General FAQs

An easy way for employees to give instant and anonymous feedback to their company, to let their leaders know if they’re pushing in the right direction.

The objective is to improve your employee mood.

Leaders get an ongoing temp check at work, making it easy to detect in advance if employee motivation is going down, and work preventative. Companies can work in a agile way and take continuous action to improve at work.

The methodology is: Measure. Talk. Improve. Repeat!

How does it work?

The Celpax is a physical device which hangs on the wall by the company exit door. It has the same question to all employees every day:

HOW WAS YOUR DAY?

Press the Green or Red button once
The green and red lights come on after you press, they show how your colleagues felt at work today!
The online dashboard shows the full results. Use this to talk with your employees about what makes people press green and red. Then try to fix these this!

Take action in an agile way to continuously improve your work culture.

Here’s a slideshow if you want to show it to your colleagues.

How can I get started?

Join signups from 60 countries:

Your 1st Celpax is 5 euros with our Do-It-Yourself approach: Use the support portal and our Community Forum.
Want support from us? Or need more Celpax devices for all your exit doors? Wanna compare your factories or offices? Customize the face plate? Check out out plans.

If you wanna include all your employees from the beginning (=hanging 1 device at all your exit doors and/or comparing offices) we offer a 90-day back guarantee so it’s still risk free. Pick your plan.

No risks. No surprises.

Too simple to work?

Measuring with the Celpax looks ridiculously easy and simple. Can this really work? Yes! You’d be surprised at the insights our users are getting:

Ongoing temp check. You always have a number (‘75% pressed green this month’) to know how your employees feel at work. People aren’t static. Work with a mindset of continuous improvement to maintain a healthy work culture.
Spot trends and see impacts. Imagine getting proof that you dropped from 75% green to 58% in the last quarter. Would management act on that? When you decide to do something to improve the spirits, you get instant feedback to how your actions and initiatives are received.
A/B testing. Let’s say you organize a ‘Lunch Roulette” at office floor 1. Your weekly score spikes to 88% green! You can compare this to your results on office floor 2 where you took no action, and learn more about what works in your organization and not. You save time, energy and money by starting to domore of things that work… and less of things that don’t work.

We’ve been doing this since 2012. There’s more than 2 years of research behind the Celpax. We interviewed 100 leaders, everything from ‘Best Place to Work’ to uh, worst place to work, before we went commercial.

That’s how serious we take measuring employee engagement.

Why two buttons?

Having two buttons is really by design, in order to force people to think, to decide.

If it’s tricky to choose, that’s positive! It means they’re not sure and are thinking, self-reflecting upon if their day was good or bad, if they want more days like this, and so forth.

You can always decide on one, and that is where the value is.

When you leave work you either want to have days like this one, or you would prefer other types of working days. There is no middle point.

To press the yellow would be the same as not pressing - you’re just participating, complying without really giving information.

The yellow button is the easy way out. If you’re being “forced” to push, that would be your way out. But then what action is there?

The Celpax is about improving!

Download the comic as a poster here

So the green/red is intentional. We want people to actively choose, to make a decision. There’s no sitting on the fence!

The comfortable middle option (orange) is that you don’t have to think. And that’s the problem.

There are tons of people who shy away from making decisions and just go for the easy, middle option. With our green or red approach, it quickly turns into a habit to evaluate your day by simply pressing one button as you leave your workplace. This also means we quickly pick up the reactions from your employees like after a key event, or an important announcement, so you can instantly check the impact on your employee morale.

When confronted with two choices – you either press green or red – it forces you to reflect on your workday. Imagine if you press red several days in a row. Perhaps it would get you thinking about things? Reflecting over why you’re not happy at work. Or the steps you need to take to have ‘greener’ days.

Or who you need to talk to in order to improve things for you and others at work.

Some ask themselves Do I want more days like this? Press green if you do, red if you don't.

Or What would I like to change about my working day?

We think you can improve your workplace faster, by offering a green and a red button.

PS. It’s not uncommon to find resistance to this solution at the start.

When a leader hasn’t closed the feedback loop and started generating conversations, acting on the issues that make people press red, showing the improvement that has come as a result of them pressing the Celpax, etc., then some people don’t get the Why behind pressing and try to discredit it.

They look more at the number, the lack of a middle button, etc, and only later on do they get that this is about the improvement, less about the number.

If they don’t see the good things that come out of pressing, it just becomes a chore.

You know, what’s in it for me? That’s when your actions need to show, show your team/s that "we're doing this so we can change the stuff that makes you press red"!

What are the lights I see after I press the green or red button?

They show the total team result from everyone!

So basically, the lights show how your colleagues felt at work today.

The collective mood result is shown proportionally on the device.

That is, one green light is not equivalent to 1 person. At first, each dot is one person, but when it starts filling up, we show percentages. We use an algorithm that is based on the result / presses from the last 24 hours.

