Employee listening suite

Table of Contents

Features

Employee listening is designed specifically to measure how users feel about important announcements and corporate communications. All the features listed below are part of the Employee listening suite; and while sentiment checks and awareness checks are included in your intranet by default, Surveys are a paid add-on to your Simpplr environment. For information on adding Employee listening to your intranet, contact your CSM.

The suite contains several unique features, including:

  • Sentiment check

    • Sentiment check allows employees to provide real-time, anonymous feedback on content they receive. Managers can give their teams a voice on information outside the traditional survey schedule. 

      With Sentiment check, teams can quickly correct course on the content messaging they send out as they receive feedback.

      Users will get an array of options to rate how they feel about any piece of content based on various scales:

      • Sentiment: Very negative to very positive
      • Agreement: Strongly disagree to strongly agree
      • Quality: Very poor to excellent
      • Frequency: Never to always
      • Emoji: sad face to happy face
      • Custom: Create your own 1 to 5 scale
  • Awareness check

    • Awareness check is enabled on a piece of content, with up to 5 questions per quiz. This is an extension of the Must read functionality on content. Users can answer the questions correctly to prove they have understood the core message of a piece of content. If they get a question wrong, then they will be shown the correct answer and need to manually select it to complete the awareness check. 

      This is not a quiz designed to punish those who get the answers wrong; rather, its goal is to check how well the core message(s) of a piece of content are being understood by the audience. 

      A piece of content must be made Must read in order to have the Awareness check option enabled.

  • Pulse surveys*

    • A Pulse survey allows for a set of brief questions to be sent out to users at repeated intervals. Users can answer questions on a five-point Likert scale (the default scale label is Strongly disagree - Strongly agree). When creating a survey, you can choose from a selection of labels as well as customizing your own. Each question gives the opportunity for optional free text feedback. 

      Use Pulse surveys to measure the impact of changes your org makes and respond as employee sentiment deviates from previous benchmarks.

  • All-purpose surveys*

    • The All-purpose survey is a versatile survey that can be used to gather one-time feedback on any topic, such as travel habits, office days, or swag sizes. It facilitates two-way communication and immediate data collection. The All-purpose survey can also function as an engagement survey. Unlike Pulse survey, it has three question types; Likert scale questions, multiple choice and free text. 

      Users can participate in all surveys on mobile via the side navigation.

  • Employee engagement surveys*

    • Employee engagement surveys give a baseline measure of employee satisfaction and will provide actionable insights into improving employee experience. They are large, comprehensive, anonymous surveys meant to be conducted on an annual basis. 

      Unlike Pulse or All-purpose surveys, engagement surveys are meant to be sent out on an infrequent basis, and contain a large question set to gain a better understanding of employee sentiment and satisfaction throughout the year. 

  • AI Perception dashboard

    • The Perception dashboard is an AI-powered, passive listening component of the Employee listening product, and will include sentiment and emotion analysis on posts, comments and replies, as well as top themes for each organization and their respective sentiments.

      Organizations rarely get consistent employee feedback on initiatives, policy changes or overall day-to-day goings-on unless they explicitly solicit it via survey, interviews etc., which themselves can be fraught with issues. When they do get this large scale feedback, they often lack the resources to sift through all of it and come to any conclusions about how employees are feeling at that particular moment, or can miss some key insights in the process. 

      The Perception Dashboard allows companies and their leaders to consistently and accurately assess the themes, emotions and sentiments on their intranets, especially as it pertains to company culture, policy and employee wellbeing.

Note:

Prior to sending surveys or adding sentiment checks to content, ensure you've whitelisted the URL  https://cdn.listenersuite-production.simpplr.xyz/ in your browser. Otherwise you may not see the option to add surveys or sentiment checks.

 

*Surveys are an add-on product that are not included as part of the base-level Employee listening suite. Contact your CSM for more information about purchasing Surveys.

Survey sharing and reporting

Surveys and survey reports can be shared with team members in a number of ways. Survey links can be shared through your messaging app integration like Slack or Microsoft Teams.

In addition, Survey managers can choose whether to show a full access report with all filters or a pre-filtered view with limited filters. They can also choose whether to include survey comments.

Survey URL sharing

Survey managers and App managers can share a survey participation URL directly to a Slack or Microsoft Teams channel. When a Pulse, All-purpose or Engagement survey is sent out and in an active state, the survey creator will see an option to distribute via the messaging app.
share survey on slack.jpg

This allows surveys to be distributed across multiple channels and to meet employees where they are, and adds to the email and in-app prompts that are already sent out automatically for surveys. 

