Pulsely

What kind of companies benefit from Pulsely?

We believe that all companies from all industries benefit from a more inclusive culture. That said, the companies who benefit the most from using Pulsely have executive commitment to DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion), dedicated resources, and a willingness to discuss the challenging topic of systemic inequities. Companies from all DEI maturity levels have successfully deployed Pulsely assessments. However, the potential benefit you can achieve with Pulsely is also a function of your current internal state and the nature of the industry you operate in. • Internal D&I state: Keep in mind that most companies want to believe they are doing much better than they actually are - stop guessing and start knowing! Otherwise, it is like hoping to lose weight without ever stepping on a scale. If your company does not have a structured approach to D&I, you can benefit from a lot of low hanging fruit that becomes evident once you understand your greatest challenges and how to address them. If your company has been at this work for a while but is not seeing much progress, the diversity fatigue can be frustrating. With D&I analytics you will be able to pinpoint your barriers to progress and implement targeted solutions to close those gaps. • If your company has a more sophisticated approach to D&I and is using people analytics to identify workforce gaps, you can now include Pulsely’s inclusion metrics to diagnose the role inclusion plays in your challenges; the solutions you implement become much more focused and measurable and you can really move the needle!

At Pulsely, our goal is to capture data on employee segments that are actionable (identifiable and of sufficient size to warrant the dedication of resources). The comparison of data from these segments will be used to analyze patterns that help you understand the perceptions and experiences of these groups. GDPR, a strict guideline followed in Europe that influences data privacy restrictions globally, recommends only collecting the demographic data that is necessary to take action which benefits employees. As a default. we recommend a set of carefully selected diversity dimensions that organizations are commonly addressing with their DEI programming. For most companies, these default demographics will give you more than enough to analyze and address for your workforce. It is possible to add additional diversity questions that capture other essential information for you to understand your workforce. For example, if your company has recently completed a merger or acquisition, you may need to compare how inclusion may be impacting the experiences and performance of employees from those legacy groups. However, we recommend that you only ask questions that the organization is prepared to act on. Asking the question creates the expectation for employees that any identified issues will be addressed.

If the answer categories (demographic segments) in the standard wording of Pulsely’s demographic questions do not align with the data you need to capture, you can also customize the answer categories in line with your organizational terminology and current HR categories. While it is important to be inclusive in the answer options, there is no way to have a mutually exclusive and completely exhaustive answer option for every single person. This is not desirable for other reasons, as well; employees from smaller minority groups often fear being singled out if they expect being an “only” in a category. For this reason, we provide an “Other (specify)” category for less common segments; this allows a person to identify themselves specifically, if they desire, but also enables them to feel protected by a larger group identity.

After you review the Pulsely Implementation Guide 6: Data Decisions, contact us if you’d need to add additional diversity dimensions or edit answer categories. Not all service levels allow this customization, so please determine whether the customization is needed and ask your Pulsely Advisor about the change fee.

If your final response rate is below your expectations or below the threshold to draw statistically significant conclusions about your workforce, you may want to consider extending the time your employees have to participate in the survey.

However, here are some thoughts and recommendations for you to keep in mind as you decide:

We can’t start to analyze your data until everything is closed so extending the survey will have impact on the report delivery date;
Telling your employees there is a closing date and then extending it can make it more difficult for them to believe in survey closing dates in the future; they may be more likely to postpone participation to future surveys (It can help this survey but make things harder for future surveys). We advise that you not extend the survey unless you plan to take action to address specific challenges in response rates and communicate the logical reason for the extension to your employees;
The most logical reason for extending the survey closing date is if there was a hurdle preventing or limiting participation such as high bounce rates, spam filters that were not addressed in the whitelisting process, or competing organizational priorities that have lessened. If you can address, rectify or mitigate these challenges, then an extension makes sense to your employees;
One additional hurdle is that employees are not prioritizing participation in the survey; this is a communications challenge on your side. Unless you can engage your leadership (business leaders/CEO) in sending additional communications to convince/motivate the non-respondents to participate you can expect very little incremental response. Please be sure to include in that message:

1. Why this survey is important to your organization and why the input of everyone is valuable;

2. What you are trying to achieve with the survey and its results;

3. Reassurance that leaders will be reviewing the results and Taking Action on them. You can include a brief summary of what you intend to do with the results and how you are expecting to act on them (We have even seen 10-15% increases from this).

You can also encourage department leaders create a "competition" between departments or offer incentives (donations to a charity, pizza party, etc) for groups that reach 50%;
We will be monitoring the number of people who request to be removed from the participants list or who unsubscribed from our survey mailing list as this can indicate increased survey resistance and fatigue;
Finally, it is important for you to have a well defined closing date or closing criteria so that you have a clear way to determine the closing and so that you do not start to “annoy” your employees.

Many of our clients ask about benchmarks because their leaders often want to know how they compare with other companies, as benchmarking against their competitors can be a useful motivation. While providing context, external benchmarks can also undermine commitment and progress (see NOTE below). We do provide a high level external benchmark but focus more on internal benchmarks. Here is Pulsely’s unique approach to benchmarks that has proven most useful for our clients:

EXTERNAL BENCHMARKS: For overall inclusion pillar scores, Pulsely provides your organization’s percentile score. Grades for each pillar are based on percentiles of all employees participating in Pulsely's assessments; the mean response of your employees is compared to the mean response of employee responses globally. Overall grades are important, but the patterns of experiences among groups will indicate organizational strengths and inclusion gaps. Identifying and addressing those inequities before they become a liability is a priority.

INTERNAL BENCHMARKS: In the work of DEI (Diversity, Equity, Inclusion), our analysis of equity focuses on internal benchmarks within your workforce. It is not unusual to see variations in workplace experiences among employees. However, when there are variations that uniquely impact specific demographic segments, it is important to evaluate where organizational solutions are needed. As such, our priority is to highlight the patterns of responses across demographic groups at your company. We will identify how inclusion scores vary among different segments that you prioritize (e.g., gender, level, etc.). After implementing solutions, you will then measure your progress toward closing those internal gaps and continue to monitor and re-prioritize your other metrics. Making progress toward your goals is the ultimate purpose of benchmarking.

NOTE: We do not provide more specific external benchmarking because we have seen that when leaders are provided with external benchmarks, one of three things usually happens: • If your scores surpass the benchmarks, results can provide a false sense of reassurance and “mission accomplished” when there is still work to be done. (And if you are in an industry that is lagging in general, being a leader in this situation is nothing to brag about. All it takes is one committed competitor to make progress and you have lost your advantage; without momentum it may take you longer than you expect to regain your leadership position.) • If your scores align with the benchmarks, leaders can lose a sense of urgency. • If your scores are below the benchmarks, leaders will ALWAYS find a way to doubt the relevance of the benchmarks to their business blaming region, size, industry, timing, etc.