That way, when you're the first one to press, you see something when you press + you might feel a bit more anonymous and get some insights as to where the mood is.

The day cut off is always at midnight, your local time. If a lot of people press the same button and there is a big difference between the mood from one day to another, the results/lights can change pretty quickly.

Otherwise, you'll mostly see the proportional lights, showing the results which are typically inline with your Mood KPI (which is the average based on your last 30 days).

Will my company know how I pressed?

No. It’s completely anonymous. No scans. No reading fingerprints. No cameras.

Our business wouldn’t work if employees didn’t press so we, of course, make sure we act in the interest of the employees.

Read the Celpax privacy guarantee.

Is there an intensity? i.e. the longer I press the button, the happier I am

No. Just press once :)

The people icons that appear after you press show today's combined mood result (from your whole team).

How can the Celpax help me as an employee?

Being asked to evaluate your workday, the Celpax starts a thinking process within both employees and leaders.

By starting a habit to give feedback upon how your day went, you automatically start reflecting over things that might lead to an improved work situation.

I.e. are you more likely to press green when you leave on time? Do you think it’s OK if you press Red three days in a row? If not, what can you do to change this pattern? Or who do you need to talk to in order to change? Or do you tend to press more green at the beginning of the week?

What kind of positive results would you like to happen? What do you need to start, stop, or continue doing
to make this happen?

By observing your reactions, you can change your behavior and actions so you get more ‘green’ workdays. You can also become a better colleague by trying to be more helpful when the trend turns red, and help finding answers and solutions to improve your workplace.

Who is in control of how you feel at work? Here's a quote from a Dutch Celpax user:

“For myself Celpax acts as a very nice reflection moment. No matter what happened and how I feel before I press the button I ask myself; really, what is the score, am I grateful for what I did do and accomplish today?”

Do employees continue pressing?

We’ve been doing this since 2012. Our data clearly shows that as long as you’re prepared to share the results every now and then, and try to fix the things that makes people press red, they do indeed (that’s why you measure right? To take action and improve!).

Read about what successful companies do to keep employees pressing the Celpax, and what we consider to be a good number of pulses per day.

After an employee has pressed, the results is displayed on the device. They can also sign up to check the results on the dashboard (although they can only see a limited part of the dashboard unless you grant them full access). This ads transparency, and keeps the feedback loop going.

In one company, 10% of their workforce spontaneously reached out to congratulate the HR team on the initiative.

Dashboard DailyPulse Employee Mood in real-time

How do you know that employees are reporting their mood honestly on the tool?

The data points that employees generate must be private without any reasonable doubt. For two reasons:

- It is the right thing to do.

- It is well known that people under suspicion of surveillance modify their behaviors, which effectively contaminates data and limits its volume.

For example: under suspicious of surveillance and management by fear, employees might press more green as they believe it's in their interest. However, under good leadership employees may feel free to press red, as critical feedback is normally accepted. This situation might bring a totally wrong picture to the top management.

It's therefore crucial that employees don't feel like anyone is surveilling them, and are totally free to provide positive or negative feedback without any reservation.

The Celpax device achieves this by the following means:

A physical device: in the electronic surveillance era, an application on your mobile or on your PC generates suspicion among certain employees: in particular those working for huge corporations with endless resources. A physical device that everybody presses is inherently private. Being anonymous, it's easier for employees to express how they really feel.

The question: “How was your day?” crosses the personal and professional lives of an employee. Under fear conditions employees can always offer a personal excuse (their kid is ill, or they got a parking ticket) would they feel compelled to justify their red pulse. On the other hand best leaders “hire the whole person” both personal and professionally, so the question is most appropriate.

Can I change the question?

Managers have been asking employees different questions in surveys for years.

One problem is that leaders don't act on the answers.

Another problem is that employees give an answer, but they're not involved, they're not invited to participate in the full cycle.

With our approach we want to change how people behave.

One day we analyzed our data set and realized that the companies that get more green the FASTEST are the ones where
they make sure face-to-face meetings happens, to involve their employees from the beginning.

Many of these leaders avoid the "let's send a survey to find out why our employees press red" and organize meetings: informal, formal, big, small... to TALK about the result. Magic doesn't happen from behind a desk.

They tell us they sit down to have an open, honest and transparent conversation. They make it clear to their employees that the only goal is to find solutions to the problems that the employees themselves identify and feel like solving. Many times the employees also want to be involved in making sure the changes happen.

But we also get user feedback that this is tough (I've heard the word impossible being mentioned) in workplaces where these meetings or encounters don't easily happen.

So we keep interviewing leaders to offer more functionality in this area.

Here's another take:

Many solutions tell you what you need to fix in your work culture. Our device shows continuously if you're improving.

