An employee engagement survey is a short questionnaire that an employer sends to its staff to measure how committed and satisfied they are. Engagement means how much an employee cares about the work and wants to stay with the company. The software that runs these surveys also collects anonymous comments, and shows HR the results by team, by location and over time.
Companies once ran one long survey every year. Today most run pulse surveys instead: five to ten questions, sent every month or every quarter, on the phone. They also send lifecycle surveys at key moments, such as one month after a person joins and in the week before a person leaves. The survey before leaving, called the exit survey, asks why the person is going.
One common question is: "On a scale of 0 to 10, how likely are you to recommend this company as a place to work?" From the answers, the software works out the employee net promoter score (eNPS). People who answer 9 or 10 are called promoters. People who answer 0 to 6 are called detractors. The eNPS is the percentage of promoters minus the percentage of detractors.
Take, for example, a hotel group in Jaipur with 1,100 staff across six hotels. In July, it sends a five-question pulse survey in Hindi and English. Of the 1,100 staff, 780 reply. Among them, 46% are promoters and 22% are detractors, so the eNPS is +24. Staff also write 310 comments. Nobody in HR can read every comment every month. So the software uses sentiment analysis: a model reads each comment, judges whether it sounds pleased or unhappy, and groups the comments by topic. It finds 58 unhappy comments about late overtime pay, almost all from one hotel. HR corrects the overtime rule in payroll. In the August survey, that hotel's eNPS rises.
People answer honestly only if they trust that their answers are anonymous. So the software shows results only for groups with enough replies, often at least five people. A manager cannot see what any one person wrote.
The survey is now changing shape. An AI service desk agent answers staff questions about leave and payslips every day. The questions that staff ask show HR what worries them, without a survey. Team results also go into the managers' own reviews in performance management.
The same kind of software, used for customers, is customer experience management. A general survey tool can also send a questionnaire to employees. But it does not know the company's teams, track the eNPS over time, or hide the results of small groups.