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The term Azimuth (az·ə·məTH) comes from the medieval Arabic word al-sumūt, meaning "the directions." In navigation, Azimuth defines the path forward, guiding explorers across horizons. At Azimuth, we use this concept to help organizations navigate the complexities of employee experience, ensuring they find direction and insight in their journey toward a more engaged and productive workforce.
Our Story
At Azimuth, we specialize in employee experience research and analytics. Inspired by storytelling, exploration, and discovery, our mission is to empower organizations with insights that drive engagement, satisfaction, and performance. Through advanced data collection and analysis, we provide organizations with a clear understanding of their employees’ experiences, turning that knowledge into actionable strategies.
Whether it's improving onboarding processes, mapping organizational culture, or understanding employee sentiment, we help businesses build thriving workplace environments. In partnership with our sister organization Ascendry, we offer comprehensive data and development services that focus on fostering a positive, productive employee experience.
Our research process is tailored to reveal the hidden aspects of the employee journey — from understanding gaps in your workforce to the long-term impact your leadership development has on organizational culture. We help you create a culture of feedback and actionable insights, and enable organizations to make data-driven decisions that enhance employee engagement and retention.
We leverage cutting-edge tools to help businesses identify strengths and opportunities for improvement within their workforce, fostering a sense of belonging and purpose for employees at every stage of their career.
Our
Approach
Harnessing research for meaningful outcomes.
At Azimuth, we are the collectors of data, narrators of stories, guides of exploration, and navigators of the unknown. To achieve our goal of expanding access to data analytics, research, and data-driven decisions for smaller organizations, we put organizations at the center and help them explore their own potential, unearth market opportunities, understand their purpose, and ultimately aid them in reaching their goals. The benefits of organization-centered development are:
1. Employee Engagement, Retention, and Effectiveness Research
2. Personality and Behavioral Research
3. Learning and Development Effectiveness Studies
4. Workforce Skills Gap Analysis
5. Organizational Culture and Climate Studies
6. Leadership Development Impact Studies
7. Custom Research
At Azimuth, we believe in the power of stories to shape employee experiences. We take the data gathered through our research and transform it into narratives that resonate with both leadership and employees. This data-driven storytelling helps organizations understand the current state of their workforce and chart a path toward improved engagement, satisfaction, and productivity. We help guide organizations through their employee experience research journey, from data collection to actionable outcomes.
Azimuth is your partner in understanding and enhancing employee experience. We provide smaller organizations with access to the research and tools necessary to create a workplace where employees can thrive. By putting employees at the center of our research, we help businesses:
• Strengthen Employee Engagement & Satisfaction
• Improve Retention & Reduce Turnover
• Enhance Leadership & Team Development
• Create Cultures of Feedback & Continuous Improvement
• Map Organizational Culture to Employee Values
• Foster Resilience & Innovation
• Improve Decision-Making with Data-Driven Insights
• Increase Productivity & Performance
Our Team
Dr. Dick Loveless, Ed.D.
President, Azimuth
Dr. Dick Loveless Jr., Ed.D., is President of Analytics at Azimuth, the research and analytics practice he co-founded with Dr. Erika Weed, Ed.D. Azimuth and Ascendry operate as one firm, with separate practices built to complement one
another: Azimuth handles research, measurement, and analysis, and Ascendry handles organizational development and talent.
Most recently a User Experience Researcher at Cisco, Dick designed and ran enterprise research and employee listening programs, and was one of four named information technology (IT) partners on Cisco's study of artificial intelligence (AI) and workforce transformation, published by Cisco in January 2026. Before Cisco, he spent 6 years in the wine and spirits trade as a research coordinator and Qualtrics programmer at OFFSITE Events and Spirits Marketing. Dick holds a Doctor of Education (Ed.D.) in Organizational Learning, Leadership and Innovation from Wilmington University, a Master of Arts in Forensic Psychology from Argosy University, and a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology from Wesley College. His dissertation was an ethnographic case study of organizational
change.
Across 12+ years, Dick has combined research and analytics with storytelling and coaching. He builds instruments that surface what people inside an
organization already know but have not been asked, and reports findings in a form leaders can act on. At Azimuth, he runs open research programs, including the Hospitality Friction Survey, the AI Friction Survey, and The Leadership Mirror, and publishes the findings free to the field.