How the Employee Engagement Pulse Survey Tool by Empuls (in collaboration with SHRM) Helps Build Great Culture

A strong culture helps organizations retain talent, enhance collaboration, and maintain high performance. It’s reflected in how employees communicate, take ownership, and show up every day. But how do you know if the culture you’re building is working as intended?

Many organizations rely on annual surveys, which often arrive too late to uncover early signs of disengagement. By the time leaders act, issues may already be affecting morale and productivity.

Empuls, in partnership with SHRM, addresses this gap with a purpose-built pulse survey tool. It’s designed to help teams collect timely, honest feedback frequently and with minimal effort. Backed by SHRM’s research and Empuls’ product capabilities, the solution empowers HR and business leaders to monitor culture and act with confidence continuously.

The Empuls + SHRM pulse survey: Built for strategic culture building

The Empuls Pulse Survey was co-created with SHRM to help organizations go beyond generic feedback and get to the heart of employee experience. Grounded in SHRM’s research and informed by real-world workplace behavior, the survey design provides a structured and repeatable approach to measuring what matters.

At its core, this tool combines pulse surveys and eNPS to provide a clear picture of employee engagement. It captures both sentiment and loyalty, tracking how employees feel and whether they would recommend their organization as a place to work.

The pulse survey model follows a simple but effective cycle: measure where things stand, analyze the root causes, and implement actions to improve. It supports the collection of frequent, low-effort feedback without overloading employees or managers. Each survey is concise, focused, and presented in a manner that encourages participation and honest responses.

What sets this apart is the balance between science and usability. Every question has been tested for reliability. Participation is anonymous by default. And leaders receive clear insights they can act on, rather than raw data that sits untouched.

What makes the Empuls pulse survey uniquely effective

Most employee surveys fall short. They’re either too long to complete or too shallow to be useful. The Empuls Pulse Survey takes a different approach. Co-developed with SHRM, it strikes a careful balance between frequency and depth, making it easier to gather real feedback while minimizing fatigue.

The survey is designed to run seamlessly within the workflow. With concise, easy-to-understand questions, it collects feedback that is both candid and actionable. Leaders don’t need to dig through spreadsheets or raw data; they receive clear insights that highlight exactly where engagement is thriving—and where it’s at risk.

Here’s what makes the Empuls pulse survey different:

• Scientifically validated questions: Every question has been developed and tested by SHRM to ensure reliability. They’re designed to uncover real insights without being repetitive or vague.
• Short and focused by design: Surveys are brief enough to complete in just a few minutes, making it easier for employees to participate regularly and for managers to act on the data quickly.
• AI nudges that improve response rates: Empuls’ built-in assistant, Em, sends personalized reminders to non-respondents, helping organizations avoid the common issue of incomplete or low-quality data.
• Data reliability indicators: The platform signals when enough responses have been collected to draw meaningful conclusions, ensuring that decisions are based on statistically valid data.
• Anonymous by default: Anonymity is built into protect respondent privacy and encourage honest, open input, without fear of judgment or retaliation.
• Custom segmentation and filtering: Results can be filtered by department, role, location, or any custom employee attribute, giving HR teams granular insight into specific engagement drivers.

With this approach, organizations don’t just collect feedback—they gain the clarity needed to take focused, impactful action.

Deep-dive into the four strategic dimensions of culture

The Empuls Pulse Survey, built in collaboration with SHRM, captures engagement across four foundational dimensions. Each dimension reflects a critical area of employee experience, enabling organizations to identify what’s working and what needs attention.

Empuls is all about exploring all four dimensions of your organization’s culture. These survey questions scrutinize each dimension of your organization and discover the exact pain point(s) of your teams.

1. Strategic connect

It’s all about unifying the organization’s efforts towards a common objective. With the Pulse Survey, the focus is on establishing the proper strategic connection that catapults your organization as a force to be reckoned with. 

Strategic planning is a crucial function of an organization’s management that helps prioritize and allocate resources to ensure everyone is working towards a shared vision.

‍The more employees feel connected to the organization and its core values, the more engaged employees are. It becomes easier for them to align with the organization's strategy and work towards achieving optimal results.

The belief that the work I am doing is meaningful fulfills the higher-order human/social needs as per Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. It provides a clear sense of purpose that drives an employee to do better, and inspiration that goes beyond financial perks, and other benefits.

