What can I learn from this page?	A running list of Product Updates through 2021
Who is this page for?	All Users

See what updates and new releases we're rolling out or jump to the previous product updates and releases:

Newest Releases

Launch performance cycles with confidence using the review page

Customers can now review their entire performance cycle during the set-up process. You’ll be able to preview and edit questions, as well as review the schedule and communications timeline.

Access expert guidance while you set up your review cycle

Our self-starter customers will now find guidance embedded directly in the platform as they set up their performance review cycles. Created by our expert people science team, customers will have full confidence they’re using best practices in their review set up.

Measure goals with new key metrics

Users can now measure their key metrics using a percentage or a number, so however they track goals, they can easily set and update them in the platform.

All goals now available in an employees profile

All team, department and company goals that an individual is an owner of are now included in the employee profile (previously referred to as the dossier) in the performance cycle, in addition to their individual goals that are already there. These goals will be visible in the employee profile of the individual's self reflection, and also the manager and peer review, if the relevant people have been assigned visibility of the goal. Each of the goals is labeled with its category icon (eg, individual, team, etc), and can be filtered by due date using the existing filter.

Develop your people with new Skills Coach courses

New courses include Essential Productivity, Leading Change, Meeting Mastery and People Development, with skills broken down into bite-sized chunks that seamlessly integrate into the flow of work.

Skills Coach invitations are now available

We’ve made it dramatically easier for admins to help their managers develop impactful soft-skills with Skills Coach, by creating a central place for admins to draft and send invitations to their employees for a Skills Coach course. Admins will be able to access the new invitations page from the Skills Coach homepage. From there they can view a list of draft invitations, sent invitations, and they are able to create a new draft invitation which takes them through a simple workflow interface.

Kiosk mode now available for Onboarding and Exit Surveys

Engage customers can now enable Kiosk mode for Onboarding and Exit surveys. Meaning employees without company email (or access to a computer) will now be able to access these surveys using their Employee ID. Learn more here.

The survey summary

When companies share results widely, participation increases by 7% and they see significantly better results on questions related to action-taking. The survey summary enables you to: create transparency to increase connection and action; offer personalised insights to build self-awareness and commitment; and, drive development through highlighting growth opportunities. Learn more

Support goal development with enhanced visibility and reporting

Designing an employee experience that inspires rapid growth, and keeps your very best people, all starts with goal setting. We’ve improved goal visibility - so you can quickly and easily understand what all parts of the business are working on, report on progress, and more effectively support individual growth and development.

Develop your people with new Skills Coach courses and invitations

New courses from LifeLabs Learning include Meeting Mastery, People Development, and Essential Resilience. Plus, use the new invitations and reporting feature to drive adoption.

Developmental 360s now available in 17 languages

This is an important update for globally distributed employees. Easily set up multilingual 360s with translated communications and action plans according to each person’s preferred language.

Apply additional comparisons to your survey results in just one click

With automated comparisons, you can easily surface historical matching surveys and see trends in just one click - with comparisons that are fully filterable by default.

Share peer and upward feedback directly with employees

Managers can now share peer and upwards feedback directly with employees in a performance review, enabling a more efficient and constructive performance process for everyone.

Previous Releases

Engagement + Experience

Benchmark Release

You can now access our 2021 benchmark comparisons - 3000+ benchmarks from our Culture Labs team - compare yourself to the leading organizations in the world.

You can now see available languages in the template library

Users can now see exactly which languages any given template is available in as you’re selecting a survey template! You’ll notice two changes:
- there’s now a count of languages available on each template card, right under the template name
- on the flip-side of the card, there’s a button that will allow users to view exactly which languages are included in that template

Program Trends

In 2020, we released survey programs, a way for you to easily group and report on surveys that have the same goal. Now you can visualize that progress and tell the story of how you are trending towards that goal. As you set priorities for the year this is a great way to look back and see what you accomplished and where you can still improve.

Leading Through Change survey template

Our new Leading Through Change survey template is designed to provide powerful insights into how employees are feeling about their managers during these uncertain times. The results and analysis can guide your organization and specifically your managers on where they can take clear actions to improve team agility, performance, and wellbeing.

Reports Commentary

Make sure your employees know their voice is being heard by providing commentary with survey results. You can now add details on company initiatives and responses when you share reports.

New Survey and Programs Page

We launched a new survey and programs page for account admins. This page highlights the most recent surveys and all programs. From here, you can build, configure and track progress on surveys and programs.

