Turning Voice Into Value: How Birches Group Helped MCA in Mongolia Build an Effective Workplace by Listening to Employees

by Lin Valenzuela, Editorial Contributor

What if one of the most important sources of information about an organization’s effectiveness is one that leaders measure the least?

Most organizations track financial performance, operational milestones, and program metrics, but few systematically measure the experience of the workforce tasked to deliver these results. Consequently, many leaders may not fully understand how internal practices such as communication, recognition, and role clarity impact employees’ ability to perform their jobs effectively.

Forward-looking organizations such as the Millennium Challenge Account (MCA) in Mongolia have decided to address this challenge and offer a compelling example of how a structured approach for measuring the experience of the workforce and using the insights from the analysis can strengthen organizational effectiveness.

MCA in Mongolia is responsible for implementing the Mongolia Water Compact under the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC). This compact represents a major investment in Mongolia’s water sector and was designed to expand the long-term water supply to the capital city of Ulaanbaatar. It includes the development of groundwater wellfields, advanced water treatment infrastructure, wastewater recycling systems, and institutional reforms to strengthen water resource management.

The complexity of this initiative, plus the fixed implementation period (five years), requires the coordinated effort of specialists across many disciplines. Recognizing this reality, the leadership of MCA-Mongolia viewed the organization’s work environment as an important part of performance. It sought to understand how employees experience the workplace and identify conditions that support collaboration and those that hinder progress.

A Data-Driven Approach

The decision to conduct workforce surveys is consistent with MCC’s broader philosophy of data-driven decision-making. Across its global portfolio, MCC relies on empirical evidence to select beneficiary countries, assess program viability, and monitor impact. Applying the same rigor and discipline to organizational management is a natural extension of this philosophy. From 2020 to 2024, MCA-Mongolia partnered with Birches Group to conduct an annual Workforce Climate Survey designed to systematically measure employees’ perceptions of the MCA work environment. A longitudinal approach was adopted (i.e., repeating the survey each year) to measure trends and changes over time. Each survey yielded a diagnostic snapshot of the current climate and enabled management to assess whether interventions implemented in the previous years were producing measurable improvements. Over time, the results created a clear picture of the MCA’s improving internal dynamics as reflected by the increasing percentage of positive responses over the years.

While the numbers were encouraging, the real value came from the insights that the survey exercises generated. Birches Group designed the survey to focus on four dimensions that contribute to the employee experience:

1. Job Clarity
2. Rewards and Recognition
3. Operational Effectiveness
4. Leadership and Team Cohesion

A total of 18 statements were used to measure these dimensions. A fifth variable, Overall Employment Experience, was measured with five statements designed to capture and quantify employees’ levels of motivation, morale, and pride in the MCA. Employees were asked to evaluate each statement using a four-point scale ranging from “Strongly Disagree” to “Strongly Agree,” and responses were coded as “favorable” or “unfavorable.” This allowed for the calculation of statement scores, representing the percentage of respondents who expressed a favorable view on each issue. These statement scores were aggregated into factor scores, providing an overview of how employees perceived each major dimension of the organizational climate.

Moving Beyond Low and High Scores

One of the most powerful features of the approach was the use of driver analysis to identify which workplace issues had the strongest impact on overall employee experience. Instead of focusing solely on the lowest-scoring items, this analysis examines the relationship between each statement and Overall Employment Experience. This technique works by looking at the respondents who reported high Overall Employment Experience and identifying which statements or items they are more positive on than other respondents. Conversely, it looks up the respondents who reported low Overall Employment Experience and identifies which statements or items they are more negative on than other respondents. Combining the information generates the top drivers—the items that will likely have the most impact on Overall Employment Experience.

Quadrant	What It Means
Key Weaknesses (top-left, orange)	High impact on experience but rated poorly. Fix these first.
Key Strengths (top-right, teal)	High impact and rated well. Protect and communicate with these.
Non-critical Weaknesses (bottom-left, yellow)	Rated poorly but low impact. Lower priority.
Non-critical Strengths (bottom-right, yellow)	Rated well but low impact. Nice to have.

Context Matters

Quantitative analysis is powerful, but numbers alone cannot fully capture the complexity of the employment experience. To complement the quantitative data, open-ended questions allowed employees to provide additional context about their ratings. The comments were then categorized into thematic areas and sentiments (i.e., positive or negative), providing another layer of insights to help explain the observations from the quantitative data. For example, while most respondents indicated overall satisfaction with compensation, some comments expressed the need for skills-based pay differentiation.

Building Trust Through Confidentiality and Inclusion

At the core, any successful workforce survey or any employee listening initiative is based on employees’ trust in the process. All surveys were designed and conducted with strong safeguards to protect confidentiality—including the use of an external platform and personal emails to collect responses, data aggregation, and presentation rules that protect the identities of respondents. Moreover, the questions were translated into Mongolian to ensure that employees across the organization could participate. These measures contributed to a 100% participation rate, which not only strengthened the reliability of the data but also signals the employees’ confidence in the integrity and value of the exercise.

Listening as a Strategy

Some of the most valuable data an organization can collect comes not from financial systems or project dashboards, but from the people doing the work. This experience of MCA in Mongolia highlights the strategic value of understanding one’s workforce. By combining rigorous survey design, careful data analysis, and commitment to acting on findings, organizations can build work environments that drive organizational performance.

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