Skip to main content
Empuls surveys are how your organisation asks what you think — about your manager, your workload, your onboarding, or just how your day is going. This page explains what to expect when an invite lands, how to answer each kind of question, and exactly what your employer can and cannot see about your response. You do not need any special permission to answer a survey. If you were invited, you can respond.

​
The five kinds of survey you might receive

Empuls has five distinct survey types. You do not choose between them — your admin picks the type when they create the survey, and the type decides how long the survey is and how often it comes back. Quizzes are a separate thing. They look similar and arrive the same way, but they have right and wrong answers and may be timed. They are not surveys and are not anonymous in the same way.

​
Where invites reach you

An invite can reach you through more than one channel at the same time. Answering through any one of them records your response once — you will not be asked twice.
  • Email. The invite email carries a direct link to the survey. Emailed links can include your own response reference, which means the link often works without you signing in to Empuls first.
  • Your Empuls homepage. If your admin has enabled the survey invites section, pending invites appear there as cards showing the survey name, who invited you, and a short description. The section shows up to three at a time and rotates through them.
  • The full invites list. From the homepage section you can open a page listing every pending invite, not just the three on show. This is the place to look if you remember getting an invite but the card has rotated away.
  • Slack, Microsoft Teams, and the mobile app. If your organisation has these connected, invites and reminders arrive there too, and the survey opens inside them.
Every survey opens at a URL of the form /home/take-survey/<survey id>, with the survey type appended as a query parameter. That is worth knowing only because it means a survey link you saved or bookmarked will still work as long as the survey is open.

​
Anonymity — what your employer can actually see

This is the part most people want certainty about, so here is precisely how it works.

​
Every survey is either anonymous or identified, and the survey tells you which

Each survey carries a single setting that decides whether responses are linked to you. There is no in-between. When you open a survey, the screen states which mode you are in — you will see either a note that you are responding anonymously or a note that the survey is collecting your identity . That note also appears again on the review screen and above the comment box, so you get the chance to reconsider before you submit.
Your admin chooses anonymity when the survey is published, and cannot change it afterwards — the setting is locked once the survey goes live. A survey that told you it was anonymous when you opened it cannot be switched to identified later.

​
Anonymous means your answers are not linked to your name

In an anonymous survey, your individual answers are not attributable to you in the results your admin sees. Empuls still records that you responded, because it has to know who still needs a reminder and how many people took part. What it does not do is attach your name to the answers.

​
There is also a minimum response count before results appear at all

Anonymity would be worthless if an admin could open the dashboard after two people answered. So Empuls holds results back until enough people have responded.
  • For Pulse surveys, the default minimum is 5 responses. Below that, the results dashboard shows a warning instead of data, and charts and comments display a “not enough data” state rather than the responses themselves.
  • For the engagement pulse dashboard, the minimum is 8 responses, with the same behaviour below it.
These minimums are configurable per organisation, so yours may be higher or lower than the defaults above. Some organisations raise the number for extra protection. If you want to know your own organisation’s threshold, ask your Empuls admin — the number is shown to them on the results dashboard.
The threshold applies to whatever slice of results is being viewed. If an admin filters the results down to a group smaller than the minimum, that filtered view is withheld too.

​
Free text is where anonymity is easiest to lose

Empuls cannot strip identifying details out of something you typed. If you write “as the only person on the night shift in the Pune warehouse, I think…”, the sentence identifies you no matter what the survey’s anonymity setting says. The comment box on anonymous surveys carries an explicit reminder about this . If you want to stay anonymous, keep comments about the situation rather than about identifiable specifics.