The Employee Mood KPI means you always know what results to expect on a normal day ("67% press green"). It’s a neutral number to jump start conversations with employees. As you converse and reach conclusions you can act fast and continuously try to fix issues brought up by your employees.

You’ll see if there’s an impact: "90% pressed green as we tested leaving fresh fruit in the kitchen yesterday", make an important announcement (one Swedish company got 100% RED when a popular manager announced departure), another company plummeted to 40% green the day of their staff party (which was mandatory outside of office hours), etc.

The Mood KPI baseline is used as a predictor of business performance and is crosschecked with daily productivity, safety incidents, retail sales, etc. Companies like Unilever automatically pin point that "last Tuesday at the 8-o'clock shift there was a problem", so they can act on the machinery equipment, something that otherwise wouldn’t have been escalated or gotten lower priority.

It’s a Do-It-Yourself methodology where you don’t have to rely on consultants and go through the traditional project steps of getting feedback, designing changes, implementing, etc that easily take 6 months. Meanwhile, colleagues are still annoyed by what doesn’t get fixed.

What is it that needs to be fixed in your work culture? Your people already know! You could have tried ten things in the same period as the traditional approach took you, and avoided paying 30K to a consultant.

It’s like Google Analytics. It doesn’t tell you what the problem is with your web site, but if you try fixing something, you see if it has an impact or not.

And like previously mentioned, our data also shows that the companies where people are having real, honest, conversations around what makes them press green (and red!) are the one's with the highest Mood KPI's. Adding more questions won't help the fact that managers don't converse with people around improvements.

Technology should never replace face to face interactions. We do everything we can to help spark conversations.

Who should get admin access to the results?

Who will act on the results?

Who will talk to the employees to discover what makes people press green?

Who will act on the results on a really red day/week/month? And do something about it?

This person should have admin access so s/he can check daily employee mood results, receive weekly email updates and verify how the Mood KPI is developing over time.

How can I add admins?

1. Click on "Invite admin users"
2. Fill in the email address of your coworkers

Add as many admins as you'd like. A great workplace is everyone's job!

How many admins can we have?

As many as you'd like. Some companies make all their employees admins to add transparency.

How can I add employees?

1. Click on "Invite admin users"
2. Fill in the email address of your employees.

3. Instead of clicking on "Send invite", click on the little arrow and chose "Invite without admin privileges"

How can employees signup to see the basic results?

Using their company email at https://users.celpax.com.

This gives them limited access to the first dashboard page only, basically the same info they see after pressing the device (the Mood KPI). For full access to all sections, make them admins.

Is this a control system?

The very opposite!

You can only improve what you measure. Building a better workplace takes time and dedication. The Celpax helps teams track their “sentiment” just like a pulse meter helps athletes track their physical form. We believe that creating a better workplace is everyone’s job, and that all employees should have a voice.

What can I do with the results?

The mood results aim to help managers have more meaningful dialogues at work.

What we see works well is when leaders simply get up and spontaneously ask people “what do you think makes us press green here at our company?” The logical step after this is of course to take action to address the problem/s that make people press red. The goal is to have greener days.

So the Celpax triggers conversations that brings out what needs to be fixed in your work culture. Sometimes you’ll be able to do something about it, sometimes not, but the mere fact that you have that conversation will be helpful. Analyze day employee engagement

What if someone presses twice?

We we’re also worried about this at first, so we build in screening mechanisms into our software to filter suspicious behavior. Then we realized that our filter hardly ever kicks in, as in our experience this behaviour simply does not tend to happen in a consistent way in companies.

Every time someone presses the button they are sending you a message, they are communicating with you. And this is what you want, for people to get involved, and to find out how you can have “greener” days!

In some companies there might be a day or two per year with what we call “Protest Pulses”. The people behind the protest pulses highly disagree with what’s going on in the company. So they press twice. This might also mean that he or she won’t’ pick up the phone when a customer calls. Twice!

On one hand they might be seen as a group “boycotting the initiative” and impacting your Mood KPI. However the question is:

Which other initiatives are they boycotting? Which other KPIs are they impacting? Customer Satisfaction? Revenue?

We personally find it very annoying to work with highly disengaged people around :) They keep telling everybody why our jobs suck, etc.

If someone presses more and distort the results one day, this could have the same effect on your business when they sabotage among their coworkers. It shouldn’t be ignored. Here’s a blog post about the “silent majority” and disengaged workers that tend to believe that “everything sucks at work”. As you start improving, the numbers will help these employees, and everybody, to see that things are improving.

Cause here’s the thing.

You need to improve the employee mood. This could be done by making the happy people happier, or getting the unhappy people less unhappy. It doesn’t matter. The focus should be on making the green pulses, greener. The same employees will be pressing tomorrow as you have today. This is what and where you need to improve.

We count pulses, we don’t count people. We place the Celpax ergonomically in a similar position at all companies so that we can compare the pulses between work sites. If someone presses the red button 3 times, it’s interesting data.

