Is Qualtrics Killing Joy in Your Organization?

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3. Prioritize Clarity and Psychological Safety

Good design = more accurate and useful responses. Every question:

• Avoids jargon and reads at a Grade 5 reading level. Increases the chances that people will correctly understand the question. Also improves the quality of automatic translation (for multi language organizations).
• When possible and appropriate refers to “the thing”, not “the person” (e.g. “The training is effective” instead of “I understand the training”). Increasing the chances that a person will feel more comfortable answering honestly without it reflecting negatively on themselves.
• Ask about just one thing at a time (no “and/or” confusion). Reduces the lack of certainty about what the person's score for a rated statement is referring to.
• Flows logically from previous questions. Helps the person comfortably move through questions in the order a real person would naturally talk about it.

And yes, skipping a question is always an option. This keeps participants in control and increases survey completion rates.

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6. The Joyous HR Engagement Model

The Joyous HR Engagement model is based upon an Open Source project that was released by Joyous in 2019, namely the EX Genome Project. This engagement model has continuously evolved and been regularly updated and revised since.

In 2025, the Joyous HR Engagement Model consists of a library of assets, including survey and campaign templates, all of which are available directly from the tool in the People & Culture category of the Campaign Templates Gallery.

These templates are highly customisable and configurable:

• The Long Culture Survey (10m). A 10 minute assessment (29 questions) of work experience, suitable for annual measurement across engagement, well-being, culture & environment and fairness & inclusion.
• The Medium Culture Survey (5m). A medium length (13 questions) assessment of work experience, suitable for six monthly or annual measurement across engagement, well-being, culture & environment and fairness & inclusion.
• The Short Culture Survey (2m). A short assessment (6 questions) of work experience, suitable for quarterly measurement.
• Action focused campaigns. Targeted conversational campaigns focused on specific improvements on topics such as: Environment, Growth, Role Support & Strategy.

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7. A Brief History of the EX Genome Project

The Employee Experience Genome Project V1.0 was first released in 2019 after 18 months of research. Since then Joyous has incorporated the feedback and analysis of millions of responses in Joyous.

The purpose of the Employee Experience Genome project is to demystify the science of measuring employee experience and engagement - enabling a more transparent, productive workplace. And importantly: to make that science easy to understand and accessible for all.

The premise of the model is that Employee Experience is everything people encounter, observe or feel at work. Employee Engagement is the emotional commitment people have to their workplace.

The model breaks Employee Experience into three core categories that have the greatest impact on engagement: Culture & Environment, Fairness & Inclusion, and Wellbeing. These are complimented by a fourth category: Engagement.

Each category includes three topics. The first release included 25 question pairs offering two rated statements per topic, each with a related open-text question, often referred to as a conversation starter.

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A few early adopters in the first two years saw great success with the conversational approach. The biggest success was a shift in the perception that 'nobody is listening' and 'nothing ever changes' as a result of feedback. For many, changes were personal, and therefore highly visible.

Leaders were responding directly to employee feedback. Ensuring a positive employee experience was no longer perceived as the sole responsibility of the HR team. Instead it became a shared responsibility across HR, leaders and the individual employee.

At the same time other adopters faced challenges. Not all teams or industries were ready for open dialogue between managers and employees. Our research discovered a strong correlation in drop off rates to manager engagement.

In all cases, repeated exposure to the same questions led to fatigue - similar to what occurs with traditional surveys - and participation gradually dropped off over time.

Participation rates dropped by 15% to 35% over a six to 12 month period until hitting a plateau.

Another challenge faced was skepticism from senior leaders that the scoring was accurate, due to the open nature of the feedback. Joyous later conducted an experiment which disproved this, however this skepticism remained.

In parallel, many customers started using Joyous for operational feedback. Their goal was to make people's jobs easier by reducing friction in their daily tasks. This not only improves employee experience but also has a positive impact on cost efficiency and productivity. In contrast to the employee experience use case, the operational use case found open and conversational feedback to be effective and universally positive.

Instead of conversations with managers, employees were engaging directly with Subject Matter Experts or Project Leaders right before or after they implemented significant changes in products, services, tools, processes or organisational structure.

Several customers correlated an increase in their employee engagement scores with the shift to using Joyous for operational feedback.

In 2021, Joyous released Employee Experience Genome Project V2.0.

The original question set was revised based on feedback from early adopters, employee comments and exhaustive analysis on the performance of individual questions. The model also expanded to 50 question pairs, enabling two sets to be rotated every six months. The adoption of the revised model saw an initial uplift in adoption and a slower drop off rate for new adopters over time.

