Key concepts every new user should know

CultureMonkey has a small vocabulary that shows up everywhere - on your Dashboard, in every report, and in almost every conversation your team will have about the results. Learn these dozen or so concepts once and the rest of the platform becomes far easier to read.

This article is a guided tour of that vocabulary. For each concept you'll get a clear definition, a note on why it matters, and a concrete example so the idea sticks. You don't need to memorize any of it - skim now, and come back when a term shows up and you want the fuller picture.

Engagement - and the engagement score

Employee engagement is how emotionally invested and committed your people feel toward their work and organization. Engaged employees put in discretionary effort, stay longer, and speak well of the place; disengaged ones do the minimum and are a flight risk. Engagement isn't a single feeling - it's the sum of many experiences: the work itself, managers, growth, recognition, belonging, and more.

The overall score is CultureMonkey's single-number summary of that broad picture. It's calculated from employees' answers to the rating questions across your engagement survey - the average of how people responded, with a top-of-scale answer counting full marks and a bottom-of-scale answer counting zero. Depending on how your account is configured, that average is shown as a score out of 100 (a percentage), out of 10, or out of 5 - the same underlying result, just a different scale.

Why it matters: it's the number leaders look at first. Tracked over time, it tells you whether engagement is climbing or slipping across the organization - a leading indicator that usually moves before harder outcomes like attrition.

Example: on a 0-100 scale, if your people on average sit around "Agree" on the survey's rating questions, your overall score lands in the high 70s to low 80s. A score that rose from 68 to 74 over two cycles is a strong, encouraging signal - the trend matters more than the single figure. Learn to read it in Understand the overall engagement score.

Drivers and factors

A driver is a theme of the employee experience that a group of questions measures together - for example Manager Effectiveness, Recognition, Growth, Wellbeing or Communication. Every rating question in CultureMonkey is mapped to a driver, so instead of reading dozens of questions one by one, you can see how each theme is scoring. Some organizations also group related drivers into broader factors for a higher-level view.

Why it matters: the overall score tells you how engaged people are; drivers tell you where the strength and the problem areas are. Drivers are what you actually act on - you can't "fix engagement," but you can improve Recognition.

Example: your overall score is a healthy 78, but the Career Growth driver sits at 61 while Team Collaboration is at 88. That gap is your story: collaboration is a strength to protect, growth is the area to invest in. See Understand drivers and factors.

Questions and question types

Every survey is built from questions, and CultureMonkey supports several question types, each suited to a different job:

Rating questions use familiar 5-point scales - Agreement (Strongly disagree → Strongly agree), Satisfaction, Quality, Frequency and others - and can display as either plain buttons or friendly smiley faces. Only rating questions feed the engagement score and driver breakdowns; free-text questions feed the qualitative analysis (sentiment and topics).

Why it matters: the type you choose decides what analysis you get back. Rating questions give you trackable, comparable scores; free-text questions give you rich, human context. Good surveys blend both.

Example: a driver question might be "I receive recognition when I do good work" (a Rating question on the Agreement scale), paired with "What would make recognition better here?" (a Free Text question) so you capture both the score and the reasons.

eNPS

eNPS - Employee Net Promoter Score - is a special, standalone metric that asks one question on a 0-10 scale: "How likely are you to recommend this organization as a place to work?" Respondents are sorted into Promoters (9-10), Passives (7-8) and Detractors (0-6), and the score is % Promoters − % Detractors, landing between −100 and +100.

Why it matters: it's the simplest, most comparable pulse of advocacy you have - one number anyone in the business understands, and one you can benchmark against the outside world.

Example: of 200 respondents, 120 are Promoters (60%) and 30 are Detractors (15%), so your eNPS is 60 − 15 = +45. eNPS is important enough to have its own guide - see What is eNPS and how is it calculated?.

The three survey types

CultureMonkey gives you three ways to gather feedback, each for a different rhythm. You'll find them under Listen in the sidebar.

Custom surveys are what most people picture: you pick questions (often from a research-backed template under Listen › Templates), choose your drivers, and send. Pulse surveys trade depth for frequency - a handful of questions on a set cadence so you're never flying blind between annual surveys. Lifecycle surveys are powered by CultureMonkey's Autopilot, which runs them automatically as employees reach each stage, so you never have to remember to send an onboarding or exit survey by hand.

Why it matters: matching the survey type to the question saves effort and keeps response rates healthy. You don't run a 40-question survey every week, and you don't want to manually chase every new joiner for onboarding feedback.

Example: you run a full custom engagement survey each quarter, a 3-question pulse every two weeks to watch the trend, and a lifecycle onboarding survey that Autopilot fires 30 days after each new hire's start date. Start with Create a survey from scratch.

Participation rate

Participation rate is the share of invited employees who actually submitted a response: submissions ÷ people invited × 100. It appears on your Dashboard right next to the engagement score.

Why it matters: it's the trust behind your numbers. A great score from 30% of your people is far shakier than a modest score from 85%. Low participation can also be a signal in itself - of survey fatigue, distrust, or a channel that isn't reaching people.

Example: you invite 500 employees and 410 respond - a participation rate of 82%, comfortably high enough to trust the results and to break them down by team. Track it in detail in Track participation rate.

Sentiment analysis

Sentiment analysis is how CultureMonkey reads the tone of open-text comments automatically. Each comment is classified as Positive, Neutral or Negative using AI, so you can grasp the mood of thousands of comments at a glance and filter straight to the ones that need attention.

Why it matters: comments are where the real "why" lives, but no one can read thousands of them. Sentiment turns a wall of text into a quick, filterable read on how people feel.

Example: a survey returns 1,200 comments; sentiment shows 58% Positive, 27% Neutral and 15% Negative. You filter to the Negative comments first and quickly see a cluster of frustration about workload. Explore this in Understand sentiment scores.

