How a leadership team at UBS uncovered hidden risk before it became turnover

They suspected something was wrong. OpenElevator showed them exactly where, and how serious it was.

The Situation

While average tenure at UBS is eight years, reducing turnover has been a key focus for managers looking to reduce costs and improve efficiencies. In particular, UBS Team Heads identified team collaboration as key to the success of their departments. They understood that interpersonal issues quickly derail their teams’ ability to remain efficient and effective.

Therefore, following a restructuring, several team heads immediately wanted to understand their team stability. They began exploring retention solutions that could help them understand the team dynamic below the waterline, including who works well together, who may be at high risk of quitting, and which issues could be addressed to mitigate conflicts and turnover.

The Challenge

The core issue wasn’t lack of effort or concern. It was lack of visibility.

“I didn’t know them myself, much less how they worked with each other. Under the previous head, the team had exceptionally high turnover, which was a source of concern and on top of that, I also had a new boss, and a very short runway to deliver results fast!”

Adding complexity, in the restructuring, several teams were decentralized across various locations. Therefore, they wanted a solution that would help them understand the teams across geographies before issues occurred.

What OpenElevator Revealed

After implementing OpenElevator, leadership gained visibility into what had previously been invisible. The data revealed patterns leaders could not previously see, and translated them into clear guidance. The data showed:

Early warning signals of disengagement and risk of departure, along with clear guidance on where intervention would have the greatest impact

Visibility into which working relationships were strong and where friction was likely to emerge

Predictive insight into how well new candidates would fit within the team structure

Most importantly, the insight put numbers to what leaders had suspected. Now the issues were no longer anecdotal or debatable.

The Action

With clear, defensible data, leadership was able to:

Focus attention on the exact area of risk

Have calm, non‑defensive conversations with managers

Address root causes before additional employees disengaged or resigned

Instead of rolling out another company‑wide initiative, they intervened precisely — and early.

Turnover stabilized in the at‑risk department. More importantly, leadership confidence improved.

Leaders no longer felt surprised or reactive. They had ongoing visibility into employee experience and could see when risk was building — and when it was resolving.

The biggest change wasn’t faster reaction. It was earlier awareness.