2. Hygiene factors

A pristine culture is built on happy employees, but where does happiness originate? The hygiene dimension takes into consideration how clear the workforce is with its roles, financial safety, organizational ground rules, and psychological safety.

Meeting health and safety needs, employees need to feel a sense of dignity and respect, where the workplace is safe and secure, and their health and wellness are prioritized.

Employees are more engaged when they are aware that they are the employee of choice for the organization. Taken together, these values, norms, culture, and needs free employees from financial, physical, emotional, and job concerns, in turn resulting in a more engaged workforce.

3. Relationship & culture

Human interaction is the key to a healthy work culture. The question is, what is your organization doing to build a healthy work culture? Building meaningful relationships within the workplace is very important for employees.

Get key insights about peer-to-peer relationships, superior-subordinate hierarchies, and cultural dynamics. Relationships are important for us as individuals, as we need personal connections for support, meaning, and friendship.

In a world where technology has taken over our lives, it’s essential to connect everyone so they don't miss out on the value of collaboration, teamwork, and personal support. Strengthening these bonds inspires better work and helps in creating a more valued environment.

4. Recognition & career growth

Employees thrive in circumstances where they have the opportunity to flourish in the best way possible.  The Pulse Survey addresses the questions of what the workforce wants and its perception of current rewards and performance structures. Employee appreciation is a vital component of human needs in the workplace.

We, as employees, are pleased when our manager acknowledges our good work. When employees are valued for the work and effort they have put in, their productivity level increases, and this motivates them to improve themselves.

Built for Enterprise Scale and Everyday Use

Empuls is designed to meet the needs of growing, multi-location, and global organizations—without adding complexity for admins or friction for employees. The platform offers the flexibility, security, and integrations required to embed continuous engagement into daily workflows.

Here’s how Empuls supports long-term adoption and everyday use:

• Integrations that simplify feedback collection: Empuls works within tools employees already use, such as Microsoft Teams, Slack, HiBob, and UKG Pro. Surveys can be launched, responded to, and followed up on—without switching platforms​​.
• Multi-language and multi-region deployment: Ideal for dispersed teams, with full support for local languages, currencies, and regional compliance needs.
• Enterprise-grade data protection: Empuls adheres to SOC 2, ISO 27001, GDPR, and other global standards. All data is encrypted and access-controlled.
• Custom branding and white-labeling: The platform reflects your company’s identity, making the experience more familiar and consistent for employees.
• Real-time analytics and trend tracking: Monitor engagement shifts over time, compare across departments, and benchmark internally with minimal setup.

These capabilities make Empuls not only easy to roll out, but also reliable at scale—ensuring engagement doesn't depend on one-off efforts but becomes part of how the organization operates.

Why choose Empuls + SHRM for culture building

Many tools can run surveys. Few are designed to improve culture with the precision, flexibility, and depth that Empuls and SHRM bring together. This partnership combines decades of behavioral research from SHRM with Empuls’ user-friendly platform and AI-powered insights, creating a solution that enables leaders to act early, rather than react late.

Here’s why organizations choose this solution:

• Designed by experts: Survey structure and question sets are grounded in SHRM’s research, ensuring that feedback aligns with proven engagement drivers.
• Tailored to real workflows: Empuls integrates seamlessly with collaboration tools, HR systems, and intranets, keeping surveys in the flow of work.
• Smart feedback-to-action loop: Insights aren’t buried in spreadsheets. With Em, the AI assistant, HR and managers get next steps, sentiment analysis, and reminders that lead to real improvements.
• Scalable and secure: Whether you're running surveys for 200 or 20,000 employees, the platform supports enterprise controls and regional compliance.
• Built to work across functions: HR teams get analytics, managers get insights, and leadership receives a clear view of progress.

Empuls isn’t just another survey tool. It’s a structured system for building alignment, strengthening culture, and creating an environment where employees want to contribute—and stay.

Conclusion: Build a listening culture that drives real change

Engaged teams don’t happen by chance. They’re built through ongoing conversations, clear alignment, and visible action. With the Empuls Pulse Survey, you don’t have to wait for problems to surface—you get continuous insight into what’s working, what’s not, and where to focus next.

Whether you’re improving manager effectiveness, enhancing communication, or creating stronger recognition practices, Empuls gives you the data and tools to move from observation to impact.

If your goal is to build a more connected, transparent, and responsive workplace—this is where it starts.