Engagement Navigation Uplift

We’ve made updates to the page titles and action buttons throughout the platform. All functionality remains the same, but the changes help improve wayfinding.

COVID-19 Combined 2020 Benchmark

Since we launched our Emergency Response and COVID-19 Response surveys in March and our dedicated COVID-19 Wellbeing and Prepare for Returning to the Workplace surveys in May, we’ve had over 1000 companies globally use these templates to proactively seek feedback from their employees. Companies have used this feedback to understand their response, how their employees are tracking, and their preferences for returning to the workplace. We’ve noticed that companies have been combining questions from multiple surveys depending on their COVID-19 response and unique situation so we’ve now created a Combined Benchmark, including data from all of the survey templates.

Onboarding Survey

We updated the survey outcome and questions in our Onboarding survey. We have refreshed some of the wording in questions for a better user experience for respondents. These are minor updates and do not impact the ability to benchmark. As an example, ‘My on-the-job training has prepared me to do my job well’ has been updated to ‘My on-the-job training has been effective’. Additionally, we have retired some questions based on customer usage, along with some that were enhanced and included in the new outcome factor. The removed questions are:

What are the three things you have most enjoyed so far working at COMPANYNAME(the question was not providing notable insight to Survey Administrator)
My induction program was thorough and effective (similar question already in the survey)
I feel like this is a great organization for me (similar question now asked in index)
I am feeling welcome here (similar question now asked in index)
I am feeling productive (similar question now asked in index)

If you have loaded in onboarding benchmarks, you may continue to utilize these if you make the transition to the updated onboarding survey with the Overall Onboarding Experience as the outcome. It will take a little time (until we reach our stringent requirements) to provide benchmarks for the new outcome, however, we can still apply benchmarks to individual questions and other factors.

Reporting Protections

You can now configure the level of indirect confidentiality protections used in your survey. Choose what is best for your organization, balancing extra protections with the utility of your report data.

COVID-19 Survey Templates

We launched four survey templates to help you respond to COVID-19. The survey templates are available in our template library for Engagement + Experience customers. Like all of our surveys, these templates are completely customizable because we know each company's experience is unique.

Additionally, we've already released benchmarks for three of the COVID-19 surveys, including COVID-19 Pandemic Response, Prepare for Returning to the Workplace, and the COVID-19 Wellbeing survey.

COVID-19 Pandemic Response

This 22-question survey template helps you establish a baseline on employee experience and needs during the COVID-19 pandemic. Learn more about this template and our other emergency response surveys. Be sure to check out our Benchmark for the COVID-19 Pandemic Response survey.

COVID-19 Pulse

This 11-question survey template is a shortened COVID-19 Pandemic Response designed for frequent/weekly pulsing during the pandemic. Be sure to check out this strategy guide to launching a survey in an emergency developed by our People Science team.

COVID-19 Wellbeing Survey

The COVID-19 Wellbeing Survey helps you understand employee overall emotional, social, and physical wellbeing during COVID-19 and the factors driving it. Use this template as a standalone survey or select a sub-set of wellbeing questions to add to a broader survey. Benchmark for the COVID-19 Wellbeing survey is also available.

Prepare for Returning to the Workplace

The Prepare for Returning to the Workplace survey template helps your organization plan for an effective transition back to the workplace. Gather feedback on employee concerns, preferences, and needs. Learn more about our Benchmark for the Prepare for Returning to the Workplace survey.

Updated Inspirations

Inspirations are "ideas for action" on survey results. We've added Inspirations for all questions in our COVID-19 Pulse survey and have updated Inspirations for Engagement surveys to be applicable to remote work. You can access our Inspirations in Reports > Action Framework. Learn more about our Inspiration Engine.

Comment Replies

Comment Replies is a newly released feature that allows specific individuals to respond to confidential comments directly in the platform after a survey has closed. The comment writer remains unknown to comment repliers and multiple replies can be made to one comment, exampled in the image below where a leader named Jack is responding is asking a recruiting leader named Audrey to add even more detail. Anyone who has access to the shared report that includes comments will also see any replies to those comments. To learn more, explore this Guide to Comment Replies and the Comment Replies FAQs for survey participants.

Survey Programs

You can now build out Survey Programs in Culture Amp. With this feature, you can group together surveys that progress toward a common goal, keep surveys organized and better close the loop on actions taken from a survey. The Survey Programs feature also includes a summary report that details every survey on a program.