Reporting sharing

Customized reports can also be created with the appropriate level of information for stakeholders. For example, the Head of the Finance department at GoodCo can receive a report focused solely on the Finance team's survey results. What's more, these reports come with pre-applied filters to ensure the information presented is directly relevant to the recipient. For instance, while the Finance department head will have the flexibility to further refine the report by location or by team manager, they will not be inundated with extraneous data irrelevant to them. They will still be able to filter by location or team manager filters, but will not be shown unsuitable information outside their department. Shared views will still protect the anonymity of survey participants and the comments section can be hidden as appropriate for the team member that the reporting is shared with.
share reporting view Employee listening .jpg

 

How is Employee listening different than traditional feedback tools? 

Employee listening

Traditional EX survey tools

Real-time

Rear-view

Continuous (always on)

Point-in-time (pulse only)

Contextual alignment (cause and effect)

Isolated (effect with unclear cause)

In-the-moment

Rear-view

Unbiased (in the moment, true emotion) 

Biased (based on how someone is feeling in general, at the time of answering the survey)

Broad (not guided only by questions - unearthing what’s below the surface)

Limited (based only on questions asked - more superficial, getting at what’s above the surface)

Active and passive

Active only

Integrated user experience 

Isolated user experience 

Automated

Usually administered, limited automation

Broader EX community of users, e.g., Comms, HR, DEX, Manager  

Usually HR administered with limited manager-specific delivery 

Themes and Questions toggle for Survey results

Survey results now support a Themes & Questions toggle across all survey types, giving survey creators and managers a consistent way to analyse results at both levels.

Previously:

  • Pulse surveys: Supported theme-level views.

  • Engagement and All-purpose surveys: Only supported question-level results.

With this update:

  • All survey types now support both:

    • A Themes view (grouped by themes), and

    • A Questions view (each question individually).

  • You can switch between them with a simple toggle at the top of the Survey Results page.

Who is this for?

  • App Managers

  • Survey creators

  • Survey managers / HR / People Analytics

What are “themes” and “questions” in survey reporting?

Questions

Questions are the individual items in a survey, such as:

  • “I understand the company’s long-term strategy.”

  • “My manager gives me regular feedback.”

  • “I have the tools I need to do my job well.”

In the Questions view, each question is listed separately, with its own:

  • Response distribution (e.g., strongly agree → strongly disagree)

  • Averages / scores (depending on question type)

  • Filters (e.g., department, location, team manager, where available)

This view is ideal for detailed, item-by-item analysis.

Themes

Themes group related questions under broader topics.

Examples of themes:

  • Leadership & strategy

  • Manager support

  • Enablement & tooling

  • Workload & wellbeing

  • Collaboration

  • Inclusion & belonging

A theme might include several questions, all rolled up into a single theme score or theme sentiment, depending on your configuration and survey design.

In the Themes view, you see:

  • A list of all themes used in the survey

  • A rolled-up score or indicator per theme

  • The ability to drill down into the questions that make up each theme (where supported)

This view is ideal for high-level insights, like:

  • “Where are we strongest?”

  • “Which areas need attention across the organization or for a specific segment?”

How the Themes & Questions toggle works

On the Survey results page for any survey type (Engagement, Pulse, All-purpose):

  1. Open the survey in Manage > Surveys (or the relevant Survey management page).

  2. Go to the Results tab.

  3. At the top of the results section, you’ll see a toggle:

    • Themes

    • Questions

  4. Click Themes to view results grouped and summarised by theme.

  5. Click Questions to view results at the individual question level.

You can switch between these two views at any time without leaving the page.

Note:

Availability of specific metrics (average score, sentiment, response distribution) may vary slightly by survey type and question type.

Themes view

In the Themes view, survey managers can:

  • See a high-level overview of how respondents feel about major topics.

  • Identify top-performing themes (areas of strength).

  • Identify low-performing themes (areas requiring attention).

  • Apply filters (e.g., department, location, team/manager, where configured) to compare:

    • How different groups feel about each theme.

  • Drill into a theme to see the underlying questions (where supported).

Use the Themes view when:

  • Presenting survey results to leaders or broader audiences.

  • Prioritising where to focus action planning.

  • Comparing overall trends across departments or locations.

Questions view

In the Questions view, survey managers can:

  • See all questions in the survey, grouped by theme (where applicable).

  • Review the response distribution and/or average score for each question.

  • Identify specific questions that are pulling a theme up or down.

  • Validate whether low theme scores are driven by:

    • One problematic question, or

    • A pattern across several questions.

Use the Questions view when:

  • You need detailed insight into exact wording issues or content gaps.

  • Creating or revising survey questions for the next cycle.

  • Preparing deep-dive reports for HR/People Analytics.

Supported survey types

The Themes & Questions toggle is available for:

  • Engagement surveys

  • Pulse surveys

  • All-purpose surveys (general surveys created for any use case)

This provides a single, consistent analysis experience across all survey types.

