Risk Density
proportionWhat share of the department is in the distress zone — because that's where attrition, whistleblower and governance risk actually live, not in the average.
Monthly culture-risk diagnostics & intervention · South Africa
Culture Pulse is a diagnostic and intervention service for medium-to-large enterprises and listed companies. We run one short monthly pulse, read the risk in each department, and respond where it's needed — from a customised training video to an industrial psychologist in the room.
One short, anonymous survey to every employee, every month.
Four analytics read the risk in each department — never per person.
The risk band sets the action, aimed at the department that needs it.
An hour with the psychologist, then we re-measure and track.
Representative data. The band edges shown (15 / 20 / 30 / 40%) are the engine's actual thresholds.
See it for yourself
What your people fill in, and what your leadership reads back. Both are live — open them in a new tab and click around.
The actual eight-question pulse, fully trilingual — English, Afrikaans and isiZulu. Under two minutes, mobile-first, anonymous. Try it end to end.
Try the live pulseA worked example: six departments, twelve months, bands and trends laid out the way your board would see them. Aggregate and anonymous by design.
See the sample dashboardStep 1 · Measure
Every employee answers the same eight items each month. Three never change — that's your trend line. Five rotate — that's your depth. Under two minutes, on a phone, anonymous.
Three questions, identical every cycle. Because they never change, they build a genuine month-on-month trend per department — the only honest way to detect movement over time.
Five targeted questions probing one culture or governance theme hard enough to surface real risk. You choose 6–12 pillars from a bank of 20+ to build your cycle.
Every pillar is designed and signed off by an industrial psychologist before it can run. This is enforced, not aspirational — the engine refuses to score a pillar whose expert sign-off values haven't been set.
Step 2 · Read
The responses don't become a single happiness score. Four analytics each target a blind spot that average-based reporting misses — and they run per department, never per person.
What share of the department is in the distress zone — because that's where attrition, whistleblower and governance risk actually live, not in the average.
Detects a department split into two camps — half content, half not. That split is a fracture line, usually inconsistent management, and an average will never show it.
Speed and direction of change. A department that's been amber for six months and one that dropped this month are different problems — monthly measurement tells a shock from a drift.
Structural problem or isolated pocket? Pattern analysis separates a department-level breakdown from a few acute responses — so the response fits the cause.
An average can read 3.2 whether everyone's mildly unhappy or 40% of the department is in serious distress. The engines tell those two departments apart. Averages never will.
Step 3 · Act
Every department, every month, lands on one of five bands — set by hard thresholds in the engine. The band isn't a colour on a dashboard. It's an instruction, aimed at the department that's flagging.
Distress density below 15%, no split, no deteriorating trend.
Nothing — deliberately. The reading becomes baseline and the trend line keeps building.
Density 15–20%, or an early downward trend on the anchor.
HR and the department lead are notified. No intervention yet — watched closely next cycle to see if it settles or slides.
Density 20–30%, a clear split, or a specific theme trigger fires.
A customised training video built for that department's specific issue — not generic content — plus a manager briefing. Re-measured next cycle.
Density above 30%, or two consecutive cycles of confirmed deterioration.
A specialist steps in. An industrial psychologist or labour lawyer engages the department's leadership directly, assesses the problem and recommends the fix.
Density above 40%, or the department's score collapsing below 2.5 / 5.
Full professional and governance escalation. Senior leadership briefed, Social & Ethics Committee notified where applicable, re-measurement accelerated.
The video at Orange is produced around the specific pattern that fired in that department — the theme, the split, the trigger. Generic e-learning doesn't move a real culture problem; a targeted, relevant response does.
Culture Pulse detects and routes — it doesn't pretend software replaces judgement. At the top bands a real industrial psychologist or labour lawyer engages directly, matched to whether the risk is psychological or legal in nature.
Step 4 · Close the loop
The cycle doesn't end in a dashboard. Each month closes with a one-hour working session walking your leadership through the findings, department by department: what fired, why it matters, and what to do next.
Then the loop restarts. The anchor re-measures every department, any intervention from last month is checked for effect, and the next pillar deploys on schedule — so you're always looking at a live trend, not a stale annual snapshot.
Who it's for
Culture Pulse works wherever departments are large enough to measure safely and culture failures are too expensive to discover late — attrition, absenteeism, grievances, a speak-up failure that ends up in the news. Consulting, not software: we design, analyse, brief and intervene. You share two links a month and act on what comes back.
Honest by design
Trust is the data source. These safeguards are hard rules in the engine — not policy promises.
No report is ever produced about an individual. The engine outputs department-level patterns only — it cannot identify, score or rank a person.
Below the group-size floor, a department's result is suppressed entirely. Small teams can never be exposed by their numbers.
Small samples, low response rates and shifting respondent mixes are flagged on the result itself — not dressed up as certainty.
Pillars are expert-designed and labelled honestly. No inflated validation claims, no invented benchmarks, no case studies we don't have.
Common questions
Yes — structurally, not just by policy. Responses are aggregated at department level only, no individual identifiers are tracked, and departments below the minimum group size are suppressed entirely. Anonymity is also a data-quality requirement: people tell the truth when it can't be traced back to them.
About two minutes per employee per month — eight questions, mobile-first. Your team distributes the survey links we provide. Leadership's commitment is the one-hour monthly findings session and follow-through on the agreed actions.
Yes. You select 6–12 pillars from a bank of 20+ during onboarding, based on your risk profile and priorities. If a challenge doesn't fit a standard pillar — post-merger integration, a specific audit finding — we design a custom pillar for it, signed off by the industrial psychologist like every other.
Monthly is the minimum frequency that makes trend analysis honest. Annual surveys give you one stale data point; you can't see direction or speed, and a shock looks the same as a drift. The burden is deliberately low — eight questions, under two minutes — so the signal stays high without survey fatigue.
Culture Pulse is priced as a project-based consulting engagement — typically a 6–12 month cycle covering one full pillar rotation. Pricing depends on the number of departments, total headcount, and the level of intervention support required. Get in touch for a scoping conversation.
Start here
Tell us a little about your organisation. We'll come back to scope your departments, your risk areas, and which pillars fit.
We'll be in touch shortly to set up a scoping conversation.
Prefer email? Reach us at info@culture-pulse.co.za