​
Question types and how to answer each

You will meet up to six question shapes. Any question can be marked mandatory, and a mandatory question blocks you from moving on until you answer it .
A free-text box, capped at 1,000 characters. Use it for the thing a multiple choice could not capture. Nothing you type here is analysed for tone against you — but see the note above about identifying yourself accidentally.
A list of options. Depending on how the question was set up, you either pick exactly one or pick several. If the question offers an “Other” option, selecting it opens a small text box — that box is capped at 100 characters and cannot be left blank once you have chosen “Other”.Single-select multiple choice is the only question type that can branch. See Surveys are not always a straight line below.
The same as multiple choice, but each option is a picture rather than a line of text. A question can carry up to 12 image options.
A scale that starts at 1 and runs up to whatever maximum the admin set. It renders as stars by default, though a numeric style is also possible. There is no zero — the lowest thing you can say is 1.
A 1 to 10 scale with a “not likely” anchor at the low end and an “extremely likely” anchor at the high end . See the section below — the scale genuinely starts at 1, not 0.
A five-point scale running from strongly disagree through neutral to strongly agree , shown as five faces. Some questions add a sixth “not applicable” option for statements that genuinely do not apply to your role — use it rather than picking the middle option, because “neutral” and “does not apply to me” mean different things in the results.This type appears in Pulse surveys, which are required to contain at least one of them.

​
eNPS runs from 1 to 10, not 0 to 10

This trips people up, because most Net Promoter Score surveys elsewhere use 0–10. The Empuls eNPS scale starts at 1. The lowest score you can give is 1, and a 0 is not accepted — the server rejects it outright. So if you meant “the absolute worst”, pick 1. How your answer is grouped in the results: Two things follow from this that are worth knowing. Picking 6 puts you in the detractor band, not the middle — the middle of the scale is not the middle of the bands. And 7 or 8 counts as passive rather than positive, so a score you meant as “fine, no complaints” does not read as an endorsement.

​
Mood-o-Meter

Mood-o-Meter is the shortest thing Empuls will ever ask you. One question, one tap.

​
The scale

Five points, running from the most negative to the most positive, shown as faces rather than words. Some mood boards add a sixth “not applicable” option. The exact icons and the wording under each one come from the mood board your admin configured, so they can differ between organisations and between languages. What does not differ is the shape: five graded points, lowest to highest, plus an optional not-applicable.

​
The 24-hour gap between check-ins

Mood-o-Meter has a 24-hour cooling-off period. Once you have submitted a mood, you will not be asked again for another 24 hours, even if the mood board is set to run daily. This is fixed at 24 hours and is not something your admin can shorten or lengthen. If you open a Mood-o-Meter link during that window, you will see a screen telling you your response is already recorded rather than the question again.

​
The optional comment

Mood questions can offer a comment box after you pick a mood. Whether it appears at all, and whether it is optional or required, depends on how the mood board was set up — and it can be configured to appear only for certain moods. Some organisations ask for a comment only on negative responses, some only on positive ones, some on all. The comment box holds up to 1,000 characters.

​
The conversational follow-up

Some mood boards follow your answer with a short conversational exchange: one question drawn from a question bank, then, once your reply has been considered, one AI-generated follow-up question. That is at most two questions, and there is no third. The exchange can be closed at any point — closing it still keeps the mood answer you already submitted. If the AI follow-up question does not arrive within about half a minute, the exchange ends itself rather than leaving you waiting.
Your comments and follow-up replies are treated under the same anonymity setting as the mood question itself. If the mood board is anonymous, they are not attributed to you.

​
Changing answers, pausing, and running out of time

​
Before you submit, you can change anything

Multi-question surveys end on a review screen that lists your answers back to you before anything is final . From there you can go back into any answer and change it , then submit when you are satisfied . Nothing is final until you submit from the review screen.

​
If you close a survey half-finished, you can come back to it

Empuls saves your answers as you go. Reopening the same invite drops you back at the first question you have not yet answered — not at the beginning, and not at the end. If your earlier answers happened to complete the whole path through the survey, you come back straight to the review screen instead. Your answers are kept per question, so a survey you abandoned three questions in still has those three answers when you return.

​
After you submit, you normally cannot change your answers

Once submitted, a survey is closed to you and reopening the link shows a confirmation that you already completed it . The one exception is custom surveys, which an admin can configure to accept multiple responses from the same person. If yours was set up that way, you can submit again. There is no way for you to tell from the outside — if reopening the link lets you answer, multiple responses are allowed.