One way of looking at it is: Why are these people here if they’re actively sabotaging? This is where your challenges lie, in changing behaviors, in improving your work culture.

It’s easy to think that the red pulses comes from someone sabotaging but rationalizing doesn’t work. We like to see it as we give people the brutal facts. In one company their Mood KPI is at 50% green. There are similar workplaces that are at 80%. Why aren’t employees pressing red 3 times there?

We urge leaders to focus on the ongoing tendency: are you moving in the right direction or not? With hundreds or thousands of pulses in one month, it makes sense to focus on the ‘big picture’, and not individual pulses. It is less important when the button was pressed.

In fact, our tests showed that in companies where they have stray pulses throughout the day, there was hardly any difference between the mood in the morning and in the afternoon – unless “something” happened during the day (a big announcement, company event, etc).

Download our info sheet with more explanations here.

Where is the Celpax device from?

The idea was born when us Celpaxers interviewed 100 leaders. We assemble in Stockholm, Sweden and manufacture in China.

We push hard to keep costs down by designing our own hardware, our own cloud, we code the dashboard ourselves and offer Mini plan with affordable prices instead of advertising.

We listened carefully to what worked for our first users and they helped us understand where we needed to improve.

As of today we’re still learning and improving – our solution is what it is today thanks to people like you.

I'd like one of my managers to pilot this, any tips?

Based on our experience - especially at bigger companies - unless you're driving this yourself (i.e. you're the one talking to the employees and taking actions to get more green), those who find a manager that is genuinely interested in trialing the Celpax device have a higher success rate.

Our system isn't for everyone. It's for many, but not everyone. It sounds obvious but your pilot is more likely to be a success, and more fun both for you and your manager, if you find someone that signs up for it voluntarily.

I.e. ask 5 people and see who replies with most enthusiasm. Get the manager to sign up for the Celpax him/herself, a simple way to check if they are a true volunteer or not!

This is also a good way to extend the usage internally at the beginning. If you use your newsletter to publish the possibility to get a Celpax to improve, those managers that are interested can sign up themselves. Their success stories can inspire and help other managers.

Can I use the Celpax for customer feedback?

Sorry, our focus is 100% on improving employee mood :) That's what our DNA is made of.

Can you write about how we use the Celpax in our company?

Yay! Get in touch with Rebecca :)

Why should I share our results with employees?

Our data show that companies that adopt a transparent approach and involve their employees in improving, reach higher Mood KPI's faster.

After an employee has pressed the Celpax, the day results is displayed on the device. Get a healthy feedback loop by giving your employees access to the full dashboard results, or limit it in time.

Or as Finax says: “There’s nothing in the results that is a secret!”.

A great workplace is everyone's job. We recommend you share at least 3 months of results on the dashboard. (And successful companies communicate the results at least 1 per month).

How can I send back the Celpax device?

Gently remove the Celpax from the wall by starting to pull in one corner. Plug out the transmitter rom the wall.

1. Use the original box, or use bubble wrap and a box (so it doesn't break during transport).

2. Address:

Attn: Rafael del Valle. Celpax AB. Blamesv. 26. 186 47 Vallentuna, Sweden.
Fill in and print 3 copies of the customs doc.

Can I move the Celpax weekly to a new department?

The Celpax has been designed for leaders to know if their improvement efforts are working. Using a baseline of the same people (as the group answers the same question every day) you will see if you get more or less green compared to yesterday, last week, last month, quarter, etc. If you move the device, the biggest advantage of the device is lost as you're mixing groups of employees. The algorithm will also go nuts as participation is one of the things we take into account when the system tells you if it's been a good, really good, or a fantastic day, based on your baseline/how people normally feel at work. Almost all companies have differences in Mood KPI between depts/areas. Sometimes they are massive.
The first couple of days it's normal for the results to be irregular. I.e. people might press more than they usually will to check out the lights, etc. (especially true in engineering settings hehe). If you move it around, you will be repeating the novelty effect over and over again.
It's a lot of work to reinstall :)

What most managers do is to test in one place, preferably where you have a manager who is enthusiastic about getting started (not where you think you have the lowest mood, chances are that manager is most enthusiastic about coming up with excuses as to not start - to avoid being in the spotlight looking like a "bad" manager :). After the pilot, the company hang more devices so they can compare depts, offices, etc.

Others hang the Celpax at the exit door and present the results as one for the company. Here's an example from McDonalds.

Which languages can I use?

You can use any language to display the question "How was your day?"
We have the dashboard in English, Spanish, Polish, Portuguese, Slovak and Swedish.

Where can I learn more?

We think the best way is to read stories from business leaders and HR that are using our Celpax.

More fun!

You can also download the complete FAQs for leaders and employees.

You can also get sessions where we help you take action on your results.

Get in touch :)