We're so excited to have you on board. 🎉
We’ll guide you through the first cycle from setup and audit to implementing your DEI strategy and improving your overall company health!
We know you really care about making this launch successful and we suspect you're super busy so this article will guide you. You can find lots of other articles in this help centre and our HR Advice team is happy to answer questions via the intercom chat function.
1. Where to begin
Book your Launch call with our HR Advice team and together we'll set some goals for your company to get the most from Insights, and we can also walk you through the platform in more detail.
2. Complete your first Audit 🕵️
The full audit comprises the employee survey and the company assessment. Completing either one of them unlocks some reports, and combined, they'll give the full picture. We advise you to complete your company self-assessment first.
3. Complete your company assessment 📝
Most companies should complete the company assessment as soon as possible. Completing within 30 calendar days of joining keeps the momentum. 🛼
It'll give you a baseline measure of ED&I at your company and let us develop your personal strategy sooner.
Estimate: 2-8 hours
Getting the company assessment to 100% unlocks most of the equality Reports.
Answer as many questions as you can, skip the ones you can't.
Once all sections are complete, you'll get a green tick and a completion score. The aim is to reach 100% - this allows us to build the best action plan for your company, and ensures your certification level is as accurate as possible.
Once you have completed your company assessment, you're ready to move on to the equity section, which is where you'll gain your Charlie Insights certification level
Answer as many questions as you can, skip the ones you can't.
Once all sections are complete, you'll get a green tick and a completion score. The aim is to reach 100% - this allows us to build the best action plan for your company, and ensures your certification level is as accurate as possible.
Once you have completed your company assessment, you're ready to move on to the equity section, which is where you'll gain your Charlie Insights certification level
4. Getting certified 🏅
Once you've completed your company assessment, you'll instantly be assigned a certification level. This will be one of the following:
100% Complete – In this case, you can book a call with our HR Advice team via the provided link. During this call, your certification will be granted, and you’ll discuss how to progress to the next level.
Partially Certified – For example, if you're 60% towards certification, you’ll receive a tailored action plan to work through at your own pace.
Each level comes with a clear action plan designed to guide your progress to the next stage. This may include best practice guides, as well as process and policy templates. You may find yourself advancing in some areas faster than others; however, to achieve full certification at any level, all actions within that level must be completed.
There are four certification levels within Charlie Insights:
1. Emerging Establishing best-practice foundations to build a culture of fairness and excellence.
2. Engaging Putting operational procedures in place to create a workplace where people can thrive and do their best work.
3. Embedded Integrating your strategy deeply into systems that support and evolve your unique company culture.
4. Expert The new standard: high productivity and retention, driven by a culture of fairness and innovation where a diverse team can truly thrive.
Why is certification important?
Certification provides a strong platform to communicate your company’s commitment to fairness, inclusion, and excellence. Publicly sharing your certification can also be a powerful tool to boost your employer brand - it helps demonstrate your values and work ethic to both prospective candidates and customers.
If you're new to Insights and don’t yet have an EDI or people strategy in place, you're likely to begin at Level 1 or 2 (Emerging or Engaging). The pace of your progress will depend on how quickly you complete your action plan. As a guide, moving up one level per year is a healthy and realistic goal—giving you enough time to implement meaningful changes, gather feedback, assess outcomes, and refine your approach.
5. Launch Your Employee Survey 🗣️
You're ready to launch your employee survey and start gathering valuable feedback! The survey includes 60 questions covering key areas such as culture, leadership, operations, and diversity and inclusion.
Because Insights is integrated within Charlie, there’s no need to manually upload employee data. Just ensure all employees are listed in Charlie before launching the survey - once it’s live, you won’t be able to add or remove participants.
Before you launch:
Double-check your employee list in Charlie.
When you're ready, go to the Survey tab at the top of the page and click Launch Survey.
Estimated time to complete: Approximately 7 minutes per employee.
Timing tip:
It typically takes 2–3 weeks to gather enough responses - this allows for people on leave and gives everyone a fair chance to complete the survey. So, we recommend launching as early as possible.
Communications strategy:
We’ll have discussed your internal comms approach during the Launch call. As a best practice, we suggest introducing the survey at the end of an all-hands meeting and encouraging employees to complete it right away.
Why 75% matters: Once 75% of employees complete the survey, your
Diversity & Inclusion reports will be unlocked. Most of our customers aim for (and achieve!) 85%+ completion.
