Inclusive Culture Survey

Evaluate key inclusion competencies across your team to understand the behaviors that foster a culture of inclusion and provide individual feedback on how to improve.

Diversity & Inclusion Data acquisition engines

Drive DEI Engagement

The Pulsely Inclusive Culture Survey is a rigorous and scientifically tested framework for measuring the contribution of individual employees to an organization’s inclusion environment. We identify insights and recommendations aligned with these goals: 

1. Promote self-awareness for each employee and build ownership of their own inclusion journey; 

2. Provide a focused learning agenda for the organization by identifying which competencies/pillars need to be developed; 

3. Understand the energy individuals bring to discussions about DEI and how that impacts the ability to speak up about inclusion

Download a sample organizational report:

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The Methodology

Pulsely’s Inclusive Culture Survey measures employee agreement/disagreement with statements about their attitudes and beliefs regarding diversity and inclusion in the workplace. These statements are based on our scientific framework that relies on the latest DEI research.

With this knowledge, you can:
  • Engage employees in personal growth with individual confidential reports and insights.
  • Reduce resistance to DEI while building a culture more conducive to constructive conversations.
  • Build DEI champions by identifying pockets of inclusive leadership to engage and leverage.
  • Identify areas with the greatest propensity for change and increased DEI performance.
  • Determine what skills should be the focus of your training efforts.
  • Evaluate the effectiveness of training.
  • Increase motivation to engage in DEI, reduce barriers that get in the way of critical conversations, and shift employee mindsets to become more inclusive.

Download a sample individual report:

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Diversity & Inclusion Diagnostic

What we measure

The Pulsely Inclusive Culture Survey is a rigorous and scientifically tested framework for measuring individual employees’ contribution to an organization’s inclusion environment. This is not a pass/fail evaluation but one that helps employees self-reflect and understand where they are on the journey to become more effective inclusive leaders. The goal is to increase DEI performance through individual and organizational behavioral change.

Dimensions of an Inclusive Culture

An employee's response to the survey produces a score in three different dimensions of inclusion:
1. Beliefs
2. Strength of Opinion
3. Ability to Speak up
An employee’s response scores align with one of three possible types for each dimension. Understanding the prevalent types in your workforce provides guidance for engaging your employees in building inclusion in a logical and constructive manner.
With the Inclusive Culture Survey, you can track how your employees’ mindsets evolve. Measuring the shift in types provides leading indicators of change and the effectiveness of your work.
How It Works
With our enterprise solutions, we support you all the way through
Trusted by our clients
We're helping improve workplace inclusion for more than 350,000 employees worldwide.
What clients say about us
The Pulsely platform has been extremely helpful in understanding our team and their needs in a responsible way that protects their confidentiality and ensures data we can rely on to design interventions.
Ren Gaffney
General Counsel at Convergent
In my 20+ years in the industry, I have explored several assessments and Pulsely is the one that I felt most closely aligns with the concept of inclusion I believe in.
Dr. Linda G. Wiley
CEO at Turning Point Leadership Group
The whole process was very straightforward and we had their support in communicating and engaging our employees. Pulsely DEI survey has original questions that lead to interesting reflections. The final report highlighted our strengths and weaknesses that allowed us to create an action plan.
Fernanda Pires
VP of People and ESG at EDP Brazil
You have really developed a work product and process here that adds tremendous value. I continue to be impressed!
Kate Harris
Director of Consulting at NEW org
We have conducted many employee surveys before but we have never had this high quality of actionable insights to create a clear path forward.
Marla Carson
SEIC (US/UK)
When our company launched its DE&I effort, we knew we needed comprehensive data to help guide our decision-making.
Mike O'Malley
SVP Government & PR at DCLI
The data as well as the data presentation helped me greatly to pinpoint challenges and opportunities and engage with senior leaders in the business. We've reached a higher level of awareness of the topic.
Anneke Beerkens
Head of Inclusion and Belonging at Adevinta
Pulsely did a fantastic job listening to our needs, and walking along side us in our DEI journey. The turn around time on our results were extremely fast and the report was clear, specific, and easy to explain. We feel like we have a better understand of where we are at so we know where we need to go.
Megan Donecker
DEI Strategy Officer at Oregon Department of Forestry
We find that the DE&I data that Pulsely provides us really empowers people and makes our Inclusion effort grassroots driven.
Johannes Rittershausen
CEO Convergent Energy
Our thinking
The Science Behind Pulsely
Tapping into research that demonstrates how inclusion enables an organisation to leverage the power of diversity and unleash the full breadth of its talent.
How Pulsely Uses DEI Analytics to Provide Direction Towards Greater Equity in the Workplace
In-depth DEI data leads to a stronger DEI ecosystem. The stronger the DEI ecosystem, the more credible the DEI strategy. Learn how Pulsely leverages DEI analytics expertise working with partners to build a company’s DEI foundation based on clear metrics.
Is Your Organization a DEI Leader or Laggard?
Whether your organization is a leader or a laggard in Diversity, Equity and Inclusion is a reflection of how you benchmark against other companies, but also and more importantly, it’s a direct reflection on how your culture is experienced by your own employees.
The key D&I success factor: Getting your leaders on board
While many D&I initiatives begin at a grassroots level among employees, organisational impact is often elusive until senior leaders become engaged.
FAQ
Frequently Asked Questions

