April 15, 2026
Traditional feedback was designed for a world where talking to thousands of people was difficult. But here we are in 2026. AI can have millions of unique conversations at once. It can ask a logical follow-up based on what somebody just said.
And yet the dominant feedback experience is still: Please rate your experience from 0–10.
Surely we can do better than this?
So, lets say I've launched a survey and here you are, confronted with that very question:
"Please rate your recent experience with us from 0 to 10"
You reply:
"0"
“What was the main reason for your score?”
You reply:
“It was a terrible experience.”
That's not helpful, in fact it's awful. Often a survey ends there. Either that, or it forces you down a rabbit hole of another 10 to some ridiculous number of questions you never cared to answer.
But what if I asked instead:
“What happened that affected your experience with us?”
You reply:
“I called you, because I wanted to stay. You increased the monthly price, I found a competitor offering basically the same thing for much less, and your agent wasn’t allowed to match it.”
Well, shit. That is considerably more useful. And now the next question is obvious.
“What would make you reconsider?”
A real outcome focused conversation naturally goes there. A static survey never would. That is one of the things AI changes completely.
The problem with a pre-coded survey: it assumes I knew all the right questions to ask before our conversation even started.
The old model was: design the questions, then collect the answers.
The new model is: Define the problem, start the conversation, then discover the questions.
Effectively, I can ask less and learn more. Faster.
Good design = more accurate and useful responses. Every question:
And yes, skipping a question is always an option. This keeps participants in control and increases survey completion rates.
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 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.
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.
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.
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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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.
A short assessment (6 questions) of work experience, suitable for quarterly measurement.
Targeted conversational campaigns focused on specific improvements on topics such as: Environment, Growth, Role Support & Strategy.
Approach:
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.
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.
Ruby set out to be a stand-up comedian, but when that didn’t work out, she became a software engineer instead. Now, as an emerging provocateur and occasional CEO - she works alongside the team at Joyous as they build the future of feedback.
