Reach every store team, and trust what comes back

Most of your people have no company inbox, work a shift, and answer an employee engagement survey standing in a stockroom. Built for exactly that, honestly.

4.7 / 5 on G2, Spring 2025

Trusted by teams at
Cerence AIBayportAujan Coca-ColaAlumilRobertshawAstra Service PartnersGarrett
Reach

Employee engagement software for retail teams without email

  • No inbox below store-manager level. The invitation goes where they look: WhatsApp, SMS or a QR code on the shop floor, with email where inboxes exist, in their own language on multilingual surveys.
  • SMS and WhatsApp need a mobile number on file. Anyone without one is silently skipped, with no email fallback, so the contact-data audit is implementation task one.
  • It arrives as your brand, not ours. Surveys are white labelled, because a vendor-branded feedback request is exactly what a store team ignores. Econofoods launched this way.
Channel depth lives on Frontline & Deskless
Integrity

A survey in a store is answered in public

  • Your stockroom is not a locked office. A customer can scan the poster and a colleague may know your employee number, so the platform has to prove who answered.
  • The passcode step is the gate. Entries must match an active employee in the survey's audience, one response each, and on an anonymous survey verification never attaches a name.
  • Two settings weaken it. Employee-ID mode sends no passcode and Skip passcode step removes the check: keep the passcode on for anything posted on a wall.
How anonymity itself works
Scope

Decide who you are actually surveying

  • "All employees" is a decision, not a default. It sets your licence, your logistics and what your engagement committee can credibly claim.
  • Managers only is fast and blind. One retailer surveyed 1,500 of roughly 7,000; everyone on payroll is the honest baseline, and agency staff work your busiest hours.
  • The audience is fixed at launch. Late joiners wait for the next cycle, leavers drop out cleanly, and excluding recent joiners trades away your earliest attrition signal.
Timing

The window is the shift, the calendar is the trading year

  • Keep it finishable between customers. Say how long it takes in the invitation, use tested survey questions, and watch started-but-not-submitted in participation insights.
  • Run before the season, not during it. Keep the same window each cycle so the comparison holds, with a light pulse on the pulse score between cycles.
  • Reminders have real limits. Non-responders only, one per person per day, fired at the account's timezone, and separate launches cannot merge into one report.
The pulse cadence lives here

Bring your store list. We will walk the whole flow against it, from first invite to store-level action.

The estate

Every store is its own small business

  • Store is a real reporting dimension. Locations, teams and custom attributes like format or banner all filter your people analytics, with enterprise-grade role controls above them.
  • One store's results stay in that store. Sub-admin scopes hold an area manager to their own patch, and a sub-admin with no scope set sees everything: configure it deliberately.
  • Small stores are protected by numbers. Reports open at 3 responses and dashboard cuts hold a group of 5, floor 3, so the smallest stores show "not enough responses", including eNPS.
Tenure

They leave before you can ask why

  • Waiting for the exit interview means the data never arrives. Part-time and seasonal staff are often gone before anyone asks.
  • Listen in-role instead. Lifecycle surveys fire automatically from the joining date, in month windows, once per person per stage, without HR touching it.
  • The separation survey sends before the last day, never after it, so the early-tenure signal is where retention work actually starts.
Monday

What the store manager does on Monday

  • The store manager is the whole programme, and they will not explore an analytics tool: their leadership moment is one card with headline numbers, one strength, one focus area.
  • You decide what they see, account-wide. Visibility switches apply to every manager at once, and "view as manager" previews a manager's view before anyone gets access.
  • One action, with an owner and a date. Actions carry deadlines and status, a red store is a data point, not a firing list, and there are no leaderboards, on purpose.
Manager dashboard
Every manager sees their own reportees only
4.6/5
Team engagement
+52
Team eNPS
92%
Participation
Scores over timeEngagement · last 6 months
Growth · 4.1Lowest driver this cycle+ Create action
In their words

Hear it from people leaders

Esther Geldenhuys, People Operations at Econofoods
CultureMonkey's support during the launch of our first company engagement survey at Econofoods was phenomenal. With their omni-channel reminders through WhatsApp and Text messages, we reached nearly 80% participation.
Esther GeldenhuysPeople Operations · Econofoods
View case study
Susan Gardner, CHRO at Aujan Coca-Cola
In just seven days, CultureMonkey designed and launched our survey to 2,000 employees across multiple geographies and in five languages. A feat that would normally take 45 days. When at Aujan Group, we asked CultureMonkey to support us with our annual employment engagement survey. We gave them an impossible task and they delivered.
Susan GardnerCHRO · Aujan Coca-Cola
View case study
Lisa Watts, Chief People Officer at Astra Service Partners
Switching to CultureMonkey and connecting to our real HR data has just been a game changer for us. Now I can see engagement information down to the manager level, which is just a completely different world.
Lisa WattsChief People Officer · Astra Service Partners
View case study
Proof

The science behind it is real, and recognized

15

drivers in the research-backed framework your engagement surveys score against

10M+

employee data points behind the benchmarks and sentiment models

4.7/5

average rating from HR leaders on G2, Spring 2025

G2 High Performer, EnterpriseG2 Momentum LeaderG2 Fastest ImplementationISO 27001 certifiedSOC 2 Type IIGDPR compliant

Go deeper on our methodology and benchmarks, or start from the People Science overview.

