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2018 Culture Amp updates and new releases
2018 Culture Amp updates and new releases

A running list of Product Updates through 2018

Jared Ellis avatar
Written by Jared Ellis
Updated over 6 months ago

What can I learn from this page?

A running list of Product Updates through 2018

Who is this guide for?

All Users

Below we are highlighting the latest updates for Culture Amp Platform, Engagement and Experience and Effectiveness. NOTE: For our most up to date Product Updates, please see 2022 Culture Amp updates and new releases

Platform

Introducing Partial Imports

We believe you should be able to focus all your efforts on collecting, understanding and acting on employee feedback. However, this can feel unattainable when your company is always changing. How do you keep track of every promotion and company restructure in Culture Amp? With the revamped Culture Amp Import Wizard and Partial Imports you can seamlessly update the right employee data so you have more time to focus on collecting the right feedback.


'Preferred Name' Demographic

We have added a new core demographic so you will soon be able to send more personal, friendly survey communications to your employees.

Receiving an email that reads Hi Jane Doe can come across as formal and lead to decreased survey participation rates. With the Preferred Name demographic, you will soon be able to send communications to your employees that feel like any other email from your team.

Starting May 1, we will use this demographic in emails sent via Culture Amp to your employees, such as survey invitations, reset password emails, etc. The salutations will read Hi Jane instead of Hi Jane Doe.

Don't worry, though, survey communications will default back to Name in the salutation if Preferred Name is not present.

Preferred Name is now visible on your account and can be populated via individual user edits or bulk employee data import.


Product Changes for GDPR

At Culture Amp, we are committed to our customers’ data privacy and information security. We’ve aligned our security programs with ISO 27001, followed secure development practices, provided ongoing training for employees, and more. Recently, we’ve also reviewed our policies and procedures to make sure we are compliant with The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).

We have made a series of updates in preparation for GDPR. This includes specific user-facing product changes that make it easier for you to understand how your data is used and have more control over that data.

  • Ensuring new users understand how their data will be used

We have introduced a new page that only appears to new users when they sign into Culture Amp for the first time. This screen provides these users with a quick and easy way to read our Privacy Policy and acknowledge they understand its contents.

  • Simplifying access to marketing emails

New account administrators now have a simpler way of opting to receive select marketing emails from Culture Amp. This option will appear when new account administrators sign into Culture Amp for the very first time.

  • Introducing a clear, simplified privacy notice on all surveys

Finally, we've added a privacy notice to all surveys so your team has a better understand of how their data is used, where it is stored, and what control they have over that data.


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Need further help? Just reply with "Ask a Person" in a Support Conversation to speak with a Product Support Specialist.


Language Support For Estonian, Khmer, Greek, Lithuanian, Serbian, and Norwegian

We've just added 6 more languages to our capture experience - Estonian, Khmer, Greek, Lithuanian, Serbian, and Norwegian.


Processing Inactive employees during User Imports and HRIS syncs

To make it easier for all customers to maintain their employee data across their whole population, we are now processing changes to inactive employee’s core and demographic information.

This applies to any form of employee data update - either through the manual data upload or a HRIS sync.


Language Support for Sinhala

We've just added 1 more language to our capture experience - Sinhala

Language Support for Arabic and Hebrew

We've just added 2 more language to our capture experience - Arabic and Hebrew.


Engagement + Experience

Text Analytics is here!

We're very excited today to announce the launch of Text Analytics, a new report that will help you make the best possible use of text feedback in your Engagement surveys.

Our launch blog post describes in more detail why we built it and how we think it will improve your ability to understand and act on employee feedback.


Get a birds-eye view with the Action Dashboard

Our Action Framework has enabled managers and employees to take efficient and effective action. However, as organizations grow in size and diversity, it is often a significant time commitment for managers to communicate what actions they’ve taken, and for HR administrators to track where action is taking place and present an overview for company leadership on how the company is addressing employee feedback.

With our Action Dashboard, this data is automatically collected and summarized for administrators to share with leadership. No longer do managers need to fill out spreadsheets or send emails talking about what they’re working on; no longer do administrators need to pull together reports from various managers to see who may need help in taking action, or which teams are working on similar projects.

The Action Dashboard provides administrators and executives with a birds-eye view of how managers are engaging with reports and taking action, and helps administrators see where the company should be making investments to support managers in taking effective action.


Powerpoint Export has arrived!

When you come to present your survey results to your company, team, or stakeholders, you want to do so in a clear and compelling way that communicates not only the numbers but also tells a story. That’s why we’re excited to announce the immediate availability of our new Powerpoint presentation export feature for all users of engagement and manager effectiveness surveys.


Text Analytics Exports, and Text Analytics for Lifecycle surveys

We've just released a couple of updates to the Text Analytics report that should make a number of you very happy:

  • It's now possible to export text analytics data in CSV and Excel format, complete with topic and sentiment classifications

  • Lifecycle (Onboarding / Exit) surveys have Text Analytics reporting enabled now too, with date filters.


Survey Capture Uplift

The survey capture experience forms an important part of your employees' first impressions of the platform. With this in mind, we have created a new, more vibrant design for the survey interface. This will provide a more welcoming, positive experience and make it easier for you and your employees to give quality feedback.

Don't worry — although the appearance of surveys has evolved, all the survey features and functionality you expect remain unchanged.