​
If the survey closes while you are in it

Your submitted answers are safe. Surveys are only open while they are active, and a survey can be stopped, paused, or reach its end date at any point. If that happens between you opening it and you submitting, you will see a message that the survey is no longer accepting responses rather than the review screen. Custom surveys are open for 7 days by default, though your admin can set a different window. Recurring surveys have a wrinkle: each Pulse or Mood-o-Meter run is a separate survey. If you open an older Mood-o-Meter invite link while a newer run is live, Empuls sends you to the current run rather than showing you an error.

​
Surveys are not always a straight line

A single-select multiple-choice question can carry skip logic. Answering it can jump you forward past questions that are not relevant to you, or end the survey there and then. Two consequences worth expecting:
  • The question count is not fixed. Two colleagues taking the same survey can answer a different number of questions.
  • Changing an earlier answer can change what comes next. If you go back from the review screen and change a branching answer, the questions after it are recalculated, and answers you gave on the path you have now left are dropped rather than carried over.

​
Answering in another language

If your admin added translations, the take-survey screen offers a language selector, and the questions, options, and scale labels switch with it. Your answer is stored the same way whichever language you answered in.

​
Reminders

If you are invited and have not responded, Empuls can send automated reminders. Reminders target people who have not submitted and whose last activity on the survey is more than 24 hours old — so a reminder is not triggered by you simply closing the tab a minute ago. Ignoring a survey has no consequence inside Empuls. There is no penalty, no flag on your profile, and no reward points deducted. You will keep receiving reminders until the survey closes.

​
Frequently asked questions

It depends on the survey, and the survey tells you which kind it is before you answer — look for the note about anonymity on the opening screen, on the review screen, and above the comment box.In an anonymous survey your answers are not linked to your name in the results. Empuls still records that you took part, so that it knows who to stop reminding and how many people responded, but not what you said.On top of that, results are withheld from admins entirely until a minimum number of people have responded — 5 by default for Pulse surveys, 8 for the engagement pulse dashboard, configurable per organisation. Below that number, admins see a “not enough data” state rather than responses.
Not individually, if the survey is anonymous — and not before the minimum response count is reached, whatever the survey’s anonymity setting.What a manager with results access can see is aggregated: scores for their team, engagement themes, and comments detached from names. If their team is smaller than the minimum response count, they see nothing at all for that filtered view.If the survey is identified rather than anonymous, individual responses are attributable. In that case the survey says so on the screen before you start answering.
Nothing punitive. You will get automated reminders while the survey is open, and then it closes. There is no penalty and no record of non-participation on your profile.The one real cost is representational — a survey with few responses may not clear the minimum response count, in which case nobody’s answers get seen, including the answers of colleagues who did respond.
You should not. A submitted response stops the reminders for that survey.If reminders continue, check that you actually submitted rather than closing the survey at the review screen — answers saved partway through do not count as a response. Reopen the invite and see where it drops you. If it lands you back on a question or the review screen, you have not submitted yet.Recurring surveys are a different case: each Pulse or Mood-o-Meter run is a separate survey, so a reminder may be for the current run rather than the one you already answered.
Normally no. Once submitted, reopening the link shows a confirmation that you already completed it.The exception is a custom survey configured to accept multiple responses. If yours is, the link will simply let you answer again.Before submitting, you can change anything — the review screen lets you go back into any answer.
Only the mandatory ones, which block you from continuing until answered. Everything else can be left blank.For agree/disagree questions that offer a “not applicable” option, prefer it over the neutral middle option when the statement genuinely does not apply to your role — the two mean different things in the results.
Usually not. Invite links emailed to you can carry your own response reference, which lets the survey open without a sign-in.Invites you open from your Empuls homepage, from Slack, from Microsoft Teams, or from the mobile app use your existing session.
Open the full invites list from your homepage rather than relying on the invites section, which rotates through only three at a time. Anything still open will be listed there.If it is not there, the survey has closed.

Action plans

What happens after the survey — how survey results turn into actions you can follow.

Notification settings

Control which channels survey invites and reminders reach you on.

Data and privacy

What Empuls stores about you and how it is handled.

Empuls mobile app

Answering surveys on your phone.