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Zoios

Solution

Employee pulse surveys

The easiest way to take care of your organization's most-valuable asset. Two minutes, on a cadence that fits, with insight your leaders will actually use.

People & Culture teams that lead with Zoios

VeoRejsekorte-BoksDonkey RepublicBech-BruunSoundboksKOMBITRoskilde FestivalECIT
01 / 07

Questions backed by science.

Our surveys are built on scientifically validated questions, battle-tested and benchmarked across 1,000+ teams in 47 countries. You're not measuring fluff; you're working with real data.

  • 11 validated Pulse questions
  • Industry & company-size benchmarks
  • Data-driven measurements
Benchmark · Tech · 800 teams
Engagement distribution
Top 20%Top 10%Industry 78You · 755060708090100
02 / 07

Honest feedback, because it's anonymous.

Responses are end-to-end encrypted and aggregated only when teams are large enough to protect identity. Employees speak freely; you hear what they actually think.

  • AES-256 end-to-end encryption
  • Strong anonymization protocols
  • SOC 2 Type II certified
HRSafe
6 people
From anonymous
"Onboarding flow improved a lot"
From anonymous
"Manager actually listens now"
FinanceSafe
7 people
From anonymous
"Q-end pressure is intense"
From anonymous
"Need clearer ownership on close"
DesignHidden
3 people
⚠ too small
need 2 more
03 / 07

No manual work. Runs on auto-pilot.

Sync your team, send the survey, and Zoios handles the rest: reminders, segmentation, anonymization, benchmarking, analysis, and a tailored report for every team. End-to-end on auto-pilot.

  • Employee sync · CSV or HRIS
  • Mail + Slack send-out & reminders
  • Reports built per team, every cycle
End-to-end automation
Nightly sync · Real-time pipeline
Employee syncNightly · 00:00
412 employees · auto-synced from HRIS
Survey send-outReal-time
mail + Slack · the moment a pulse goes live
Reminders sentReal-time
nudge non-responders automatically
SegmentationReal-time
splitting by team · region · tenure
AnonymizationReal-time
hash · k ≥ 5
BenchmarkingReal-time
vs. industry · vs. previous
Analysis & recommendationsReal-time
AI root-cause · suggested actions
Build report (per team)Real-time
live dashboards · 24 reports
04 / 07

Catch problems before they grow.

Run pulse surveys at the cadence that fits your team, monthly or quarterly. They surface drift weeks before an annual survey would. Spot the early signal, like optimism in Engineering dipping after a strategy shift, and act before it becomes a people problem.

  • Monthly or quarterly cadence
  • Anomaly detection per team
  • See reason for drop or uplift
Optimism · Engineering
Optimism, last 5 pulses + projection
Strategy shift
JanFebMarAprMay→
!
Optimism in Engineering is dropping
likely cause: new strategic direction · -19 over 3 months
05 / 07

AI that finds the root cause.

Trained on thousands of teams, our models cluster open comments, attribute the underlying causes, and recommend concrete actions you can take this week.

  • Qualitative feedback analysis
  • Root-cause attribution per theme
  • Ranked action recommendations
147 comments · 3 root causes
147Comments
42%Meeting overload
→ Block focus time
28%Career path unclear
→ Deploy a leveling framework
18%Tool fragmentation
→ Audit overlap
06 / 07

See which teams need attention.

Every team gets a live engagement and strain score, along with trend lines. Themes sorted by urgency. Drill into the root cause behind the issue, and walk into your next 1:1 already knowing which conversation matters most.

  • Engagement & strain score per team
  • See every theme as it develops
  • Concrete action recommendations
Attention queue
Sorted by priority
01
Engineering
Well-being · -11%
59
02
Sales
Workload · -6%
68
03
Operations
Recognition · 0%
74
04
Marketing
Life harmony · +2%
78
05
Product
Support · +3%
80
06
Customer Success
Contribution · +5%
86
07 / 07

Useful for every role.

Executives get the org-wide picture. Managers get a report tuned to their team. Teams get a conversation guide for their next retro. One survey, three audiences, each with exactly what they need.

  • Executive view · org-wide signals
  • Manager view · team-level drilldown
  • Team view · conversation guide
One pulse · insights for every role
Pulse data
79 responses (93%)
◧
Executive
Exec + HR
Org-wide insights
Company overview
Org. trends
Cross-team heatmaps
▤
Manager
Per manager
Team report
Team health score
Drivers & detractors
Recommended actions
◉
Team
Per team
Discussion guide
Talking points
Shared wins
Open questions
Average six-month uplift

Numbers that move.

Across customers who adopt Zoios and act on the signals.

+14%
job satisfaction
+18%
well-being
−19%
work stress
See the certification methodology

Why pulse beats annual

Why pulse surveys work, and where they fall apart

Employee pulse surveys have become increasingly popular. The world is moving faster than ever, and keeping an eye on the health, engagement and wellbeing of your most important asset makes sense. Although surveys are not innovative or sexy, we all know what they are, they have strong scientific power, and that creates comfort and buy-in internally.