Editable Slack Invites

Slack invites and reminders are now editable for all Engagement, Experience, and Effectiveness surveys. We know that being able to bring your voice and tone into platform communications is valuable. Survey administrators can customize Slack communications, as well as email communications, under Survey Admin > Communications.

Enhanced Survey Duplication Features

We've extended our survey duplication features to also include hierarchy shared reports, custom Slack messages, and demographic selections. When duplicating a survey, you will see a confirmation box showing you exactly what's being cloned from the existing survey.

PDF and PowerPoint Bulk Exports

You can now download a .zip file containing every shared report in a report group. This new export feature provides your data in .pdf, .ppt, .xls, and .csv formats.

Trend for Experience

The Trend feature familiar in the Engagement product is now available for Experience. Trend helps you gain meaningful insights, understand the impact of actions taken, and evaluate progress over time. All continuous surveys--exit and onboarding--will now show a trend graph for the Index factor based on previous responses to the same survey. The Trend graph shows up in the Insights Report.

Moments on Engagement Trend

We've added a new feature to the Engagement trend chart in the Account Dashboard called Moments. With the introduction of Moments, you can now add dates that are important for your organization to tell the story behind the data. Learn more about Moments.

Hierarchical Report Sharing

We've launched the ability to automatically create reports for leaders based on their organizational hierarchy, making it easier and faster to share reports through the business. To activate this feature, reach out to your assigned Coach or our Support team. You can also learn more about how to create and share reports.

2020 Benchmarks

Benchmarks can provide you with important insight and context for your Engagement results. We just released 2020 benchmarks for Engagement. Learn more about the 2020 Benchmarks to start comparing your survey results with the world’s largest employee data collection.

Emergency Response Template

Our People Scientists have created an Emergency Response Survey template to help you address this complex and challenging situation. This survey can be used to measure your business response during this time, collect information from your teams, and use their feedback to inform your strategy. We are offering a free template with an extended emergency response survey and a special COVID-19 pulse survey. For our customers, the Emergency Response Survey and COVID-19 Pulse Survey are also available in the template library when you log into your account. Learn more about this and other COVID-19 resources to support you and your employees.

One-click onboarding survey

We know how valuable it is to measure the onboarding process and capture the entire employee experience, so we’re making it easier for you to launch an onboarding survey in just one-click. Account Administrators can log in to the platform to get started.

Performance

Outlook Integration (Deprecation)

We will no longer support the Performance Outlook plugin starting October 1, 2021.

We understand that there is a need to better integrate everyday Performance-related tasks into the flow of work of our customers. We recommend that users uninstall the plugin and install our Slack or Microsoft Teams integration to easily include tasks like giving and receiving feedback into your day-to-day activities.

iOS Mobile App (Deprecation)

We will no longer support the Performance iOS app starting October 1. Starting October 1, you will no longer be able to download or update the Performance iOS app.

We understand that there is a need to better integrate everyday Performance-related tasks into the flow of work of our customers. We recommend that users uninstall the Performance iOS app and install our Slack or Microsoft Teams integration to easily include tasks like giving and receiving feedback into your day-to-day activities.

Performance Reviews

We’ve simplified creating and managing Review cycles with our Unified Performance Cycle. Easily tailor your Review process to what works for your company and then use the new dashboards to manage progress across the company. Learn how to set up a new performance review cycle in this course on Culture Amp Training.

Goals

It’s the time of year for goal setting. We’ve made a host of updates like allowing multiple goal owners and setting different goal types to make sure you and your team can stay focused and aligned this year. Want to learn more? We have updated courses for managers and employees for setting effective goals on Culture Amp Training.

1-on-1s Participation Report

With the new 1-on-1s Participation Report for administrators, you can understand usage across departments and encourage managers to kick off the year by scheduling 1-on-1s.

Export Performance Data

Employees can now export their individual performance data, delivered to their email as a PDF. The PDF contains only performance information visible by the employee and their manager such as reviews, self-reflections, goals, and continuous feedback. The PDF will not contain any piece of continuous feedback that was not shared with their manager.

Performance Header Uplift

Our new Performance navigation will be automatically updated for all accounts on 29 July. All functionality remains the same, but the changes help to improve wayfinding throughout the product. Learn more about the navigation uplift.

Manager Learning

All performance users can now access Manager Learning from the main navigation. These bite-sized lessons are focused on key manager development areas, including managing remotely.

