Annual employee surveys with 45 questions and feedback delivered months later – that was previously the reality at Spendrups. Today, the company works with quarterly pulse surveys and has made transparent dialogue a natural part of both everyday work and the overall business strategy.
Previously, Spendrups conducted employee surveys once a year. It was a comprehensive survey with 45 questions distributed to all employees via email. For many employees in production, participating meant leaving their workstation and logging in to a shared computer.
The results were compiled, presented to management, and then gradually communicated throughout the organisation. In some cases, several months could pass between the survey and the discussions about the results reaching the teams.
“It never became a real-time result. By the time the feedback arrived, much of the feeling employees had when answering had already faded. Discussions could instead get stuck on how a certain question had been interpreted or whether people even experienced the situation the same way anymore,” says Linda Mägi, HR Director at Spendrups.
At the same time, Spendrups is an organisation with more than 1,000 employees spread across production sites in Grängesberg and Hällefors, headquarters in Stockholm, and sales teams throughout Sweden. During the peak season from May to August, the workforce increases by around 150 employees. The need for a more flexible and relevant approach to employee surveys became increasingly clear.
Pulse surveys had already been discussed within the organisation, so the transition to CatalystOne Engage felt very natural. There were also no technical challenges in synchronising the tool with the separate HCM system SDWorks – the integration has worked very well.
Instead of one major annual survey, Spendrups now conducts four shorter pulse surveys per year. Each survey remains open for one week to ensure that employees across all shifts have the opportunity to participate.
“What’s so great is that we now have fresh results to discuss several times a year. That allows us to follow trends continuously, step by step,” says Linda.
According to Linda, one important change in working with pulse surveys is ownership. The results are not viewed as a rating or evaluation of the manager, but rather as the team’s shared view of the work environment. This has made conversations less dramatic and more solution-oriented. Instead of directing criticism at one individual, the focus shifts to how the team can improve working methods, information flow, or priorities together. It has also created a much stronger sense of engagement among employees.
However, introducing pulse surveys also required resetting expectations. CatalystOne Engage was perceived as an easy-to-use tool, but managers needed support in how to work with feedback and facilitate team dialogue. Instead of lengthy workshops, the organisation moved toward shorter, more focused discussions where teams jointly prioritise a few areas to improve before the next survey.
Management forums and training initiatives for managers therefore became essential. In these settings, leaders learned how to facilitate constructive discussions about the results, prioritise the right actions, and follow up over time. The forums also became a place to exchange experiences, gain inspiration, and share best practices with other managers facing similar challenges. This created alignment around how results should be handled and built confidence in the new way of working.
(Peter Edwall, Sales Director at Spendrups)
Peter Edwall, Sales Director at Spendrups, works in the restaurant division with around 140 employees. After each pulse survey, the results are reviewed in a joint division-wide meeting before being broken down within each team. Openly discussing the results has become a natural part of the process.
“Absolutely. Why conduct surveys and then lock away the results? Since we introduced pulse surveys, dialogue has become closer and more natural. Employees are one of the most important parts of our strategy, so if you want to influence the business, you should participate,” says Peter.
The shift to pulse surveys has also produced clear evidence of success through high response rates. Across the organisation, the response rate stands at 81 percent – and in Peter’s unit, an impressive 99 percent.
“How can you know what to improve if you don’t know how your employees are feeling? I’m convinced that employees want to have an impact, and we see that reflected in the response rates. When we break the results down into teams, we get highly engaged discussions around comments and results,” says Peter.
Today, employee feedback is an integrated part of Spendrups’ continuous improvement efforts. One of the company’s five business goals is to be an attractive employer, and engagement is viewed as a natural management responsibility. Spendrups has created a structure for continuous improvement – and a culture where dialogue is not saved for once a year but kept alive over time.
“What I’m most proud of with pulse surveys is that they are such a concrete tool in our work with continuous improvement. The surveys lead to excellent discussions within the teams, which ultimately help the entire organisation grow,” concludes Linda.
Spendrups is an organisation with more than 1,000 employees spread across production sites in Grängesberg and Hällefors, headquarters in Stockholm, and sales teams throughout Sweden. During the peak season from May to August, the workforce increases by around 150 employees. The need for a more flexible and relevant approach to employee surveys became increasingly clear.
With an 81 percent response rate across the organisation – and as high as 99 percent in Peter’s unit – Spendrups has created a level of engagement that few employers achieve. Here are some of the key success factors behind the strong results:
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“We have never had such a high participation rate in our employee surveys, and we receive many valuable comments from our employees. This gives us new opportunities to target both work environment and engagement”
– Inger-Elisabeth Følling, Senior HR Consultant, Coop Norge SA