However, there are mistakes you should not make when implementing a pulse setup. We have helped literally hundreds of companies and thousands of teams run pulse surveys, and here are the mistakes you should avoid at all costs, alongside the criteria that separate the ones that work from the ones that quietly die.

3 common mistakes

The 3 mistakes that make companies fail with pulse surveys

Mistake 1: Changing the survey topics every quarter

The big strength of more frequent pulse surveys relative to a big annual survey is that you can track trends over time, teach managers how to utilize these insights, and set goals for the workplace culture you want to build. If you change the survey questions or topics every quarter, you lose every one of those strengths.

Many fall into this trap of wanting new insights and new topics all the time, sometimes urged by executives with strong opinions. Resist this. Consistency is what makes pulse surveys powerful.

Mistake 2: Ignoring low response rates

When you measure employee satisfaction on a company-wide level with an annual or bi-annual survey, it is reasonable to accept lower response rates. Why? Because 100 answers in a 200-person company is a statistically significant sample, as long as it is relatively distributed across the organization.

However, with pulse surveys you need to activate your managers and teams, and managers are not going to trust and use results if only 3 out of 6 people in their team have answered. You need to drive response rates higher to ensure meaningful insights for most teams.

Low participation at the team level makes pulse surveys useless for the people who need them most: frontline managers trying to improve their teams.

Mistake 3: Running surveys without sharing results or taking action

You get a nice 84% average response rate on the first couple of pulse surveys, but now it is beginning to decline. Why? If managers do not have access to department and team results, if the results are only ever (if at all) discussed at town hall or all hands meetings, and employees do not feel it is used for anything meaningful, then participation drops.

When running monthly, bi-monthly or quarterly pulse surveys you need to make sure that results are shared in teams and departments for discussion and shared responsibility. Many think only of the managers, but it is a collective responsibility to drive a healthy and sustainable culture.

If employees are never engaged in conversations about the pulse results, or never hear about it from their manager, they assume it is not being used for much, and they stop wasting their time answering.

3 criteria for success

The 3 criteria that drive pulse survey success

At Zoios we have helped thousands of teams run pulse surveys successfully, and there are a few criteria, or components, that the best ones get right.

Criterion 1: Decide on a consistent survey and a chosen schedule

Have you ever tried just working out when you feel like it, or just doing 1:1s with employees when the timing happens to be good? What happens in reality is that it gets done less frequently than we believe and know is meaningful for the organization.

You should decide on a schedule of pulse surveys from the start, regardless of whether that is monthly, bi-monthly, quarterly, or some custom selection of five months during the year (for example Jan, Mar, May, Sep and Nov).

You should also run a consistent set of questions in your survey. This allows for tracking trends and training managers in the factors and elements your pulse measures. We recommend measuring engagement, satisfaction, strain and eNPS, which is our 11-question scientific pulse.

Criterion 2: Make data accessible in real-time dashboards

Survey results are the most relevant just after they were collected. Employee sentiment can change quickly on a team level. Pulse surveys should be used by every manager with a decent-sized team, so make sure they have instant and real-time access to the data of their teams.

Once they have access to their data we can begin to train them in the framework we use, and they can take ownership of the results. Way too often we hear that managers were given PDF reports up to 8 weeks after the survey was initially sent to employees, and by then the pulse survey is almost useless.

Criterion 3: Close the feedback loop with conversations and action

Help managers present the results for their team and use them for team actions. This is the only way to ensure the feedback loop is complete and that the pulse survey is perceived as valuable by employees, enticing them to continuously answer the pulse.

This requires tremendous work on playbooks, suggested actions, question templates and other artifacts that you get out of the box with a solution like Zoios. Every manager receives individualized recommendations, questions to ask during employee check-ins, and team conversations to facilitate.

Customers

What our customers say.

Gut feelings, validated by data.

“You can granulate the data and have more detail in terms of what is happening. So when we have a feeling we can actually validate if it's something we need to tackle or not. That's very powerful.”

Gabrielle Damgaard-Mørk

Chief People Officer, 24Slides

Trends that drive everyday dialogue.

“We can follow the trends and facilitate dialogues to make small or large changes in our everyday work-life, to ensure we accommodate what motivates people and develops them as consultants.”

Helene Sarkel

Partner, NoA Connect

Read all customer stories →

Frequently asked

  • How often should we run a pulse?

    Most teams run monthly or bi-monthly. Pick a cadence and stick with it. Consistency is what makes trends visible.

  • Will the same questions every month feel repetitive?

    That is the point. Repeating the core set is what lets you track change over time. We rotate qualitative prompts to keep it fresh.

  • What if response rates drop?

    We send smart reminders to anyone who has not answered. Most customers stay above 80% without manual chasing.

  • Can people see results?

    Yes. Closing the loop matters. Sharing results back with people is one of the things that keeps participation high.

Get started

Listen to your people. Act on what you hear.

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