Employee engagement and performance management for the world's best companies
Culture Amp is an employee experience platform that combines engagement surveys, performance management, and people analytics in one system. Founded in 2011 in Melbourne, Australia, it serves 6,500+ organisations globally — including Canva, Etsy, McDonald’s, the NBA, and Tiffany & Co.
Pricing: From ~$5–$8/employee/month per module (minimum ~$4,500/year) | Free demo available
Culture Amp sits in a distinct category: it is not an HRIS, payroll system, or applicant tracking platform. It is a people analytics and employee experience tool — built to help HR teams understand what employees actually think, track how that changes over time, and take structured action on the results.
The company was founded by Didier Elzinga, Doug English, Jon Williams, and Rod Hamilton. Its core thesis is that organisations perform better when they systematically listen to employees and act on that data. Every product decision — from survey design to analytics dashboards — is built around that belief. Culture Amp’s in-house science team (organisational psychologists and I/O researchers) develops and validates the question library, which gives the platform’s engagement instruments more rigour than most HR software survey builders.
Culture Amp is used alongside an HRIS — it ingests employee data from Rippling, Workday, BambooHR, ADP, and others — but it doesn’t replace one. If you need payroll, onboarding, or benefits administration, that’s a different tool.
User sentiment is notably positive on engagement survey features and benchmarking. Critical feedback clusters around: pricing for smaller teams, learning curve for admin setup, and some rigidity in custom reporting.
The survey platform is Culture Amp’s flagship capability and the reason most organisations choose it. The platform includes pre-built, validated templates for: annual engagement surveys, onboarding surveys, exit interviews, manager effectiveness surveys, diversity and inclusion surveys, and pulse check-ins.
Survey design is informed by Culture Amp’s science team — organisational psychologists who have validated each question’s reliability and predictive validity against engagement and retention outcomes. This is a meaningful differentiator: many HR tech survey builders let you write any question you want, which is fine until your results don’t correlate with actual behaviour.
After surveys close, Culture Amp generates analytics reports that highlight engagement drivers (the factors most predictive of overall engagement at your organisation), heatmaps segmented by team, tenure, location, or any demographic dimension, and trend data showing change over time. The benchmarking database — drawn from 6,500+ Culture Amp customers — allows you to compare your scores against industry and company-size peers. Knowing your engagement score is 68% is less useful than knowing it’s 12 points below the median for SaaS companies with 200–500 employees.
Culture Amp’s performance module supports flexible review cycles: annual, semi-annual, quarterly, or rolling. Review templates are configurable, supporting 360-degree feedback, self-assessments, upward feedback (employees rating managers), peer reviews, and manager assessments. Goal setting integrates OKRs and individual development goals with review cycles.
A differentiating feature is the data connection between Engage and Perform: HR teams can analyse whether teams with low engagement scores show different performance outcomes, or whether high-performing teams have specific management behaviours that correlate with engagement. This cross-module analytics capability is available to organisations using both modules and isn’t easily replicated with separate tools.
The platform includes structured 1-on-1 tools: agenda templates, talking points, action item tracking, and a running history of manager–direct report conversations. Continuous feedback allows employees and managers to give and request informal feedback at any point, building a record that informs formal review cycles.
Beyond survey data, Culture Amp can ingest HR data from connected HRIS systems to generate headcount, attrition, and DEI dashboards. Predictive analytics features flag early signs of engagement decline or flight risk — giving HR time to intervene before they lose key talent. The analytics layer provides a single view of people data: survey results, performance ratings, attrition trends, and demographic distributions in one dashboard.
Culture Amp has invested significantly in DEI capabilities. Demographic-split survey analytics allow HR to compare engagement scores by gender, ethnicity, age band, tenure, and any other dimension in employee data. Pay equity analysis helps identify and address compensation gaps. Inclusion survey templates are validated specifically for measuring psychological safety and belonging. For organisations with active DEI programmes, Culture Amp’s DEI toolkit is among the most developed available in a standalone people analytics platform.
Culture Amp’s 6,500+ customer dataset is one of the platform’s most defensible advantages. When you run an engagement survey, you don’t just see your own scores — you see how they compare to companies of similar size, industry, growth stage, and geography. This transforms engagement data from an internal metric to a competitive signal. Knowing you’re in the bottom quartile for manager effectiveness among 200–500 person tech companies creates urgency that a raw score doesn’t. Few competitors at comparable price points have benchmarking data this deep.
Culture Amp’s in-house organisational psychology team is unusual for HR software companies. The team designs survey instruments using established psychometric methods — question validation, reliability testing, factor analysis — and publishes research on engagement, performance, and diversity based on platform data. When you use a Culture Amp engagement survey, you’re using an instrument that has been tested for whether it actually measures employee engagement, not just what HR managers think engagement looks like.
Most engagement platforms stop at data collection and dashboards. Culture Amp goes further: after survey results are available, the platform suggests specific actions managers can take to address the factors driving their team’s scores. Managers can commit to actions, set timelines, and track progress. HR can see which managers have reviewed their results, created action plans, and are making progress. This converts survey data from a reporting exercise into a change management tool.
