Retention With Intention: How Anders Built a Data-Driven Talent Strategy

The Challenge

A platform not being used to its full potential 

When she started, Anders wasn't using all the modules; reviews consisted of three questions and lacked a clear strategy. A lot of things had to happen behind the scenes before the firm could start using Quantum Workplace's full capabilities. At the time, utilization and adoption of Quantum Workplace was less than 50%. While Anders was good at sending performance reviews out to employees, the underlying philosophy was missing, making it harder to demonstrate the value of these reviews.

A competitive talent marketing demanding differentiation  

Sanders feels that accountants and consultants have the “pick of the litter” in the job market and when deciding where to work. Because of this powerful position, Anders is always looking for ways to differentiate themselves from others to attract top talent, a challenge made more urgent by the firm's ambitious growth and revenue goals, which put a premium on getting workforce planning right.

The Solution

Quantum gives them some room to grow to support this differentiation, which is directly tied to Anders Strategic Plan. Additionally, their People team's 2026 goal is “Retention with intention,” moving beyond simply keeping employees to strategically retaining top performers.  

With Anders' mission being to “Serve as a catalyst for those striving to achieve their highest potential,” Sanders feels that with Quantum Workplace she's able to help make that possible.

Building trust through “Quantum Abby” 

When Lauren Sanders started at Anders two years ago, she was skeptical of Quantum Workplace. “I was not sold immediately,” she recalled of the platform she inherited.

That all changed when Anders' customer success manager, Abby, whom Sanders nicknamed ‘Quantum Abby,’ helped educate her on how to best use the system. “She had her work cut out for her,” Sanders joked, “but she listened, we dug in, and we really started utilizing the platform more and all of its services and all it can do. It really enabled me to see the full picture of how it all works together and how it's going to help our employees grow and work together so everyone can reach their full potential.”

Anders picked Quantum Workplace as their vendor of choice around 2019, according to Sanders. Although the vendor selection process occurred before her employment at Anders, she believes ‘Quantum Abby’ came on as Anders' customer success manager shortly after.

To Sanders, this relationship with Quantum Abby has been nothing short of game-changing. Abby frames and justifies strategies, explaining why the platform was or wasn't doing certain things. “I feel like I put her through the wringer, so we're pretty close at this point. But it was nice because we pushed each other,” Sanders said.

Quantum Abby would also come back with feedback. “When I started seeing that Quantum Workplace was committed to quickly making changes for the betterment of customers, then I could go to my leadership and say, ‘Now we're able to get that data,’” Sanders remarked. “Quantum Workplace was responsive and made that change. That was huge for us and huge for winning over my heart.”

While providing this level of customer-to-customer success manager relationship is a big investment for Quantum Workplace, it ultimately led to better overall platform usage—up approximately 54% from 2024 to 2025—and proved to be a winning customer retention strategy.

Once she and Quantum Abby started making changes, Anders was able to use the platform more effectively and robustly. That's why today they have more robust reviews and 360 feedback, which the firm needed and was ready for. “Quantum Workplace helped make it smooth,” Sanders commented.

A new strategy rooted in a philosophy

An interesting feature of Anders' company strategy is that it anchors it in Brené Brown's teaching of “Clear is kind. Unclear is unkind.”

According to Sanders, Quantum Workplace has helped them embrace that philosophy by providing quick, honest, and kind feedback at every level of the business. Not only did this help hold leaders accountable, but it also aligned core competencies with behavioral expectations within roles.

Early iterations of this new strategy began with Anders' Talent Management and Talent Development teams working together to create a career architecture and behavioral expectations, including core competencies for being great in a role and for showing up for their colleagues and clients.

“Once we got people hooked on these philosophies, then Quantum Workplace was able to come in and help support that,” Sanders said.

With transparency as one of the company's core values, Sanders and her team used the engagement surveys to inform action planning and hold leaders accountable based on employee feedback.

“It's always important to hold people accountable regardless of their level,” Sanders said. “If we see leaders holding themselves accountable, everyone's just going to want to ratchet up their person, and that's going to be better for our clients.”

Sanders said that even though some of the feedback made some people uncomfortable because they weren't used to hearing it, it's making them better, and in her eyes, making change takes accountability. “The worst thing you can do is get that data and do nothing with it,” Sanders commented. “Also, the partners love it.”

The Results

At the time she started, the utilization and adoption of Quantum Workplace were less than 50%. While Anders was really good at getting performance reviews out to their employees, the underlying philosophy wasn't there, which made it harder to demonstrate the value of these reviews. “We measure it all,” Sanders said.

Since the company's first survey in 2023, the overall response rate has increased from 77% to 88%. Perceptions of Career Growth & Development and Manager Effectiveness have increased by 10% and 4.8%, respectively.

The Career Growth & Development increase has been a big win for Sanders and her team. The question, “I know how I fit into the Firm's future plans,” has increased by 4.8%. This ties directly to effective management practices, learning & growth opportunities, and a clear outlook for the future.

