succession plans for its critical roles, and investing in the managers who sit closest to its teams.

With continuous engagement insights, transparent development pathways, modern performance practices and emerging AI capabilities, they are not waiting for change to arrive. It is shaping what a modern, tech-enabled workplace looks like.