Set Up Engagement Pulse
Engagement Pulse checks in with your whole company in Slack, every week, without you writing a single question. Each person gets five short statements to rate, plus the eNPS question once a month. CultureBot turns the answers into scores across ten pillars, an overall engagement score, and eNPS, so you can see what to keep doing and what to fix.
Teams often use it to:
- Replace a once-a-year engagement survey with a steady read on how people feel.
- Start with one department or location before rolling it out company-wide.
- Send comments to a private leadership channel as they come in, and reply to the people who wrote them.
Please note: Engagement Pulse is available on the Pro plan, and to any workspace with fewer than 25 people, for Slack workspaces. Only full admins can set it up, see results in CultureBot, and reply to comments.
How to Set Up Engagement Pulse
In the CultureBot web app, open Pulse in the left sidebar, below Shoutouts, then Settings. If you haven't started a pulse yet, click Set up Pulse. Settings save automatically as you go, but nothing sends until you click Start Engagement Pulse in the last step.
- Choose Who Gets It: Open Who gets it. By default, every member of your Slack workspace gets the pulse. To send it to only some people, see Send the Pulse to Certain Departments or Groups below.
- Set the Schedule: Open Schedule and choose Weekly, Every 2 weeks, or Monthly, plus a day and time. For monthly, also choose the first or last week of the month. Each person gets the pulse at that time in their own time zone.
- Pick Your Channels (Optional): Under Results, choose a Comments channel and a Readouts and monthly summaries channel. Use private channels, and invite CultureBot to them. See Read Your Engagement Pulse Results for who to add.
- Keep the Reminder On: Under Reminder, CultureBot sends one reminder the day before a pulse closes, only to people who haven't finished.
- Try It First (Optional): Use the Try it tab to send a test pulse right away to Chosen people or Everyone. Test answers and comments never count toward your scores.
- Click Start Engagement Pulse: This is the step that schedules your first pulse. See below.
Start Your First Pulse
Scroll to the bottom of Settings to the Start section, which reads "Nothing sends until you start." Click Start Engagement Pulse.
A confirmation shows how many people get the first pulse and exactly when. It also includes A message for your team. Copy it into Slack before the first pulse, because a pulse a leader announces gets more answers. Then click Start.
You'll see "Engagement Pulse is on", and the top of Settings shows Scheduled with the day the first pulse goes out. If the button is greyed out, check Who gets it: it needs at least one person, and any filter you started must be finished.
Send the Pulse to Certain Departments or Groups
Start with one team before rolling out company-wide, or leave out a group such as contractors. Under Who gets it:
- Add Guests If You Want Them: Members are always included. Under Account types, tick Multi-channel guests or Single-channel guests to add guests.
- Choose Only Certain Groups: Under Include, change Everyone to Only certain groups.
- Add a Group: Pick Departments, Locations, Members of channels, or Specific people, then choose the values. Click Add another group to add more. Anyone in any of your groups gets the pulse.
- Leave People Out: Under Exclude, click Add an exclusion. Anyone who matches an exclusion is left out, even if they match a group you included.
- Check the Count: The count shows how many people are in and why others are left out. Click View list to see exactly who gets the next pulse.
Departments and locations come from your employee directory, so keep it current through your HRIS sync. Your rules are checked again before every pulse, so new hires and people who change departments are picked up automatically. New starters join 14 days after their start date. With fewer than 10 people in the pulse, most scores stay hidden.
Change, Pause, or Stop Your Pulse
Everything stays editable on the Settings page after you start:
- Change the cadence, day, or time under Schedule.
- Change who gets it under Who gets it.
- Change channels or the reminder under Results and Reminder.
Edits apply from the next pulse. Anyone with a pulse open keeps the statements they were sent until it closes.
The status card at the top of Settings shows whether the pulse is Scheduled, Live, or Paused, and when the next one goes out:
- Pause stops new pulses. The open one still closes on schedule. Click Resume to restart from the next matching day.
- Turn off ends the open pulse now. Your answers, comments, and history are kept.
What Engagement Pulse Asks
Every statement comes from a bank of 98, written by CultureBot and grouped into ten pillars. Each pulse draws five statements from five different pillars, and no one sees a statement they answered recently. A typical one reads: "My teammates help each other when the workload is heavy."
| Pillar | What it covers |
|---|---|
| Recognition | Whether contributions get noticed and acknowledged, by peers as well as managers and leaders. |
| Voice | Whether people speak up, whether others are open to it, and whether concerns are addressed. |
| Feedback | Whether people know how their work is seen and receive feedback that helps them improve. |
| Management | People's relationship with their manager: trust, communication, clear expectations, and support for growth. |
| Team | How well people work together, share information, and feel connected, within teams and across them. |
| Growth | Building skills, a path forward, ownership, work that matters, and seeing a future here. |
| Leadership & Direction | Understanding and believing in the company's direction, how change is handled, and whether leaders keep their word. |
| Culture & Values | Whether the values are lived, everyone is respected and has equal opportunity, and people are proud to work here. |
| Rewards | Whether pay and benefits reflect contribution and are understood. |
| Wellbeing | Whether the pace is sustainable: workload, stress, energy, flexibility, time off, and focus. |
To read every statement, open Settings and click See all statements under What employees get. You can't add or edit statements.
What Do Employees See?
A direct message from CultureBot with five statements, each from a different pillar, rated from Strongly disagree to Strongly agree. It takes about a minute, and every answer saves as soon as it's tapped. A pulse stays open until the next one arrives.
About once a month the pulse also asks: "How likely are you to recommend working here to a friend?" The scale runs 1 to 10, because Slack can only show five buttons in a row.
People can add a comment to explain an answer, and send a general comment or question when they finish. Comments are shared without their name unless they tick Show my name. Your company never sees who said what, and scores only show once at least 5 people have answered.
Next Steps
- Read Your Engagement Pulse Results: scores, trends, departments, and sharing results with your leaders.
- Read and Reply to Engagement Pulse Comments: start a conversation with the people behind the comments.
- Looking to send a one-off check-in instead? See Create A Pulse Check-In Survey.