Coach's scorecard

With the data Quantum Workplace gives her, Sanders inputs it into Power BI, which creates what she calls a ‘Coach's Scorecard’ that measures how successfully someone manages their people, how many one-on-ones they're doing, how they rate their employees, and other people-management factors. Quantum Workplace's Insights Hub will ultimately be able to do this without Sanders even needing to manually feed Power BI.

The Coach's Scorecard was a vision she had held for many years and brought to life with the help of her colleague, Macie. With the scorecard, they can define and hone in on manager effectiveness, giving Sanders and her team a way to address potential problem areas in their management and leadership—a move towards being strategic and proactive rather than just reactive. “That is invaluable data that drives returns on our managers managing people,” she remarked.

Culture is really the through-line that goes through all of this—how everyone treats each other on a day-to-day basis. Anders' approach is unique in that it focuses not just on the employees but also on the top-down impact of managers' actions on employee performance. “HR can have all the bells and whistles and best programs, but without managers, it all falls flat. They have to be on board,” explained Sanders.

Connected Talent Platform adoption

As of summer 2026, Anders is now a premium support customer running nearly the full Quantum Workplace connected talent platform:

●    Engagement Surveys with premium support (up to four per year)
●    Performance Management with role-based competencies
●    Growth Module
●    360 Feedback
●    Anytime Feedback
●    One-on-Ones
●    Goals
●    Talent Reviews
●    Succession Planning Module

Anders has seen very strong platform adoption internally with the new performance review process, achieving an 88% response rate for feedback, 99% for employee-shared reviews, and 98% for facilitator-shared reviews.

One-to-one utilization for day-to-day concerns is closer to 80%, with all employees meeting regularly with their managers. Without managers having to do much of the heavy lifting, they achieved a 70% completion rate in their new Growth Module, which focuses on career development.

Module type & frequency

Anders' approach has a few key strategies powered by Quantum Workplace's one connected platform:

●    One-on-ones should be monthly
●    360 feedback reviews and midyear reviews
●    At any point, written feedback can be requested within the system
●    Goals should be set annually and reviewed quarterly
●    Growth Module has cycles on an annual basis
●    Performance reviews are done semi-annually
●    A major engagement survey is conducted annually

The large engagement survey Anders conducts in August often provides Sanders and her team with the data they need to develop additional training or communication strategies to improve clarity. Programs, such as benefit offerings, can be influenced or adjusted based on this feedback as well.

In Anders' engagement surveys, they use the questions provided by Quantum Workplace, along with a few additional ones from internal teams. Quantum Workplace Insights Analyst Teresa, helps with the engagement survey insights, really digging out insights—“She's the scientist behind it.”

While survey questions fluctuate from year to year, and some focus on the Best Place to Work survey, their 2026 surveys place a stronger emphasis on how employees feel about AI and strategic plans.

The growth module

A Quantum Workplace data feed powers Anders' People Analytics Dashboard and Sanders' “coach's scorecards,” tracking completed one-on-ones, coaching scores, and review completion for partners on demand, without needing to pull reports.

Anders' Growth Module competencies are pulled directly into performance reviews, which resonate especially well with an accountant-heavy population that prefers data-driven, structured coaching over open-ended conversation.

Succession Planning

“We need to plan ahead,”  Sanders said in regard to the succession planning framework Anders began to lay out. Company leaders went through 74 senior manager-level and above employees to help set them up for success and a future at the firm. This required substantial investment from Anders's leadership, underscoring the profound importance of aligning an organization's HR/People strategy with that of executive leadership for a company's prosperous growth.

Additionally, Anders' People Advisory Council, made up of individuals scattered throughout the firm who meet monthly, helps test new internal programs or ideas and gauge employee sentiment. This has had a big focus on business units and day-to-day leadership, which, at Anders, prioritizes giving managers the autonomy to do what works best for their teams. Internally, this helps develop new ways of doing things and also the next generation of innovative business leaders.

“It's more of that day-to-day interaction that shapes the employee experience,” Sanders explained about this strategy and how it ties back to their strategy of trust, but also making sure every leader is operating at their best to be a great leader in big and small ways.

Anders' future plans

When it comes to the outlook for Anders' relationship with Quantum Workplace, Sanders believes that Quantum Workplace's upcoming Insights Hub will provide strategic direction from a workforce perspective in a simple way that she thinks her leaders will like.

Quantum Workplace's Succession Planning module will also ensure the firm has long-term successors and plans in place. According to Sanders, she wants Anders to keep planning for the inevitable: “People retire, and people leave, but for some reason it can be a challenge for businesses to address this reality.” Thankfully, Quantum Workplace makes it easy to see top talent and who could be the next leader of the company. “We're also going to be measuring what's important, even if what's important might change,” Sanders explained.

Sanders says a big part of this success is that Anders' leadership is on board. To her, this is a critical element. “If [leadership] is not on board, it's not going to work,” she said in regard to how other companies could see the success she's had with her people strategies.

Quantum Workplace has also been essential in providing resources to convince leadership of new initiatives and of what has worked well at other companies. This ties back to Quantum Abby, whom Sanders playfully dubbed their “secret weapon.” With Quantum Abby's help, Sanders can confidently explain to leadership what the talent strategy measures and why it matters for setting the company up for a brighter future, with a steady pipeline of leaders who have the right skills.