what is this business
ACTUALLY TRYING TO CREATE HERE?
The Compass · for business
You decide how this business runs – the hours, the structure, what gets rewarded. The Compass tells you how that lands with the people doing the work, and what they’d change first.
who it’s for
For those who run the place: founders and owners, leadership teams, HR and people leads – in companies, public bodies and non-profits alike.
And for those who advise, invest in or support it: boards and investors, consultants and coaches, occupational health and wellbeing professionals.
why this matters
You know your numbers. Headcount, turnover, absence, the engagement score. None of them answer the question underneath: how are your people actually doing, and what would they change?
That question decides who stays, how hard they try, and what the place is like to be in.
what it is and what you get
The Compass asks your people how they experience working life as a human being, not as a job title. First what a good working life looks like to them, then how each part of it feels today.
Built on our framework, the 17 Living Goals. A few of the questions:
- fair pay, decent conditions, the tools to do the job
- whether the work leaves you energy and health
- trust and real connection with the people you work with
- how much say you have, and whether raising something leads anywhere
The distance between them is the gap. What comes back is the reading, in three parts: a full written report split by group and team, a one-page canvas that sums it up, and a day going through it together.
It’s an online questionnaire, about ten minutes each, anonymously, over a two-week window.
Example – partly – read
Click image to enlarge
Try it on yourself first. It’s the same one your people would use.
when you’d reach for the compass
Things are changing.
Forty new people in a year, or a reorganisation on the way. Find out what people want kept while you can still keep it. Change tends to throw out the good bits by accident.
You’re new to the place.
New owner, new leader, or brought in to advise. You’ve inherited a culture nobody can describe to you. This describes it, from the people doing the work.
People are leaving, or going off sick.
Exit interviews come too late. Absence tells you who’s off, not why. This asks while people are still deciding, about work and the life around it.
Your survey tells you nothing new.
Same questions every year, same scores, and a 6.4 doesn’t tell you what to do on Monday. The Compass asks what a good working life looks like first, then which parts of it they’re missing.
Different departments feel different.
One average for the whole company tells you nothing. Read it team by team and you see who’s doing fine and who isn’t.
why this is different
It starts with the ideal, not the complaint.
Most surveys ask people to rate what they’ve got. The Compass asks what good looks like first, then where things stand today. The gap between them tells you what to defend and where to go.
It reads a life, not a job.
This isn’t an engagement survey with a wellbeing question bolted on. Your engagement score already covers work – the manager, the pay, the pressure. This covers the rest too: health, money, relationships, purpose, whether they feel they belong anywhere at all. Ask only about work and work is the only problem you’ll ever find. Read the whole picture and you can see whether the job is what actually needs fixing, or something else is.
You get something written.
Not a template with your numbers dropped in. A reading written for your business, saying where your people stand and what to look at first.
Your people get something back.
Everyone who takes the Compass gets their own results – personal, theirs to keep. A read on their own answers, written for them. That’s also why the answers come back honest: people reflect differently when the reflection is their own.
Businesses measure what they can report. People work on what they can’t.
what it costs
One number, set by one question: how big is the read?
Read it twice.
One read tells you where your people stand and what to move first. Two reads, six or twelve months apart, tell you whether it worked. Same seventeen goals, same question, so the movement is real rather than a feeling. Booked together, the pair costs a quarter less than two separate reads.
On request.
In your language, or for your sector: that’s a tailored Compass reading.
how it works, start to finish
- 01
You get a join code.
- 02
You share the code with your people, through your channels.
- 03
They each spend about ten minutes on the Compass.
- 04
I write the reading, split by group where each has ten or more.
- 05
We spend a day going through it together.
Start to finish, about four weeks from the day the code goes out. Two weeks the Compass is open, and two weeks while I work through the answers.
anonymous by design
No one sees what a single person answered. Not you. Not me. Answers go straight into the totals.
Results are only shown once enough people in a group have answered, so no single person can be picked out.
Honest answers are the only ones worth paying for. This is how you get them.
ready when you are
Tell me about your business – how many people, what you'd like to know – and I'll help you set it up: which teams to read separately, and how to get your people taking part.
one compass, three parties
The same 17 Living Goals, read for wellbeing organisations, businesses and cities.