From feedback to action: how Orange Cyberdefense listens at scale

Orange Cyberdefense sells expertise. Its security analysts, penetration testers, consultants and architects are the product, and when one of them leaves, years of knowledge leave with them. David Anglister explains how the company uses continuous feedback to stay close to its 3,300 employees across countries, teams and a decade of acquisitions.

Growth and change made listening business-critical

Orange Cyberdefense has grown from around 300 to more than 3,300 employees, largely through acquisitions. Each new company brought its own culture, ways of working, HR systems and leadership habits.  

Building one organization out of that takes more than a new org chart. It takes a shared identity, while people are going through constant change.

Cybersecurity makes it harder. Talent is scarce and heavily recruited, and in distributed teams it's easy to miss the early signs that someone is pulling back. Orange Cyberdefense needed to see those signals before they turned into resignations.

From annual snapshots to continuous insight

Winningtemp was first rolled out locally, in Sweden and Norway. Other HR teams in the group saw the results and wanted the same. Germany and the Netherlands followed.

As more teams started working across borders, managers with international teams asked for the same view of their people. Today, the whole organization uses one common framework.

The idea was simple: move from occasional measurement to continuous insight.  

Employees answer short pulse surveys on a regular basis. Managers follow engagement, participation and eNPS, along with trends in leadership, stress, working conditions and development.

The aim isn't more data. It's knowing which team needs attention, and what to talk about when you get there.

Numbers need context

eNPS is an important metric, but David’s perspective makes one thing clear: a score rarely tells the full story on its own. Results need to be read together with trends, participation, benchmarks and local context.  

Country is one example. How willing people are to recommend their employer varies between markets, so a score that looks low in one country may be normal there. HR and managers need judgement as well as numbers.

Trust is built into the setup

People only answer honestly if they trust that their answers can't be traced back to them. Winningtemp helps Orange Cyberdefense protect anonymity in four ways:

• Minimum reporting thresholds: results are only shown when enough people have answered.

• Merging small teams: if a team is too small to protect individuals, its results are folded into a larger group.

• Secure authentication for everyone who answers.

• Controlled access to who can see which results.

Managers close the loop

Results only lead somewhere if someone owns them. At Orange Cyberdefense, that's the managers. After each round, they:

1. Share the results with their team.

2. Explain what will be done.

3. Follow up on what was raised last time.

Skip the third step, and employees quickly stop believing their answers matter.

The takeaway: listening only matters when it leads to action

Orange Cyberdefense’s experience shows what continuous listening looks like when it becomes part of everyday leadership. The survey is not the point. It’s what happens after: whether managers act, employees see progress and the organization has the structures needed to trust the insight.

For growing organizations, the lesson is clear. Feedback becomes valuable when it is connected to action, owned by managers and supported by reliable data. That is when employee listening stops being a survey process and starts becoming a way to lead better.

Want to see how your managers could use feedback the same way? Book a demo and our experts will show you what it would look like in your organization.