Stand out with an award-winningThe Noblis Spark: Decades of Recognition, Built on a Culture of Innovation
Goal
Protect, measure, and grow Noblis’ unique workplace culture drivers over time to retain the exceptional people needed to solve complex problems.
Approach
12 consecutive years of confidential Workplace Survey feedback, Insights, and Top Workplaces recognition
Impacts
Drive strategic growth and open innovation for the best of reasons. Noblis strengthened employee development pathways, reinforced its reputation as a mission-driven innovator, and elevated its workplace experience – ultimately achieving a score significantly above industry benchmark.
Exceptional, mission-driven employees advance innovation – and require a strong engagement strategy
As a nonprofit science and technology company, Noblis’ mission is to research, develop, and deliver breakthrough solutions that help the federal government tackle some of the nation’s most challenging problems.
Accelerating essential projects in the defense, federal civil, homeland security, intelligence, and law enforcement sectors requires a top-tier workforce and a strategy strong enough to not only retain but engage some of the most brilliant minds in the industry.
With such an important mission, Noblis collaborated with Energage in 2014 to collect employee insights, drive open innovation, and connect deeper with Noblis’ workforce. The Noblis team regularly wins Top Workplace awards and World’s Most Ethical Companies recognition because of what they call “The Noblis Experience.” “It’s a commitment to establish trust and confidence with every colleague, every client, every time,” said Mile. “We are very protective of our culture and the collaborative environment that we’ve worked so hard to achieve.”
“First and foremost, we value the opportunity always to improve our workplace culture. We find that Energage provides us with that measurement opportunity in a confidential way. As a data-driven tech company, it’s critical to get employee-centered feedback, and we value the ability to harness insights and actionable information so that we can continuously improve our culture.”
Mile Corrigan, President and CEO at Noblis
Noblis prioritizes its people and workplace culture because they bring better experiences and solutions for customers. Additionally, they foster a more collaborative and innovative work environment that drives better business outcomes.
Acknowledging that people drive Noblis’ culture, Mile noted, “Their natural curiosity and innovative mindset is what helps us anticipate and solve what’s next.”
Sparks fly when employees are empowered to speak up
The Noblis Spark represents a foundational principle that encourages employees to speak freely, share ideas, and feel safe doing so. It’s how Noblis teams ignite ethics, respect, efficiency, and innovation daily – a key reason why people love working at Noblis.
But it’s also how the company identifies bottlenecks and opportunities for improvement. In recent years, confidential employee feedback from the Workplace Survey helped Mile and her team achieve two impressive milestones: improving employee development and maintaining a strong foundation through growth.
“We pride ourselves on building an open and respectful environment where employees can speak freely, where they’re encouraged to share ideas. When employees feel safe doing that, that’s when the Sparks fly.”
Mile Corrigan,
President and CEO
She explained, “Having this third-party independent data to lean on as we were going through those times of change and different growth stages was extremely important.” Employee feedback helped Noblis stay hyper-connected with employees at every step of the process.
During one of those inflection points, Workplace Survey data revealed that certain employees were looking for more professional development opportunities. “The Energage results revealed more details on what our employees were seeking, in terms of growth opportunities,” Mile said. “As a result, we strengthened development pathways and continuous learning initiatives. That helped us further improve our culture and create more opportunities tailored to our employee development objectives as well as our customer needs.”
Listening closely to employee feedback gives Noblis leaders the chance to stay on top of how employees are evolving with a rapidly changing tech landscape. “I launched an enterprise-wide AI-forward initiative when I became CEO, which really puts the power of generative AI in the hands of the entire workforce, not just the data scientist who develops AI algorithms, machine learning capabilities, and large language models,” Mile continued. “We like having the survey as a resource to understand how we’re doing and how engaged people are feeling.”
Building excellence: One award and solution at a time
Mile and the Noblis team have won the Washington Post Top Workplaces awards for 12 years straight. More than a decade of intentional, data-driven action steps led them to sit well above the industry benchmark for workplace experience.
Mile also recently won the Top Workplaces for Leadership award. She said it was an incredibly proud moment because it was 100% unexpected and came directly from her employees. “To get that so early in my career or tenure as CEO was definitely a highlight for me,” she said. “It was very touching.”
“Now, I’m very proud of how mature a company we’ve grown into and our ability to scale and provide opportunities across a highly distributed and remote workforce. It’s amazing what you see over time and how we’ve been able to use technology like this to enable that connection but also find ways to connect within and among each other.”
– Mile Corrigan, President and CEO
Noblis has won 12 consecutive Top Workplaces awards from The Washington Post