How this change improves your workflows

  • All survey types support a Themes & Questions toggle on the same page.

  • You can:

    • Start at a Themes view to understand where you’re strong or weak.

    • Switch to Questions view to see which questions drive those scores.

  • Reporting is more intuitive and aligned with how HR and People Analytics teams want to interpret results.

Access and permissions

The Themes & Questions toggle is available to:

  • App Managers with survey reporting access.

  • Survey creators and Survey managers who are allowed to view results for that survey.

Permissions and anonymization rules remain unchanged. For example:

  • If a survey is configured as anonymous, data for small groups (e.g., fewer than 4 respondents) is still suppressed or aggregated according to your confidentiality threshold.

  • If the user does not have access to a specific filter or segment, they will not see it in either view.

How to use the toggle in your analysis process

Here’s a suggested workflow for survey owners:

  1. Start in Themes view

    • Identify your top 3 strongest and bottom 3 weakest themes overall.

    • Repeat this by key segment (e.g., department, location, manager) using filters.

  2. Drill down in Questions view

    • For each weak theme, switch to Questions.

    • Identify:

      • Which specific question(s) scored lowest.

      • Whether issues are consistent across segments or isolated to certain teams.

  3. Build your action plan

    • Use theme-level insights to set priority areas (e.g., Manager support, Workload & wellbeing).

    • Use question-level insights to shape specific actions (e.g., “Improve 1:1 feedback frequency”, “Clarify workload expectations”).

  4. Communicate findings

    • Use Themes view for a clear, executive-ready story: “Here’s where we’re doing well and where we need to improve.”

    • Use Questions view when sharing more detailed findings with HRBPs, managers, or analytics teams.

Do all questions have to be part of a theme?

  • In Engagement and Pulse surveys, questions are typically organized under themes.

  • In All-purpose surveys, you may:

    • Use themes (recommended), or

    • Have standalone questions.

  • If a question is not assigned to a theme, it will still appear in the Questions view. In the Themes view, it may be grouped under a generic or “Other” category depending on your setup.

How does anonymization work with Themes vs Questions?

Anonymization rules are applied consistently:

  • If a segment (e.g., one department) does not meet the confidentiality threshold, its data:

    • Is either not shown, or

    • Is aggregated at a higher level, depending on your configuration.

  • This applies in both Themes and Questions view, and to CSV exports as well.

Easier access to survey data export

Survey owners and admins can now export survey data to CSV more easily. The Download CSV action has been moved to the top of the Survey Results page, so you no longer need to scroll to the bottom or look inside the comments section to find it.

In addition, the button behavior now clearly reflects your confidentiality threshold:

  • The Download CSV button is always visible on the Survey Results page.

  • If the survey does not meet the confidentiality threshold, the button appears in a disabled (greyed-out) state instead of being hidden.

This change makes it clearer when export is available and why it may be blocked.

Who is this for?

  • App Managers

  • Survey creators

  • Survey managers / HR / People Analytics teams

What's changed?

  • Download CSV is placed at the top of the Survey Results page (near other key actions and filters).

  • The button is always visible:

    • Enabled when export is allowed.

    • Disabled / greyed out when the confidentiality threshold is not met.

  • This is consistent across all survey types (Engagement, Pulse, All-purpose) and all reporting views (including the new Themes & Questions toggle).

Where to find the Download CSV button

To export survey results:

  1. Go to Manage > Surveys (naming may vary slightly).

  2. Open the survey you want to analyze.

  3. Click the Results tab.

  4. At the top of the results view, look for the Download CSV button:

    • It appears near the main survey result controls (filters, views, Themes/Questions toggle, etc.).

  5. If the button is enabled, click it to export your survey data to CSV.

You no longer need to:

  • Scroll to the bottom of the page, or

  • Hunt through the comments/feedback section to find the export option.

Confidentiality threshold and disabled button behavior

To protect respondent anonymity, survey reporting uses a confidentiality threshold (e.g., a minimum number of responses must be present before detailed data is shown).

With this change:

  • The Download CSV button is always visible.

  • If the survey meets the confidentiality threshold, the button is:

    • Enabled (clickable), and

    • Triggers a CSV download.

  • If the survey does not meet the confidentiality threshold:

    • The button is shown in a disabled (greyed-out) state.

    • This visually explains that:

      • Export exists, but

      • It’s temporarily unavailable due to confidentiality protection.

This is clearer than hiding the button entirely:

  • Users know where export lives.

  • The disabled state signals why they can’t download yet (insufficient responses).

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Note: Some features may not be avalable in your instance due to various packaging and pricing. To learn what features are available to your org and bundling with the Simpplr One packaging, contact your CSM or Account Manager.

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