How is Pulsely different from other providers?

Measuring inclusion is complex. There is no definitive set of metrics to assess an organization’s inclusiveness. Through our expertise in D&I research and consulting, we know the underlying systemic challenges that are usually only identified during time consuming and expensive qualitative research. Our analytics platform is developed to efficiently and quantitatively evaluate the drivers of inclusion that lead to engagement and other positive business outcomes. This assessment allows you to determine which of the many different possible causes are impacting your workplace most significantly so that you can focus your efforts on solutions that will make a difference. With actionable insights and recommended practices linked to your areas of opportunity, you can focus your efforts and make progress. We are not an HR company or a survey house building an inclusion module. The function of our platform is designed from the ground up to gather and analyze your workplace through the lens of diversity and inclusion. The power of Pulsely comes from our data-mining algorithms to find the story in your data. You will receive more than heatmaps of survey answers; you will gain insights on which groups need focused attention, which of their challenges should be prioritized, and how that impacts your business performance. Our technology-driven approach to diagnostics and measurement allows you to dedicate more of your limited resources to implementing solutions that will accelerate your progress.



How is Pulsely different from an engagement survey?

Many companies do have annual engagement surveys that assess key elements of the culture and the employee experience. What we have seen is that even when there is demographic analysis of engagement results, companies may know WHO may be less engaged by not WHY, so they struggle to identify WHAT to do differently to increase engagement.At Pulsely we know that inclusion is a precursor to engagement. Our diagnostic questions assess the underlying causes of the problem by evaluating research-identified barriers to inclusion that underrepresented employee groups may face. With our actionable insights you can implement solutions that are directly related to challenges specific groups are facing and you can measure your progress!Even if your organization requires you to do an annual engagement survey, Pulsely is value-add. The diagnostic direction you get from Pulsely will enable you to make greater gains in your engagement numbers.

What kind of companies benefit from Pulsely?

We believe that all companies from all industries benefit from a diverse and inclusive culture. That said, companies with executive D&I commitment, dedicated resources, and a willingness to discuss  the challenging topic of systemic inequities benefit the most from using Pulsely. The potential benefit you can achieve with Pulsely is 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.

How does Pulsely ensure employee participation on surveys?

Pulsely data collection instruments have been carefully designed to generate high levels of participation and completion. Employees often mention that the questions in our Inclusion Survey are fascinating and thought-provoking, as they are not the typical employee engagement questions. We also believe that communication and trust between the employee and the employer strongly influence response rates. We offer a communication plan and templates that include messages from leaders to establish the importance of the project to the organization and to the executive team.  These messages should also reinforce the confidentiality of responses and the organization’s intent to use the results to guide action that will improve the workplace. Pulsely helps you reinforce the Data-Insight-Action loop so that employees believe their contributions will be valued and acted upon.