The Comments and Text Analytics reports are changing (a little)

We are rolling out the first of a number of changes to the the Comments and Text Analytics reports for Engagement surveys. These changes are designed to streamline the experience of viewing and understanding text feedback in our platform, and make it easier for our team to improve these reports in future. As a first step, 'Text Analytics' will become 'Comments' in the site navigation, and the old Comments report will be retired.


New Action Feedback (get team feedback)

Our Action Framework has enabled managers and employees to take action. However, there was no easy way for managers to check-in with their team and get feedback on how effective the action was. With the new 'Action Feedback' feature, managers can now send a quick two-question survey to their team to measure how effective was their action.

We recommend that you use 'Get team feedback' after you had the action running for at least a month.


New design for Action Framework

Introducing the new design for Action Framework. The new design makes it easier to view selected Focus Questions and actions associated with them.


Trend over time now available

Good news! We are rolling out a new visualisation of survey trend over time. If you have asked the same questions on multiple surveys, we will automatically form those into question and factor trends.

The Trend chart is filterable, and is available on both overall and shared reports.


Reimagined Survey Design Experience

Formulating the right questions for an employee survey is a challenge. Even HR experts can find it daunting. Employee survey questions are, after all, the most visible and memorable aspect of the survey process.

Culture Amp has released an enhanced survey design experience so it is easier for you and your colleagues to create the right surveys — with the right questions — to match the needs of your organization.


Edit comment sentiment and topics

Our text analytics tool automatically assigns a sentiment and up to two topics to most comments. However having a human read a comment and change the default sentiment and topic is now possible. Our ELF (Employee Language Focused) robot does not pick up some of the subtleties of language like sarcasm, but a human can. If a person's comment covers many themes, you can review and decide which theme they discussed the most, or seems to be the most important.


Effectiveness

Introducing draft 360s

All 360s created by administrators are now be created as Drafts, with no communications sent until you explicitly make a nomination request or launch the 360.


Visibility of 360 reviewer nominations

Draft 360s brought admins control over preparation of new 360s and communications to employees and reviewers. We've built on this to bring even more control and visibility to the process.

Employees can now choose when they mark nomination done, moving the 360s from "nominating" to "nominated" in the process manager. Or they can save and finish later to keep any changes and leave the process in "nominating".

This allows employees to control reviewer selection, and gives admins a more accurate view of progress and targeted reminders.

Once nomination is marked done, the employee cannot make further changes, and any edits must be done by an admin or coach.


Improved and Bundled Reviewer Emails for 360s

When an employee has been asked to give feedback to several people at once, they will now receive one email with a list of all the people who have requested feedback.

Previously, they would have received separate emails for each person. We have also revised the messaging to make it simpler and more concise. This currently applies to both invitation emails as well as reminder emails sent to reviewers. Next, we are working on bundling the emails sent to coaches.


Individual Effectiveness (360) - Create a batch of 360s

Save time and create 360 processes for a large group of employees in a single batch.

We have extended the functionality for creating a batch 360s from a csv file. Now, in addition to employees and coaches, you can also specify reviewers: manager, co-workers and direct reports.

With two process creation options to choose from, you can either invite your employees to nominate reviewers or go straight to launch:


Leadership 360 Survey

Culture Amp has developed a Leadership 360 survey with the purpose of providing both leaders and organizations with valuable insights into their current leadership capability.

Aggregate data can guide global leadership development and training initiatives, while individual reports support leaders to focus on their own unique leadership strengths and opportunities.


Updated Manager Effectiveness template

Culture Amp have updated our Manager Effectiveness Template, which incorporates new research on what makes an effective manager, including updates to Google’s Project Oxygen research.

The new Manager Effectiveness template:

  • Is Shorter.

  • Includes Supplementary Questions

  • Draws in New Google Research

  • Refined and more Statistically Robust

In short, the updates to the Manager Effectiveness template mean that the items and the factors best reflect current research on the behaviors that lead to effective people management.

The new updated Manager Effectiveness template is automatically available for all Effectiveness and full-platform customers. You can find it now in your template library.


PowerPoint Export comes to Individual Effectiveness (360)

When you come to present survey results to your company or team, you want to do so in a way that is clear and compelling, but also tells a story. That's why we're excited to announce that you can now export your Individual Effectiveness (360) Insight Report as an editable PowerPoint presentation!

Present your results with a compelling narrative of strength and improvement areas. Inspire a discussion of learning and development opportunities, all backed up by data!


Comment on Strength and Improvement Areas

Feedback on strengths and opportunities is most effective when it is supported by concrete examples. That's why we're introducing commenting for selections, where reviewers are able to give specific examples in a clear and structured way. This makes it easier for reviewers to focus on giving actionable feedback and for employees to understand why certain skills are considered by their colleagues as their strengths or areas for improvement.

Our Survey Designer has also been enhanced to let you differentiate between a skill and its description. This makes it easier for reviewers to scan and understand the options available.


Removal of reminder emails to complete a 360 process

The final stage in a 360 process is for a Coach or Employee to mark the process as 'Complete'. This moves the process from the 'Review' stage to the 'Complete' stage. It was designed to help Coaches manage the list of 360 processes they are responsible for, to indicate which processes require no further action.

There used to be a reminder email sent to Coaches and/or Employees to do this final step. The Coach Feedback Review Reminder email and the Employee Feedback Review Reminder email have now been removed for all existing and new 360 surveys.

This is part of our project to simplify and bundle 360 emails so that only important and useful emails are being sent by the platform. The Dashboard for a Coach will display which 360 processes need to be completed.

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