FAQ

Employee engagement software for retail: FAQs

Reaching store teams

The invitation has to arrive somewhere they actually look.

How do you survey retail employees who don't have a work email?
Send the invitation where they already are: WhatsApp or SMS to a mobile number on the employee record, a QR code and shared link posted in the store, or email for head office and store managers. Each survey sends on one primary channel, and the survey carries your brand rather than ours.
What if we don't have mobile numbers for our store staff?
Anyone without a valid mobile number with a country code is silently skipped on SMS and WhatsApp, and there is no email fallback. Treat the contact-data audit as implementation task one. Where numbers genuinely do not exist, a QR code or shared link works with no contact detail on file, verified at the passcode step instead.
Can employees answer on a shared tablet in the store?
Yes. There is no separate kiosk mode: a shared device opens the same shared link or QR code, and each person verifies at the passcode step before their survey opens. Saved progress follows the survey link rather than the device, so open a fresh private window for each respondent and close it afterwards.

Trusting the answers

A survey in a store is answered in public. Prove who answered.

Can a customer scan our QR poster and complete the survey?
Not with the passcode step on. A shared link or QR code opens a verification form first, and the details entered must match an active employee in that survey's audience; anyone else sees an error instead of the survey. The check is about eligibility and routing, not attaching names to anonymous answers.
Can one employee answer on behalf of another?
The passcode protects against it: the one-time code goes to that person's own email or phone. Two settings trade this away: employee-ID mode admits a matching ID with no passcode sent, and the Skip passcode step setting removes the code exchange entirely. For store-floor distribution, keep the passcode step on.
Can someone answer the survey twice?
No. Once a verified person submits, the response is recorded against that participant, and reopening the link shows they have already responded rather than a fresh form. One person, one response, even on a shared link or QR code that the whole store uses.
How do you keep results anonymous in a store with six people?
With minimums, not reassurances. A survey report opens after a minimum number of responses, three by default. Dashboards hold every cut to a minimum group size, five by default with a hard floor of three. The smallest stores show 'not enough responses' instead of a score; that is the protection working.

Scope and timing

Who is in, and when the window opens.

Should we survey all store staff or only store managers?
It is a genuine decision, not a default. Managers only is fast and cheap, and tells you nothing about the people they manage. Everyone on payroll is the honest baseline and needs contact data first. Excluding recent joiners is common, though new starters leave earliest. The audience is fixed at launch either way.
When is the best time of year for a retailer to run an engagement survey?
Before your peak season, not during it. Retailers pick the survey window around the trading calendar rather than the fiscal year, so it lands in a quieter period with time to act before peak. Keep the same window every cycle so each year's score is compared against a like-for-like period.
Can different stores launch on different dates?
Only as separate surveys. A survey has one launch moment and one locked audience, and separate surveys cannot be merged into a single report afterwards, only compared side by side. Most estates launch everyone together at a fixed time in the account's timezone and let the response window absorb shift patterns.
How long should a store survey be?
Short enough to finish between customers. State how long it takes in the invitation itself; the platform does not display an estimated completion time automatically, so that line is yours to write. Watch the count of people who started but did not submit: the clearest sign a survey is too long.

Results and rollout

Each store sees its own results, and nothing else.

Can each store manager see only their own store?
Yes. A manager's view is scoped to their own people, and an area manager gets a sub-admin scope covering only their patch. Two settings matter: a sub-admin with no scope selected sees all employees, and the controls that hide comments or the heatmap apply to every manager on the account at once.
Can acquired stores show their own brand on the survey?
Yes. The survey shows the most specific logo available: one set on the survey itself, otherwise the employee's business group logo, otherwise your organisation logo. Group acquired chains into business groups and each one's people see the name they recognise. Each employee belongs to one business group, so one group per fascia.
How do we hear from part-time staff who leave without an exit interview?
By asking while they are still on the rota. Lifecycle surveys trigger automatically from the joining date, so new starters are asked in their first weeks without HR touching it. The separation survey sends within the month before the recorded last day; sending to personal numbers after someone leaves is not documented.

Bring your store list and your contact data

A working session on your estate: which stores are reachable today, what the passcode step should check, and what your store managers will see on Monday.

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