Why I built Pulsory

I spent over a decade working in hospitality. I started as a chef, moved to waiting tables, then became a shift manager and later an assistant manager. When I went to university I dropped back down to waiting tables, picking up shift manager shifts when they needed the cover.

So I've seen it from most angles. The kitchen, the floor, and the side that has to make the rota work.

The surveys

In all that time I was asked what I thought maybe four or five times. I remember the questions leaned heavily on management, and beyond that almost nothing about them stuck with me.

I think that's the point. If something had visibly changed afterwards, I'd remember it. Nothing did, so they blurred into everything else that came down from above and went nowhere.

What I do remember is the distance between the restaurant and the people above it. More was expected of us every year. We were offered programmes that didn't help with anything we were actually struggling with. When support came, it rarely matched the problem. And people left. Often the ones who had been there long enough to be genuinely good at the job, worn down by a role that kept asking for more.

What I think was really going on

I don't think the people above us were villains. They were busy, a long way from the floor, and working with very little reliable information about what daily life in that building was like. They were also running a business that had to make money.

That's the tension nobody really talks about. Looking after your people and protecting the bottom line can feel like two competing jobs, especially when margins are thin and you're being asked to do more with less.

I don't think they compete nearly as much as people assume. The same information that tells you how your team is really doing also tells you what it will cost you to ignore it. Sort out the thing that's quietly grinding people down and you keep the good staff you already have, which is almost always cheaper than replacing them. The two goals mostly point in the same direction. You just have to be able to see clearly enough to know which thing to fix first.

So I built the thing I wish they'd had

Pulsory asks people what's really going on, anonymously enough that they'll answer honestly. It turns that into plain English, with a realistic idea of what a problem is costing you. It gives you something concrete to do about it. And it shows your team what changed, so answering feels worth their time.

It's deliberately built to support you rather than grade you. In a smaller business the person reading the results is usually the person the results are about, and I never wanted this to feel like an audit. Most of the owners and managers I worked for genuinely wanted to do right by their staff. They just couldn't see clearly enough to know where to start.

Why a tool, and not advice

I'm not an HR consultant and I wouldn't pretend to be. Building things is the skill I have, so that's what I did. Pulsory doesn't tell you how to run your business. It tells you what your team is experiencing, what it's likely costing you, and what usually helps.

Where it is now

Pulsory is in private beta with a small number of UK businesses, and it's just me building it. If it sounds like something your team would benefit from, I'd genuinely like to hear from you.

NathanFounder, Pulsory