To recap, here's your plan:
Communicate with employees about Charlie Insights - what it is, why you're using it, and what to expect. (We'll provide supporting resources if needed.)
Launch the survey via Survey > Launch Survey.
Remind anyone who hasn't completed it - we'll send nudges too!
Reach 75% completion and unlock your Reports!
6. Unlock Your Reports & eNPS 📊
Once the employee survey is complete, your Diversity & Experience tab will be unlocked. Here, you'll find your results broken down into the three core areas the survey is built around:
Retention
Productivity
Inclusion
Within each category, you’ll see detailed insights, starting with the highest-risk and highest-priority areas for action.
👉 Want to understand the scores? Head to our intercom article understanding your survey results but our HR Advice team will be on hand to walk you through the results too.
Next steps:
Take time to review your results, either independently or with your management team.
Make a note of any key takeaways or questions.
When you're ready, book a Strategy Call with our HR Advice team. Together, we’ll review what the data is telling you, decide what to communicate internally, and align on the next strategic focus areas.
7. Commit and take action 🎯
After your Strategy Call, our HR Advisors will build a personalised strategy for your company. This typically takes around one week, and once it's ready, it will appear in the Strategy tab.
Your strategy will be tailored to the key areas you discussed during your call usually focusing on three core priorities for the next 6–12 months. These areas can evolve over time, and you’ll have the flexibility to shift focus as your needs change.
All our recommendations are science-backed interventions, designed to address the specific challenges you've identified.
We’ll continue to support you in setting goals, taking meaningful action, and tracking progress—right up until your next Audit session, where we’ll reflect on what’s changed and where to go next.
Wow, that was a lot! 😅
Take it step by step and we're over there on the chat function if you need us.
Appendix: Useful resources for internal comms 📟
How to get the best survey completion rates
Use different channels and styles of nudge to create the feeling that everyone should have their say.
Explain why high survey completion is key: the results (and resulting action) will be much more powerful if they are indicative of all parts of your organisation. Set the clear expectation that everyone should participate.
Encourage everyone to block out a specific time in their diaries - or do that for them: Send company-wide 10-minute calendar invite to all employees to complete the survey at the same time.
Ask managers to mention it in their 1-on-1s. Give them the key points written down to help (it's anonymised, science-backed, and it benefits everyone). Encourage them to pass queries back to you so you can compile a custom FAQs for the whole team.
Publicise your completion rate if it's good. If over 50% of employees have already completed the survey, shout about that in team meetings or chat tools. Ask the others to go and do it now.
Put it on agendas for your employee groups and committees, not just the D&I related ones, and have execs and leaders mention it in team meetings. This makes it clear that it's an important topic for everyone, not a select few.
Ask executives and leaders to message in a company channel once they've completed it. Role model that it's worth taking the time.
Host an 'open office' where people can drop in with questions and/or an anonymous queries form.
Reach out to us if you need anything, we want this survey to be successful too!
Appendix: Starting in special circumstances
We're happy to support you during your Launch call with figuring out the best option. Here's a couple of things that worked for other customers who may have been in similar situations as you:
People need to see us making changes asap, what can we do immediately?
Actions speak louder than words so if you need to demonstrate your commitment quickly, start with the Critical Foundations on your Dashboard (or in Strategy). Your first strategy (before we design a personal one with you) is an evidence-based action plan to lay the critical foundations of equity. These are the best first steps for any company to make immediate change.
We only just surveyed our team, what can we do instead?
We've gotta say this bit first: no one has a survey like ours when it comes to exploring diversity and inclusion in your workplace. It averages 7 minutes to complete and our customers regularly see engagement rates higher than any other survey they run.
If you really can't run it right now, we suggest you prep for launching it in 1 month's time.
In the meantime, you can complete the company assessment to partially unlock the Equality reports, and start completing actions in Strategy to lay the critical foundations of ED&I and overall company health.
We've got a bunch of people ready to work on this, what should they do?
🤩 That's fantastic! Focus them on getting the Audit done. The company assessment is divided into sections like Hiring, and Pay and Bonus, share the responsibility for completing them and put others on crafting great internal comms for launching your employee survey.
Prioritise getting that Audit done super fast, but when there's no more work to share your team can start using Strategy. Work through this evidence-based action plan to lay the critical foundations of equity even before your Reports are in.