Cultural Dialogue for public administrations: staying future-proof

Secure the knowledge of experienced staff before it retires.

In many public offices, a large share of experience will retire in the coming years. At the same time it is getting harder to find and keep specialists. In the Cultural Dialogue, your employees write anonymously what they know, what keeps them and what wears them down, and weigh their colleagues' contributions. Across all departments, alongside day-to-day work.

After 21 days you know the practical knowledge, the hurdles in day-to-day delivery and your workforce's priorities.

Proven with more than 60 clients in business, public administration & politics. On average, our clients did not know 8 of the 10 strongest contributions.

What you get

1. Capture experience: Someone who has worked at the counter for twenty years knows where processes get stuck. In the dialogue they write it down while they are still there.

2. An employer people stay with: On pay, the public sector often can't compete. On purpose and culture it can. You see what keeps specialists and what makes them leave.

3. Priorities for leadership and HR: At the top is what many share. The segment analysis shows where a department differs from the whole organisation.

How it works

• Strategy workshop: Three hours. We arrive with a finished concept and sharpen the questions with you, for example on knowledge transfer, digitalisation or workload.

• Launch: Within 48 hours the dialogue space is ready. We write the invitation, you send it. No IT project.

• Dialogue: Three weeks, moderated daily. We check every contribution. Your people need about ten minutes on average.

• Result: A report per question, a one-pager for management and a ready-to-send response to employees.

Why BrainE4 is different

• More than a staff survey: «Satisfaction 3.4» explains nothing. Here you read the reasons, in your people's own words, and how many stand behind them.

• Across departments: What one office knows, another often needs. The dialogue makes it visible and ranks it by weight.

• Safe for everyone: Anonymous, compliant with the Swiss FADP and the GDPR, developed in Switzerland with OST and ZHAW.

• Insight Guarantee: In the strategy workshop we record six assumptions per question: what you expect. We mix them covertly into the contributions. If on average at least five of the top 10 are new to you, your knowledge has doubled. Otherwise we refund the dialogue.

For whom

• Heads of offices and departments: when experienced people are about to leave and their knowledge is written down nowhere.

• HR and personnel offices: when you want to know why specialists stay or resign.

• Digitalisation leads: when new software is coming and you want to know beforehand where delivery will get stuck.

In practice

Zurich Cantonal Building Insurance: A public-law institution asks around 6,800 firefighters directly, instead of a sample: what is necessary, what is desirable, what is superfluous? The results convinced even early sceptics. Read the interview

«Instead of the loudest voice deciding, we found solutions with consensus across all levels of hierarchy.» Renato Mathys, Head of Fire Services

NAGRA: On a sensitive topic and in the middle of change, NAGRA brought the entire workforce into the dialogue. 80% took part, and their contributions are in the new mission statement word for word. Read the interview

«Verbatim passages from employee input are now in the new mission statement: a strong signal to the workforce.» Philipp Senn, Head of Communications and Public Affairs

Ideal for:

Knowledge transfer before retirements · Employer attractiveness · Reorganisation · Digitalisation in delivery · Mission statement · Leadership culture

Frequently asked questions

We are subject to the freedom of information principle. Does this still work?
Yes. What is published is a reviewed ranking, not a comment section. During the dialogue everything stays internal. You have the results first, and you explain them first, together with your response.

How much effort is it for our administration?
Three hours in the workshop and one approval of the communication. We handle moderation, analysis and the report.

Will enough people take part?
The invitation is half the battle, and we write it. Typically 70 to 90 percent of employees take part.

Is this an AI method?
No. Every judgement comes from a human being. AI only helps with structuring and never decides.

All questions and answers

See more

Video: The Cultural Dialogue in brief. Watch the video

Cultural Dialogue: Use cases from retention to the impact of measures. Learn more

Try it yourself: An Idea Duel from your employees' point of view. Experience the Idea Duel

The knowledge is in the house.
Capture it before it leaves.

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