Strategic Advisory partnership
Business impact at a glance
- Aligned employee listening with core business priorities, enabling leadership to make informed, people-focused strategic decisions.
- Leveraged the Top Employers Institute Strategic Advisory Services to transform its employee listening framework in support of strategic priorities.
- Cultivated a continuous listening culture within leadership, empowering managers to respond effectively to team insights.
- Translated Certification insights, maturity analysis and global benchmarks into targeted improvements, strengthening the organisation’s people strategy.
- Reinforced governance and leadership accountability for engagement outcomes, instilling clearer ownership and oversight across the organisation.
Context
Leviatan Group operates in a highly competitive, innovative-driven environment, delivering advanced Design & Build projects across defence, medical, educational and administrative sectors. With four companies, Leviatan Design, Ubitech Constructii, eConfaire Immersive Design and Copraag Entrepreneur, the Group integrates BIM-driven (Building Information Modelling) execution with multidisciplinary expertise.
With more than 280 employees in Romania across engineering, construction and technology specialities, the organisation has entered a new phase of growth and innovation.
In this environment, HR is expected to act as a strategic partner in organisational transformation. For Leviatan Group, strengthening employee listening, leadership capabilities and governance became essential to sustaining performance, innovation, and long-term business impact.
Alina Podaru
Chief People & Cultural Officer | Leviatan Group
The expertise and openness of the Top Employers Institute Strategic Advisors, along with practical examples, equipped us to implement more effective HR practices, providing not just inspiration but a clear plan of action.
The partnership gave us confidence and tools to turn current challenges into opportunities to strengthen our organisational culture. Top Employers Institute moved beyond conventional consultancy, becoming a true partner in our people transformation journey.”
The leadership challenge
Leviatan Group’s existing listening practices were active but fragmented, and they were not yet governed through a unified organisational framework.
As the HR team became involved in increasingly complex projects, the leadership team faced the challenge of ensuring these initiatives were managed within an integrated structure to mitigate several identified risks:
- Feedback activities around employee listening operated in silos rather than within an aligned, coherent annual framework.
- Action planning and communication loops across the organisation were inconsistent with their growing needs.
- Managers lacked clarity and training on their role in interpreting and acting on insights from their people.
- Employee listening fatigue risk increased without clear prioritisation or visible follow-through.
The leadership team saw an opportunity to elevate its impact by standardising its listening practices, embedding leadership ownership and aligning insights from employee listening with strategic priorities.
The turning point
As a Certified Top Employer, Leviatan Group turned to Top Employers Institute to create a fundamental shift in its people strategy through its Strategic Advisory Services.
The experts’ involvement reframed listening from an operational HR activity to a critical governance mechanism. Top Employers Institute’s HR experts introduced a structured progression that guided Leviatan Group through four stages: from actively listening to employees and generating meaningful insights to embedding those insights within formal governance structures. Ultimately helping to drive tangible organisational transformation.
Through Top Employers Institute’s research-backed framework, Leviatan Group mapped its existing listening policies, identified maturity gaps, and benchmarked its approach against the global network of Certified Top Employers. The strategic shift in thinking allowed leadership to move from listening as a one-time-a-year measure to an integrated system that aligned with measurable business outcomes.
The intervention included:
- Designing an annual listening structure that clarified purpose, timing and ownership.
- Introducing “moments that matter” employee journey mapping to prioritise high-impact employee experiences.
- Defining governance councils and accountability structures to ensure insights get converted into actionable agreements.
- Equipping all managers with a practical listening playbook (Connect-Observe-Inquire-Act) to nurture daily listening behaviours.
The Strategic Advisory session was collaborative and personalised, ensuring that global best practices were adapted to Leviatan’s operational reality. With Top Employers Institute’s partnership, the thinking moved the organisation to reframe listening as a governance and leadership capability.
Organisational shift and impact
The organisation established a mapped listening architecture that includes annual and pulse surveys, HR touchpoints and informal channels. These listening inputs are now coordinated through a centralised listening plan. The shift in this practice has reduced duplication, mitigated the risk of survey fatigue and created clarity across leadership structures.
Leviatan Group, with guidance from Top Employers Institute, moved from a fragmented approach to a clearly structured listening ecosystem embedded in leadership and governance processes.
It has also strengthened its leadership accountability. Managers now operate with clear expectations for leveraging employee insights, supported by structured listening routines and follow-up responsibilities.
The introduction of formalised governance structures has enabled the organisation to ensure that its insights are prioritised and translated into action. Decision-making around engagement initiatives is now informed by consolidated listening data, allowing leaders to focus on issues with the greatest organisational impact.
For Leviatan Group, this shift strengthened HR’s credibility as a strategic partner to the business. The HR team now operates with greater credibility at executive levels, supported by structured insight and clearer governance.
Through its partnership with the Top Employers Institute’s Advisory team, Leviatan Group now operates with clearer ownership of employee engagement, stronger leadership accountability and a more consistent process for turning insights into measurable action. Positioning the organisation for its next stage of growth with greater alignment, responsiveness and resilience.