SourceAmerica: Amplifying the Voice of the Employee with AI-Powered Explorance MLY

About SourceAmerica

SourceAmerica, a nonprofit organization with a legacy spanning over five decades, is dedicated to creating employment opportunities for people with disabilities. Founded with a mission to promote inclusivity and accessibility, SourceAmerica serves as a vital link between individuals with disabilities and federal employment programs in the United States. Operating as a federally funded organization, SourceAmerica supports over 36,000 individuals annually, enabling them to secure meaningful employment and achieve greater financial independence.

The Challenge: Reimaging Employee Engagement

At SourceAmerica, measuring employee engagement is more than just a procedural task—it is a strategic imperative that connects employees to the organization’s mission and informs its culture of inclusion. Employee feedback had historically been gathered as part of an effort to meet directives from the board of directors, ensuring alignment with organizational goals and priorities. However, SourceAmerica recognized the opportunity to take their employee feedback initiatives to the next level.

By deeply understanding employee sentiments, SourceAmerica could empower its workforce, improve its programs, and ensure employees felt heard in a meaningful way, the challenge lies in doing so effectively. Additionally, the manual analysis of employee feedback was time-consuming and limited the organization’s ability to act on insights efficiently. Preparing for an aging workforce with 25-30% of employees nearing retirement eligibility further underscored the need for strategic workforce planning.

The Solution: Transforming Feedback into Actionable Insights

In 2021, SourceAmerica implemented a baseline employee engagement survey using Explorance Blue. Measuring success and opportunities for improvement at both an individual and company level, SourceAmerica surveyed over 400 employees and achieved an 89% response rate, including over 200 open-ended comments. This survey set the foundation for a deeper understanding of employee perceptions, ranging from role satisfaction to professional development needs.

Building on this success, SourceAmerica introduced quarterly pulse surveys to track engagement trends over time and employee onboarding surveys to better understand the experiences of new hires. These initiatives have since gathered nearly 3,000 open-ended comments, reflecting a diverse range of employee perspectives.

To analyze and act on this wealth of qualitative data, SourceAmerica adopted Explorance MLY. The AI-powered solution enabled SourceAmerica to categorize and analyze the thousands of employee comments, offering insights into recurring themes, sentiment, and areas requiring attention. SourceAmerica leveraged MLY to uncover significant themes like succession planning and professional growth opportunities.

With this data, SourceAmerica began to implement targeted initiatives, such as mentoring programs, flexible work arrangements, and enhanced inclusion practices, which have become central to SourceAmerica’s culture.

The outcome: Delivering Meaningful Program Changes with Survey Data

The partnership between SourceAmerica and Explorance has resulted in a transformative approach to employee engagement. By empowering managers with data-driven insights, the organization fosters stronger connections between employees and organizational goals.

With MLY, the ability to analyze comment data in real-time has enhanced decision-making and guided strategic initiatives such as professional development, mentorship programs, and succession planning. As SourceAmerica continues to evolve its employee engagement strategies, the introduction of dashboards and lifecycle surveys will further integrate employee feedback into its growth plans.

SourceAmerica’s collaboration with Explorance demonstrates the power of leveraging advanced feedback analytics to drive meaningful change. Through tools like Explorance Blue and MLY, SourceAmerica has not only strengthened employee engagement but also reinforced its commitment to the voice of the employee.