Chrome Extension

The Chrome extension allows you to use Culture Amp Performance directly from their Chrome browser. Any user with a Culture Amp Performance account can download the Culture Amp extension from the Chrome web store, log in and start giving and requesting feedback today. Once installed, simply click on the Culture Amp icon in your extension toolbar (located to the right of your address bar), which can be accessed regardless of what website you're viewing.

Performance Navigation Update

We shifted the navigation bar in Performance from the side to the top as part of our effort to keep Culture Amp more streamlined and your workspace more focused. We are bringing you this update in order to improve consistency navigating across our products, make it easier to toggle between the Engagement and Performance products, provide a cleaner, more focused interface for all users, and improve the accessibility of admin functions throughout Performance.

Withdraw Manager-Requested Feedback

We added even more flexibility to our Manager-Requested Feedback functionality, Managers and Admins can choose to withdraw feedback requests that they receive. Learn more about Manager-Requested Feedback and how to withdraw MRFs in the platform.

Additional Goals Exports

We added two new goal export options in the Admin's dashboard for managing goals. In addition to Goals summary, you can now export Key results and Goals alignment as well. Use these three exports to drill into goal alignment and key results data by department, job role, goal type, and specific goal.

Teams in Performance

We know not all teams follow a hierarchy structure. For this reason, you can now create Teams in the platform to support your people no matter the organizational structure. Learn more about Teams, including team roles and how to view, create and manage teams. To activate this feature, reach out to your assigned Coach or our Support team.

Team Goals
Team goals is a new goal type in Culture Amp Performance that allows cross-functional and agile teams to create and manage progress toward shared goals, no matter the structure of the organization. Just like Teams, the Teams Goals feature must be activated. Reach out to your assigned Coach or our Support team to get started.

Team-Based Feedback.
With the launch of teams, we are introducing team-based feedback, allowing team leads to gather feedback about the members of their teams within the context of that team and give it to managers. Managers gain visibility into the performance and development of their direct reports through this team-based feedback provided by team leads.

Visual update to Goals section

We designed a new interface to highlight Goals as a central feature of the platform and make it easier for users to have clarity into team, department and company goals. Enjoy the new vertical layout with the same functionality as before with updating, editing and commenting on goals.

Updates to navigation

With the introduction of teams to the platform, we made a few small updates to the left side Navigation bar to make it easier to locate new features.

In-platform message support for Account Administrators

We offer an in-platform messenger for Account Administrators to connect directly with our Support team. Messenger is available in Performance and Engagement. Learn more about how to contact support.

New help center panel

Helping you get the most out of our platform is important to us. We've added the Help Center panel into our Performance product to make it easier for you to access our support resources.

New filtering feature

You can now filter users by start date when creating a self-reflection or review cycle. This filtering feature allows you to quickly exclude new employees from upcoming cycles.

Platform

Rippling HRIS Integration

For our customers using Rippling, you can now save time and automatically sync your core employee data. See our full list of integrations and learn how to sync Culture Amp with your HRIS data.

1-on-1s for Everyone

Meaningful conversations are the foundation of the manager-employee relationship. 1-on-1s are one of your most powerful levers in improving employee engagement, development, and performance. We've made available our 1-on-1 conversations tool for all of our customers - at no additional cost. Reach out to support@cultureamp.com to get started with 1-on-1s.

Skills Coach

We’re excited to continue our Lifelabs Learning partnership and help managers learn the critical skills they need to be successful. This quarter we’ve released 3 more courses - 1-on-1s, Strategic Thinking, and Productivity & Prioritization. Plus, Skills Coach is now available for Microsoft Teams users. Join thousands of managers already seeing remarkable results.

Check out our Culture Amp Training course to get your checklist for rolling out Skills Coach.

Unified Home

We've streamlined navigation in the platform to make it even easier for users to find the most important information. Updates include a single navigation bar for performance and engagement, one task list for all your to-dos, as well as updated colors and fonts throughout the product.

Language Support

We've added Japanese, Korean and Polish to our Engagement template library so you can now easily survey your employees who speak those languages. See what other languages we support and how to get started with enabling language support.

Amplify capabilities

Survey results repeatedly show that manager development is a key opportunity area for companies. But it's clear that instead of providing managers the guidance they need to be successful, we're just asking more of them. With our new Amplify capabilities - Manager Learning Playbooks, Skills Coach, and 1-on-1 Conversations - you can give your managers the tools they need to become better coaches and increase team effectiveness - without adding to their workload. Learn more about Amplify capabilities.

