Client success story
Knight Frank Valuations (SA)
Connecting leadership, engagement and business performance
Across a decade-long relationship documented in this case study, Knight Frank Valuations (SA) used leadership, personality, team and stakeholder data to understand what was driving its culture and performance, then embedded those insights into planning, development and measurement.
The focus
Knight Frank Valuations (SA) is a specialist real estate valuations business with operations across Adelaide, Melbourne and Sydney. The case study documents a long-term focus on strategic planning, leadership development, employee engagement, customer experience and analytics.
Rather than looking at these areas in isolation, the organisation used a connected set of measures to understand how executive leadership and team culture related to employee engagement, customer satisfaction and financial performance.
The result was a repeatable management cycle in which assessment data informed hiring, executive development, team conversations and broader business planning.
“PBC has taken our business from good to great. We started working with them over 15 years ago and they have completely transformed the way we plan, engage our employees, and generally get things done! We didn’t know what we didn’t know… through tools such as Hogan Assessments, staff and client surveys, and the 360 tools, we have developed a robust planning and employment cycle. We always come away from a PBC session with a renewed sense of purpose.”
James Pledge, Head of Knight Frank Valuations (SA)
The approach
The executive team used Hogan personality assessments, the Hogan 360 and PBC's High Performing Team Assessment to build a multi-level picture of leadership. These measures were complemented by employee engagement and customer satisfaction surveys, creating a broader view of how leadership behaviour connected with stakeholder experience and business outcomes.
The assessments were repeated over time, allowing the organisation to compare results, identify trends and use the findings within annual planning and team development workshops.
Personality
Understand executive culture
Fourteen senior executives reviewed Hogan personality data, including MVPI results, to understand the values shaping leadership culture and recruitment fit.
Leadership
Measure leadership effectiveness
The executive team completed the Hogan 360 every two years to benchmark leadership behaviour and monitor performance over time.
Team effectiveness
Track how the team performs
The HPTA was used on multiple occasions to identify team strengths and opportunities across critical themes linked to performance, culture and strategy.
A connected measurement cycle
The strength of the approach was the ability to examine multiple layers of performance together. Leadership and team measures provided insight into internal capability, while engagement and customer data showed how that capability was experienced by employees and clients.
Personality and values
Use Hogan data to understand the executive team's shared drivers, preferred culture and likely behaviour.
Leadership behaviour
Use Hogan 360 feedback to benchmark leadership effectiveness and track change over time.
Team performance
Use HPTA data to understand collective strengths, priorities and progress.
Employee engagement
Measure how employees experience the organisation, its leadership and its culture.
Customer experience
Track customer satisfaction, service quality, loyalty and competitive perception.
What the data showed
At the time of the case study, Knight Frank Valuations (SA) was recording strong results across multiple measures. The combined data provided a consistent picture of a leadership team with high levels of engagement, customer loyalty and externally benchmarked business performance.
Leadership above benchmark
The executive team's overall Hogan 360 results were above the global 50th percentile benchmark, with senior leaders also described as achieving top-quartile 360 results.
Team performance improved
The executive team's HPTA result was above the Australian average and increased across the two-year period reported in the source case study.
81% employee engagement
The reported engagement score placed the organisation within the top 5% of organisations in the benchmark used for the case study.
Strong customer experience
Customer satisfaction results ranged from 8.3 to 8.9 out of 10, compared with an average client score of 7.9 in the source case study.
Executive culture in focus
Fourteen senior executives explored their Hogan personality results during an annual business planning and team development workshop. Their MVPI profile highlighted particularly strong shared themes around Power, Hedonism and Commerce.
The organisation used these insights to make its leadership culture more explicit and decided to give greater weight to these values during recruitment to support cultural alignment. The findings also reinforced its stated ethos of working hard, enjoying success and staying humble.
From employee engagement to customer loyalty
The case study linked leadership and team measures with employee and customer data to test whether strong internal culture was reflected in the experience of clients. The results showed high engagement alongside strong customer satisfaction, service ratings and loyalty.
Employees
High engagement
- 81% overall employee engagement
- Clearly defined values rated strongly
- Business plan understood and shared
- Training and learning opportunities valued
- High levels of trust reported
Customers
Strong satisfaction
- Overall satisfaction ranged from 8.3 to 8.9 out of 10
- Customer scores increased over the period reported
- Many customers rated the business better than competitors
- No surveyed customers rated it worse than competitors
Loyalty
100% intended to stay
- All customers surveyed intended to stay with the business
- Service ratings increasingly shifted toward excellent
- Personnel were rated good or excellent by all customers surveyed
- Communication, accessibility and relationships were recurring strengths
Linking people data with business performance
The case study concluded that Knight Frank Valuations (SA)'s sustained focus on leadership, strategy, engagement and analytics contributed to its overall performance. An external financial consultant independently benchmarked the business and reported that its financial performance was consistently within the top 1% of businesses it had analysed.
The value of the approach was not any single assessment in isolation. It was the ability to connect personality, leadership behaviour, team effectiveness, employee engagement and customer experience into an evidence base that could inform planning and ongoing improvement.
Explore the story further
A connected view of leadership and performance
This client success story shows how Hogan Personality, Hogan 360 and HPTA data can sit alongside engagement and customer measures to create a broader view of organisational performance.