In 2022, Joyous released a third version as the Te Reo Māori Employee Experience Genome Project V1.0. As a proudly New Zealand organization Joyous worked with our valued partner, Maurea Consulting, to adapt both the model and the Joyous product to support delivering the model in dual language side-by-side. This was the same 50 question pairs as version 2.0, with some further improvements to the english questions based on feedback and in-line Te Reo Māori versions to support our Kiwi customers in helping to uplift Māori cultural competency.

Over the course of 2022 to 2025, most Joyous customers shifted away from weekly conversations between managers and employees. Today, nearly all Joyous HR customers use a combination of quarterly surveys and action focused campaigns - following the current Joyous HR Engagement Model, outlined in this article.  

The EX Genome model has been adapted and refined over the last three years to suit this approach and been renamed to the Joyous HR Engagement Model and action-focused campaign templates targeting specific topics were added to compliment the surveys. This version is not Open Source.

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8. Types of Questions

Joyous supports a variety of question types and features to suit different goals — from measuring engagement to collecting targeted, actionable feedback. Three core question types are used in the Joyous HR Engagement Surveys and Campaigns.

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Core Question Types:

• eNPS (Employee Net Promoter Score):
  Measures overall employee loyalty by asking:
  “How likely are you to recommend [ACME] as a place to work?”
  Employees answer on an 11-point Likert scale from 0 to 10.
  • Scores of 9–10 = Promoters
  • Scores of 7–8 = Passives
  • Scores of 0–6 = Detractors.
  • The eNPS score is calculated as:
    % Promoters – % Detractors (Range: -100 to +100)
    This is displayed as a whole number in the dashboard.
• Rated Statement:
  A rated statement which employees answer on an 11-point Likert scale using the same format as eNPS for consistency. The average score is calculated across all responses and rounded to one decimal place (Range 0-10). This enables benchmarking and heatmap comparisons across individuals, teams, or categories over time.
• Open Text Question:
  Allows employees to provide feedback in their own words. Typically used once per topic to collect specific, actionable insights without overwhelming participants, and used to identify actionable insights.

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Additional Question Types and Features:

• Multiple Choice (Select One or Many):
  Offers a predefined set of options. Can be configured to allow a single response or multiple selections.
• Demographic Data Collection:
  Gathers contextual data by allowing employees to self-identify based on existing attributes (e.g. business unit, region, gender) or a predefined list.
• Conditional Visibility:
  Questions are only shown when relevant, based on previous answers.

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9. Survey and Campaign Templates

Long Culture Survey Template (10m)

A 10 minute assessment (29 questions) of work experience, suitable for annual measurement across engagement, well-being, culture & environment and fairness & inclusion.

Download the template in an excel workbook here.

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The Medium Culture Survey (5m)

A medium length (13 questions) assessment of work experience, suitable for six monthly or annual measurement across engagement, well-being, culture & environment and fairness & inclusion.

Download the template in an excel workbook here.

The Short Culture Survey (2m)

A short assessment (6 questions) of work experience, suitable for quarterly measurement.

Download the template in an excel workbook here.

Action focused campaigns

Targeted conversational campaigns focused on specific improvements on topics such as: Environment, Growth, Role Support & Strategy.

Approach:

• One focus only: e.g Role Support.
• Two topics covered over two weeks. For example: Week 1 - Support, Week 2 - Training & Information.
• Two questions per week only. One rated statement followed by one open text question.
• Open. Most often action focused campaigns are open, and people's names will go with their feedback.
• Conversational. By default an AI agent is used to draft one concise follow up message to each open text question response with the system poses instantly after a response is received.
  This follow up will thank a person for their detailed feedback, or ask a tailored clarifying question in the event a response was too vague.
  A real person can also jump in, which is helpful when facilitators want to understand more or provide relevant information to the respondent.
• Flexible. Just like surveys this approach is flexible - including the structure, visibility and conversational approach. This best practice has been tried and tested over millions of conversations and is highly recommended to ensure the highest level of actionable engagement with the minimum time disruption to people.

Action focused campaigns should only be run one to three months before the organization intends to take action on a focused topic. They are a fast and meaningful way to gather specific actionable ideas from people. This greatly helps improve the quality, awareness and adoption of the prioritised actions.

Download the template in an excel workbook here.

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Week 2

Conclusion

And there you have it! If you made it this far, well done! You now have a comprehensive understanding of how Joyous recommends approaching HR and Engagement with our Employee Experience (EX) product.

Rest assured, your account manager will partner with you on your journey and you will be supported at every step. We are here to work alongside you and will tailor our approach to suit your unique requirements and culture.

If you have any feedback or questions don't hesitate to reach out to your account manager directly.