Hospitality

Anonymous staff surveys for hospitality

For pubs, restaurants, cafés and hotels. Find out what's wearing your team down before it turns into another resignation, another advert and another round of interviews.

Work out your turnover cost

If you've hired for the same role three times this year

You already know turnover is expensive. What's harder to know is why people keep going.

Most people won't tell the person who signs their payslip what's really wrong. It isn't that they don't trust you. It's just hard to say out loud, especially in a small team where everyone knows everyone. So you find out at the end, in a resignation, when it's too late to fix.

In hospitality that gap is wider than most. Your team is spread across shifts, sites and two very different worlds under one roof, the kitchen and the floor, and the person who hears the real story is rarely the person who can change it.

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. In all that time I was asked what I thought maybe four or five times. If something had visibly changed afterwards, I'd remember it. Nothing did.

NathanFounder, PulsoryRead the full story →

The numbers

52%

Staff churn in hospitality, the highest of any UK sector.

CIPD analysis of ONS Annual Population Survey data, 2022 to 2023

1 in 3

Over a third of hospitality staff are in their first year in the job, against about 16% across the economy.

Same source

17%

Only 17% of organisations surveyed calculated what labour turnover costs them.

CIPD Resourcing and Talent Planning Report, 2022

That 52% counts everyone who moved on, including casual and seasonal work coming to an end, so your own turnover is probably lower. The real question is what yours is, and what it's costing you. Most businesses can't say. The turnover cost calculator will tell you in two minutes.

What your team might not be telling you

None of this is unusual, and none of it is easy to raise with the owner.

The rota. Short notice, closing one night and opening the next morning, split shifts. People cope, until one day they don't.
Being short. When someone leaves, everyone else covers. Breaks get skipped, and a stretched team is exactly when the next person starts looking.
The kitchen and the floor. Two teams, often with different problems and different managers. One overall score can hide a kitchen that's struggling.
The guests. Most shifts are fine. The difficult ones are the ones staff remember, along with whether they felt backed up.
Whoever runs the shift. For most of your team, the business is the person in charge that night. They make or break how the job feels.

Built for hospitality

Made for the way your business actually runs.

No work email? No problem

Kitchen and floor staff scan a QR code and answer on their own phone in a few minutes. No app, no login, no password.

Every site side by side

See which sites need attention, and spot the general manager whose team everyone wants to work in, so you can copy what they do.

Kitchen and front of house

Set them up as separate departments and see each one on its own, as long as it has at least five responses.

Seasonal swings handled

Your price is set by headcount and checked once a year, so a busy summer never pushes you into a bigger band.

Small sites stay protected

A site with fewer than five responses is hidden, never shown as a rounded number, so nobody on a small team is singled out.

Short and regular

A full survey each January and an eight-question check-in in April, July and October. Short enough to fill in between shifts.

The duty to prevent sexual harassment

Since 26 October 2024, employers in England, Wales and Scotland have had a legal duty to “take reasonable steps to prevent sexual harassment” of their employees. In a business with late shifts and a lot of contact with the public, it's worth knowing whether your team feels safe at work.

An anonymous survey is one way to hear about problems early, alongside your policies, training and a clear way to report. It isn't legal advice, and on its own it doesn't meet the duty.

Questions

Pulsory for hospitality

Do my staff need a work email?

No. Anyone without a work email can take the survey by scanning a QR code you put up at the site. It works on any phone, with no app and no login.

Does it work with seasonal staff?

Yes. Add and remove people as they join and leave. Your price is set by headcount and only checked once a year, so seasonal ups and downs don't change it.

Can I compare my sites?

Yes. You can see the whole business at a glance, look at any single site, and compare them side by side. Area and site managers can have their own view, scoped to their own people.

What if one of my sites is very small?

Any site with fewer than five responses is hidden, so nobody can be identified. Where three or more small sites come up short, Pulsory combines them into a single line, but only if together they reach five.

How long does the survey take?

A few minutes on any device. It's 24 questions each January and 8 in April, July and October, plus any questions of your own.

Will my managers see their own results?

No. Managers never see their own scores. Only the people above them in the chain do, with exactly the same anonymity protections.

Find out what your team really thinks

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