Skills Coach Early Access Program

Skills Coach delivers a daily micro-learning through Slack to help managers improve their leadership skills. The interactive exercises take no more than two minutes and use the principle of spaced repetition to drive new behaviors and the formation of healthy habits. Learn more about Skills Coach. If you use Slack, join the early access program and start using Skills Coach today. To sign up, contact support@cultureamp.com or your Customer Success coach.

HRIS Integrations

Good insights start with good data. You can manually import data using an XLSX or CSV document or you can sync Culture Amp with your HRIS via an HRIS integration. We strongly recommend an HRIS integration to save time when launching surveys, sharing reports, or running a performance cycle. Learn how to sync Culture Amp with your HRIS data. With an HRIS integration, you can:

Make regular surveying via pulsing and lifecycle surveys incredibly easy
Improve the quality of your insights by ensuring your data is correct and up-to-date
Easily distribute insights to the right people using hierarchy and reporting line information
Share the workload around collecting and understanding on feedback

HRIS integrations are also very flexible. You can choose between automatic daily syncs or manual syncs at a time of your choosing. And you’re not limited to the data in your HRIS, you can supplement your data by manually adding additional demographics in Culture Amp.

Hierarchy Validation Made Easier

We have improved the hierarchy validation process for updating employee data. We know that employees without managers may exist within hierarchical organizations. In the event you have employees without managers, you no longer need to assign a manager to every employee to successfully validate the hierarchy. Now as part of the hierarchy validation process, you'll be asked to designate a leader for your organization. This is usually a CEO or Managing Director. This selection serves as the top of the hierarchy and will be remembered for future imports.

Microsoft Teams App

Our Microsoft Teams app is live and available in the Microsoft App store. Help your employees share feedback and access Culture Amp insights from with Microsoft Teams. With this app, users can:

Give and request feedback
View received feedback and share it with managers
Respond to feedback requests
View notifications from Culture Amp including engagement surveys, performance feedback and reviews, and self-reflections and goal updates

Install the Culture Amp app for Teams and drive your employee engagement and performance management all without leaving the flow of work. Learn more about installing the app for your organization or get started with our user guide.

Slack App

We've enhanced our existing Slack integration to now bring survey notifications and the ability to give and receive feedback into the flow of work for your teams. Learn more about new features in our Slack app and how to install it for your organization.

Import History

We introduced a new Import History page in Admin Settings that allows account admins to view the import history of bulk imports performed in the account. With this feature, account admins can click through to see an import summary of all the employees and demographics that were added, edited, or removed during the import. To explore this feature in the product, go to Account Admin > Users > Import history.

New resources added to Manager learning

We’ve added a resource on managing remotely to Manager learning in the platform, our standalone library of ideas, videos, and downloadable resources for managers. Managers can browse this library of ideas, videos, and downloadable resources, and bookmark their favorite ideas to implement or refer back to later.

Employee Data Guided Workflow

We know that updating and cleaning up employee data can be a stressful and high stakes process. We've built a new guided experience for updating employee data. The workflow guides you through the process of updating your employee data and providing information about your organization's reporting lines.

Bulk Import Summary

Account Admins can now view summary information about their last bulk import from the Users page. This tells you the status of the import, time of the last update, who made the last update, how the last update was actioned and whether there was any ignored data in the import.

Update to Demographic Values

Having accurate demographic information is crucial to getting good insights out of Culture Amp. To help prevent unintentional duplicates to demographic values, we've updated them to no longer be case sensitive. Now, demographics with the same characters, but different capitalization, will be merged using the first value that was provided. For example, "melbourne" and "Melbourne" are automatically grouped together. This update applies to all imports going forward.

Community

Working through crisis

There's no playbook for working through times of crisis, but we created a toolkit to help you work through it. Over the course of five months, we talked to our customers, our community, and thought leaders about what they were doing to make decisions, stay well, and create supportive environments for their teams. In case you missed any of the content along the way, we’ve now included key learnings and resources from all 7 parts into a toolkit for crisis preparedness.

HR for HR

Our People Scientists have partnered with Thrive Global to create a quick survey to check-in on HR’s wellbeing. It includes personalized resources from industry experts to help support you, including an individual wellbeing checkup and wellbeing resources focused on HR professionals.

New 2020 Benchmark Insights on Culture First

We publish hundreds of benchmarks across industry, geography, and size to help you get insights into the cultures of the best-performing organizations. We released new 2020 benchmark insights:

#Engagement #Performance #Experience #AccountSettings