Do you benchmark company data with industry or geographic data?

Many of our clients ask about benchmarks because their leaders often want to know how they compare with other companies. In the work of DEI (Diversity, Equity, Inclusion), our analysis of equity focuses on internal benchmarks within your workforce. 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.).For overall inclusion pillar scores and inclusion competency scores, Pulsely provides your organization’s percentile score. Grades for each pillar are based on percentiles of all employees participating in Pulsely's Inclusion 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. After implementing solutions, you will then measure your progress toward closing those gaps and continue to monitor and re-prioritize your other metrics. Making progress toward your goals is the ultimate purpose of benchmarking. We do not provide more specific benchmarking because we have seen that when leaders are provided with external benchmarks, one of three things happens:1. 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.2. If your scores align with the benchmarks, despite being just as “bad” as other companies, leaders can lose a sense of urgency.3. 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.Of course many companies find that benchmarking against their competitors is a useful motivation. One important caveat is to not let the results of external benchmarks provide a false sense of reassurance. Being a leader in a lagging industry 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.

What demographic information do you collect?

We can collect any demographic information that is relevant to you. These are the most frequently asked used demographic dimensions: GenderGender Identity/Sexual OrientationRace/EthnicityAbilityCaregiving ResponsibilityAge / GenerationMarital StatusLanguage (one or two official languages)NationalityEducationSocioeconomic backgroundReligionVeteran StatusCareer Progression

What consulting services do you offer?

Included in the pricing, our Customer Success team is available for any questions or challenges you may experience.Besides the Pulsely software solution Pulsely also offers DE&I services. For more information please visit our Services offer. (and link this to the Services page)

Are surveys anonymous?

We distribute unique links to employees to track response rates by demographics and to limit reminder emails to those who haven't yet responded. In this model, your employees’ survey responses are confidential. While our system may capture response-specific data, it does not allow us to access an individual’s answers. As the client, you will not be able to link any specific response to any individual employee. All data is aggregated before being presented to you. Furthermore, no group or data subset with fewer than five responses will be displayed. If necessary, multiple response categories may be combined to meet this minimum threshold, or the data will not be shown.

What’s Pulsely’s Privacy Policy?

At Pulsely, we are committed to our customers’ data privacy and information security. We’ve aligned our security programs with (i) ISO 27001, followed secure development practices, provided ongoing training for employees, and more. Our policies and procedures are reviewed and compliant with (ii) The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).All third party services that Pulsely uses in order to process Data and deliver the core speciality of its products are also compliant with (i) and (ii).Read our full data privacy policy here.

What can Pulsely do that my internal analytics department can’t do?

The benefits are in both the type of analytics provided and the timing. Many HR teams have expertise in people analytics, but they may not have expertise in looking at data through the lens of diversity and inclusion. Our experts inform not only what is measured but how the data is analyzed and displayed to reveal actionable insights. We have seen analytics teams get lost in deep analysis while missing the “forest for the trees” because they aren’t sure how to identify the most relevant insights.

Why do companies need DE&I Analytics?

To manage: If you can’t measure DE&I KPIs, you can’t manage De&I or hold the organization accountable for progressTo focus: Companies need to deploy targeted efforts that deliver impact. This is not possible without reliable analytics that identify specific points of interventionTo save money: invest in the right actions, monitor progress, identify what’s working and replicate across your companyTo anticipate risks: To identify risks of legal noncompliance, liabilities and employee churn.

How much does it cost?

Our pricing is tailored to meet the unique needs of each organization. The final cost depends on several factors, including the size of your organization, the complexity of the analysis, and the specific services you require. To get an accurate estimate, we invite you to book a meeting with us, where we can discuss your needs in detail and determine the best solution for you.

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Schedule a conversation with our team to find out more about our services or partnership models.
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