Culture Amp is consistently rated highly on usability relative to the depth of its capabilities. Employees completing surveys find the interface clean and mobile-friendly — critical for survey completion rates. Managers using dashboards report an accessible learning curve. HR administrators configuring survey logic, segmentation rules, and integration settings face more complexity. Most organisations need a few sessions with a Culture Amp CSM to configure the platform correctly for the first survey cycle.
Implementation is significantly lighter than enterprise HRIS deployments. Most mid-market organisations are fully operational within 4–8 weeks. The process involves: connecting your HRIS for employee data sync, configuring your survey strategy, setting up access, and running a pilot survey. Culture Amp provides onboarding templates, admin training, and — for enterprise customers — dedicated CSM support through the first survey cycle. Unlike HRIS implementations, there’s no complex data migration.
Culture Amp surveys are typically confidential, not fully anonymous.
Support quality varies significantly by tier. Entry-level packages have limited live support. Mid-market and enterprise customers get dedicated Customer Success Managers who help design survey programmes and facilitate action planning. The Help Centre is well-maintained. Most enterprise customers cite their CSM relationship as one of the platform’s most valuable aspects.
Culture Amp integrates with major HRIS platforms: Rippling, Workday, BambooHR, ADP Workforce Now, SAP SuccessFactors, Ceridian Dayforce, and HiBob. The HRIS integration automatically syncs new hires and terminated employees. Additional integrations include Slack, Microsoft Teams, and Greenhouse/Lever for onboarding survey triggers. HRIS integrations are typically available from the Engage+Perform tier; entry-level packages may require manual uploads.
For a 300-person company using both modules, budget $28,800–$50,400/year. The minimum annual commitment effectively sets ~100 employees as the floor where Culture Amp becomes cost-viable.
Lattice is Culture Amp’s closest competitor. Both serve mid-market tech companies with engagement and performance features. Lattice is stronger on performance management depth — OKR tracking, compensation planning, career development. Culture Amp is stronger on engagement survey science, benchmarking data, and DEI analytics. Performance-first buyers lean Lattice; engagement-first buyers lean Culture Amp.
Glint is embedded in Microsoft Viva and suits Microsoft-heavy organisations. Culture Amp is more flexible as a standalone platform with deeper benchmarking and a broader HRIS integration ecosystem. For organisations outside the Microsoft stack, Culture Amp is generally the stronger product.
15Five focuses on weekly check-ins, manager coaching, and continuous performance conversations. Culture Amp is more analytics-heavy and survey-driven. HR teams wanting data-driven listening choose Culture Amp; teams focused on improving manager habits often prefer 15Five.
Qualtrics is the enterprise-grade alternative for 5,000+ employee organisations needing maximum survey customisation and multi-language support. Culture Amp is easier to implement, has better mid-market benchmarking, and is more affordable below the enterprise tier.
Culture Amp is an employee experience platform that helps HR teams run engagement surveys, manage performance reviews, and analyse people data. It collects structured employee feedback, benchmarks results against industry peers, and guides managers through action planning. It is not an HRIS and does not handle payroll, benefits, or onboarding.
The Engage module runs approximately $5–$7/employee/month with a minimum annual commitment of around $4,500. Adding the Perform module brings total cost to $8–$14/employee/month. A 300-person company using both should budget $28,000–$50,000/year. Pricing is not publicly listed; a quote is required.
Standard surveys are confidential, not fully anonymous. Individual responses are not visible to managers, but personalised survey links allow completion tracking. Results below the confidentiality threshold (typically 5 respondents) are withheld. Fully anonymous (unattributed) options exist but sacrifice demographic segmentation.
The primary competitors are Lattice (closest feature overlap), Glint/Microsoft Viva (Microsoft-first organisations), 15Five (coaching-focused), Qualtrics EmployeeXM (enterprise tier), and Leapsome (European alternative).
No. Culture Amp reads employee data from your HRIS but does not replace systems like BambooHR, Rippling, Workday, or ADP. You need both — Culture Amp is a specialist analytics and listening layer, not a core HR system.
Most mid-market organisations are fully operational within 4–8 weeks. There is no complex data migration — only a data sync from your existing HR system. Enterprise deployments with complex segmentation requirements take longer.
Not typically. The minimum annual commitment (~$4,500) and platform depth make most sense for 100+ employee organisations with a dedicated HR function. Below that, alternatives like Officevibe or TINYpulse are better suited.
Culture Amp is the strongest choice for mid-market organisations building a serious, data-driven employee listening programme. The science-backed survey instruments, industry benchmarking database, and action planning workflow set it apart from competitors that are survey builders with a dashboard layer. The DEI analytics are among the best at this price point.
The limitations are real: it’s not an HRIS replacement, the pricing minimum excludes smaller teams, and the performance module is less differentiated than Lattice. But for its core use case — understanding what drives engagement and attrition, then acting on it — Culture Amp is the benchmark.