Swisscom

From traditional employee surveys to a modern feedback culture at Swisscom

mit Gabriela Spichiger

Health & Employability Specialist

Participants: +15%

The response rate increased continuously over time

Comment length: +36%

Over time, more and more participants wrote increasingly longer comments

Feedback culture: +62 points

The score of the feedback question increased from 0 to 62

Industry

Telecommunications

Headquarters

Bern, Switzerland

Company size

+19,000 employees

Website

swisscom.ch

The company

Leading telecommunications provider and digitalization pioneer

Swisscom is Switzerland's leading telecommunications and IT service provider and one of the country's largest companies. With its comprehensive infrastructure and innovative technologies, Swisscom connects people, businesses, and society.

As an innovative company, Swisscom works with modern, partly agile work methods and places particular emphasis on a progressive corporate culture. This innovation culture is also reflected in how the company handles employee feedback and organizational development.

The challenge

Traditional surveys without measurable improvements

Swisscom had been using a comprehensive traditional employee survey to measure employee satisfaction and engagement for many years. However, this only led to noticeable improvements in a few cases and had little impact on employee motivation or engagement.

  • Too infrequent implementation → Long periods between surveys prevented timely responses
  • Overly long questionnaires → Too many questions led to fatigue
  • Delayed communication → Too much time passed between the survey and communication of results
  • Lack of effectiveness → Only in a few cases did noticeable improvements occur in daily work

The solution

From internal challenge to innovative solution

An internal team at Swisscom identified the core problem of traditional employee surveys and developed a tailored solution: instead of just measuring, the surveys should systematically lead to concrete improvements throughout the entire company.

The innovative method is based on a bottom-up process in which teams work independently with their results and derive and implement measures from their insights.

With Pulse Feedback, Swisscom can:

  • Work bottom-up – Teams receive their results directly and work with them independently
  • Communicate transparently – Semi-transparent approach creates trust and openness
  • Reach all teams – Flexible adaptation to different work methods and structures
  • Discuss systematically – Structured results discussions in teams and at various leadership levels
  • React promptly – Short cycles enable quick responses to feedback
«With Pulse, you engage much more with who I'm giving feedback to and why. People understood this well and questioned themselves more.»

Gabriela Spichiger

Health & Employability Specialist

The result

Ownership and concrete changes

Pulse Feedback became an integral part of work at Swisscom over the years and brought about numerous local and global improvements. Continuous use led to a measurable improvement in feedback culture: over time, more and more employees participated in the surveys and provided increasingly detailed feedback.

Since using Pulse Feedback, impact has been shown in various areas:

  • Measurable feedback culture improvement → Employees are continuously contributing more
  • Independent work with results → Teams work independently with their insights
  • Open handling of critical topics → Important concerns reach the leadership level

A special observation: Critical comments became increasingly longer and more detailed, even though the scores became more positive during the same period. Agreement with the statement "In my work environment, I receive feedback that helps me progress" also increased noticeably.

«What is revolutionary about Pulse Feedback compared to all other methods is the transparency. And the very user-friendly evaluation of results. This allows everyone in the company to work independently with the results. And it pays off: teams that consistently worked with Pulse Feedback were able to measurably increase their performance.»

Philippe Nicod

Former Lead Chapter Future Workforce

Why Pulse Feedback

Trusting partnership and innovative solutions

Swisscom particularly values the personal, pragmatic, and solution-oriented collaboration with the Pulse Feedback team. The team supported the entire process from implementation to sustainable integration.

  • Trusting collaboration: Reliable, helpful, and very present during survey waves
  • Customer-oriented adaptations: Addressing specific wishes and needs
  • Innovative solution approaches: Spontaneous and creative responses to complex challenges
  • Authentic philosophy: Open feedback is not only taught but lived
  • Competent support: Help with internal discussions and convincing presentations
«The collaboration is very trusting, personal, and pragmatic. The Pulse Feedback team supports us throughout the entire process from A to Z and is very close to our needs.»

Gabriela Spichiger

Health & Employability Specialist

Ready for effective employee surveys?

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