Comment analytics and topics

Beyond tone, CultureMonkey clusters what comments are about into topics - the recurring themes and keywords people bring up on their own. This is the heart of Comment Analytics (found under Analyse › Feedback): it surfaces the handful of subjects that dominate the conversation and how sentiment splits within each.

Why it matters: sentiment tells you the mood; topics tell you the subject. Together they turn open text into a short list of clear, prioritized takeaways instead of an unreadable transcript.

Example: the top topics this cycle are workload, remote work and managers. "Remote work" skews strongly Positive while "workload" skews Negative - so you know exactly which theme to act on and which to celebrate. See Browse all feedback.

Benchmarks - internal and industry

A benchmark is a reference point that answers "compared to what?" CultureMonkey offers two kinds:

• Internal benchmarks compare one group against another inside your own organization - a team against the company average, or this quarter against last.
• Industry benchmarks compare your scores (and eNPS) against aggregated data for companies in your industry, so you can see how you stack up externally. Regional benchmarks compare across geographies.

Why it matters: a score of 72 means little in isolation. Knowing your industry average is 65, or that your team is 8 points below the company, turns a number into a decision.

Example: your Wellbeing driver scores 70. Against an industry benchmark of 63 you're ahead of peers - but internally, your Sales team scores 55, well below the company's 70. Both comparisons matter, and they point in different directions. See Compare against internal benchmarks and Compare against industry benchmarks.

The anonymity threshold

The anonymity threshold is the minimum number of responses a group must have before CultureMonkey will show results for it. By default this is 5 - so any team, filter, or breakdown with fewer than five responses stays hidden, protecting individual employees from being identified.

Why it matters: anonymity is what makes honest feedback possible. If a manager with three reports could see their team's exact answers, no one would speak freely. The threshold guarantees results are always reported in groups large enough that no single person's response can be inferred.

Example: you filter a report to a 4-person team and the scores don't appear - that's the threshold doing its job, not an error. Add a person's worth of responses (or widen the filter) and the numbers return. If a breakdown looks empty, see Why can't I see results yet?.

Segments and demographics

A segment is a slice of your workforce defined by a demographic attribute - the employee data you bring into CultureMonkey. Standard demographics include team, sub-team, manager, location, business unit, business group, region and country, and you can add your own custom attributes (say, tenure band, job level, or shift).

Why it matters: the company average hides as much as it reveals. A healthy overall score can mask a struggling team, a shaky location, or a manager who needs support. Segmenting is how you find where to act - subject, always, to the anonymity threshold.

Example: your overall eNPS is a solid +38, but segmenting by location shows the Austin office at +52 and the Remote group at +12. Same company, very different experiences - and now you know where to focus.

Action plans

An action plan (an action on the board under Act › Actions) is a concrete commitment to improve something the data surfaced. Each action ties to a driver, has an owner, a deadline, and a status you move through a Kanban board as work progresses.

Why it matters: insight only changes anything if it turns into follow-through. Actions are where "we heard you" becomes "here's what we did," and closing that loop is itself one of the strongest ways to lift engagement and eNPS next time.

Example: your Career Growth driver scored low, so you create an action - "Launch quarterly career conversations" - assign it to the People team, set a deadline, and track it from To-do to Done on the board. Start with Create a new action.

Channels

A channel is the way a survey reaches your employees. CultureMonkey delivers over Email, SMS, WhatsApp, Slack and Microsoft Teams, and you can mix them so everyone gets reached where they already are.

Why it matters: the right channel is the single biggest lever on participation. Deskless and frontline staff may never check email but will answer an SMS or WhatsApp message; office teams may respond fastest in Slack or Teams.

Example: you send an engagement survey to office staff via Slack and to your warehouse teams via WhatsApp and SMS. Reminders go out on the same channels, and your participation rate climbs because the survey met people where they are. See Distribution channels overview.

How the concepts fit together

Read as one loop, the vocabulary tells a story:

1. 1Listen - you build questions (mostly Rating and Free Text), grouped by driver, into a survey (custom, pulse or lifecycle), and send it over the right channels.
2. 2Analyse - responses become your engagement score and eNPS, broken down by driver and segment, benchmarked internally and against your industry; comments are read for sentiment and clustered into topics - all protected by the anonymity threshold, with participation rate telling you how much to trust it.
3. 3Act - you turn the lowest drivers into action plans, assign owners, and close the loop so the next cycle's numbers move.

Frequently asked questions

What's the difference between the engagement score and eNPS?

The engagement score is a rich, out-of-100 average built from many rating questions across your drivers - it's diagnostic. eNPS is a single 0-10 recommendation question scored from −100 to +100 - it's a fast, comparable headline. Use both.

Why are some of my results hidden?

Because the group is smaller than the anonymity threshold (5 responses by default). Results only show for groups large enough that no individual can be identified. Widen your filter or wait for more responses.

What's the difference between a pulse and a lifecycle survey?

A pulse runs on a recurring schedule (say, every two weeks) to track engagement over time. A lifecycle survey is triggered by an event in the employee journey (onboarding, a milestone, exit) and is automated by Autopilot.

Do open-text comments affect the engagement score?

No. The score and driver breakdowns come only from rating questions. Free-text comments feed the qualitative side - sentiment and topics - but don't change the numeric score.

What is a driver, in one sentence?

A driver is a theme of the employee experience (like Recognition or Growth) that a group of questions measures together, so you can see and act on where engagement is strong or weak.

Where to go next

• Start with the big picture: What is CultureMonkey?
• Go deep on the headline metric: What is eNPS and how is it calculated?
• Look up any term: Glossary of CultureMonkey terms