Understanding your survey data helps you identify trends and decide where to take action. Here’s how to access, interpret, filter, share, and export your Pulse Survey results.
Note: To learn how to create and administer a survey, see How to set up and administer Pulse Surveys.
Accessing your results
You can monitor survey results in real time as responses are submitted.
Click Pulse Surveys in the left-hand navigation.
Select the Company tab.
Use the survey dropdown to select the survey you want to analyze.
The survey results are organized into four tabs: Overview, Questions, Heatmaps, and Comments. Each gives you a different way to explore your survey data.
Note: The response rate includes any survey where a participant has answered at least one question. Participants can update their answers until the survey deadline.
Reading and interpreting results
Overview
The Overview tab gives you a high-level view of your survey results, including the current average score and overall response rate.
Use the available controls to explore the data:
Period: Select the period you want to analyze. This is particularly useful for repeating surveys.
View: Choose the survey data you want to be displayed.
Group by: Break down results using profile information such as Department, Location, Manager, or other available fields.
Grouping your results can help you spot differences between teams or employee groups and identify areas that may benefit from further investigation.
Tip: Grouping results by Manager shows responses from each manager’s direct reports only. Indirect reports are not included.
Questions
The Questions tab lets you explore results at the individual question level. This can help you understand which topics are driving the overall survey results.
Use the Period, View, and Group by controls to explore the results from different perspectives.
Heatmaps
The Heatmaps tab provides another way to compare survey results across groups and identify patterns in your data.
The same Period, View, and Group by controls are available here, making it easy to apply a consistent analysis across the Overview, Questions, and Heatmaps tabs.
Comments
The Comments tab contains written feedback submitted by participants. Comments can provide additional context for the numerical survey results and help you better understand why employees responded in a particular way.
Use the Period picker to choose which survey period’s comments you want to review.
Note: Unlike Overview, Questions, and Heatmaps, the Comments tab only includes the period picker. The other viewing and grouping options are not available for comments.
Grouping results by performance rating
When available, you can use Performance Rating to group survey results. This can help you understand whether engagement differs between employees with different performance ratings.
For example, you might use this view to explore whether highly rated employees are less engaged in a particular area or whether another performance group has distinct feedback.
After selecting Performance Rating from the Group by dropdown, you can choose a specific Review cycle and Rating question, including the Overall Rating. This gives you more control over which performance data you use to compare your survey results.
Protecting respondent anonymity
Survey results are aggregated to help protect respondents’ anonymity. When a group has fewer than three respondents, its responses are included under Company rather than displayed as a separate group.
This means you can still see those responses reflected in the overall results, but they won’t appear as their own segment when grouping your survey data.
Sharing results internally
Sharing a survey gives selected people visibility into its results without giving them access to administrative settings. This can be useful when executives, department heads, or other stakeholders need to review survey findings.
Open Pulse Surveys from the left-hand navigation.
Select Company and open the survey you want to share.
Click Share at the top of the survey.
Add the people you want to share the survey with.
People you share the survey with can access it from Pulse Surveys > Company.
Note: Sharing gives the recipient access to all available data within the survey. Access is not automatically restricted based on the recipient’s department or team.
For example, sharing a survey with the Head of Sales gives them access to company-wide results, not only Sales results. For a repeating survey, sharing also includes past and future results within that cycle.
Exporting results
You can export survey data when you want to analyze it further outside Small Improvements.
Open Pulse Surveys from the left-hand navigation.
Select Company and open the relevant survey.
Click Admin at the top of the survey.
Select Export Pulse Survey.
Choose the available CSV or Excel export option.
Exporting can be useful when you want to combine survey data with other reporting or perform additional analysis in a spreadsheet.