Personio Surveys

Personio Surveys suits a Personio customer who wants surveys fed by the employee record. Answers are confidential, not anonymous. Admins see all results, send times follow one Berlin clock, and the exit window is 30 days.

By Ashish Manchanda Published 28 Oct 2026 Last updated 28 Oct 2026

Personio Surveys starts from employee data and sets its own privacy rules

In one line

Personio Surveys runs engagement, pulse and lifecycle surveys on employee data kept in Personio.

Buy it if

You want surveys fed by the employee record. You accept confidential answers. You also accept onboarding surveys that are normally visible.

Do not buy it if

You need answers that the system cannot link to a person. You want send times that follow each person’s local time. You need longer than 30 days to export your data.

Price

Personio sends buyers to Sales for detailed pricing that fits the company’s needs. Annual subscriptions paid upfront get a 10% discount on software services.

A survey picks its people from the Personio records and reports back by group

A Personio survey starts from the employee record, not from a blank list, and that shapes everything below. Personio Surveys is an app for employee surveys. Anyone in the company can use it, depending on the permissions granted. It uses employee data from Personio. A survey creator picks participants from the people list and its attribute filters. Those filters respect the creator’s attribute permissions.

A survey can run once or repeat in rounds. The library holds more than 200 expert-reviewed questions. You can add or remove them. Scale questions run from 1 to 5, with labels you set at the top and bottom. A survey can hold only one NPS question. Personio advises several questions, not NPS alone. NPS alone gives less reliable results.

Personio’s People Matter Framework article says there are eleven ready-made templates. Its Surveys overview counts three templates on engagement and change management. The framework groups results into engagement strength, engagement outcomes and contributors. Contributors are cultural and leadership factors. Personio does not measure them directly. Score questions produce Engagement, Referral and Retention scores. Personio calculates the engagement score from three library questions.

Participants get an email with a link to the survey. They can also log into their Personio account or use a shared link. Employees can answer on a computer or a mobile device. Library questions use the language in the survey creator’s personal setting. The invitation email uses each person’s own language setting.

Favourability is the share of people who gave a scale question a 4 or 5. A colour grid compares scale results across groups such as departments. Recurring surveys compare round by round for scale and NPS questions. A custom report can be shared with anyone in the company. A confidential survey keeps its privacy rules in shared reports.

Personio also offers an AI Fluency Survey. It is a ready-made confidential survey on how ready employees are to use AI. It has 21 predefined questions, and three are optional. The minimum is three responses per question. Benchmarks against other companies using the same template are marked as coming soon. It is not a test of individual employees, and a low score does not identify anyone to correct.

Joiners and leavers can enter surveys by date, and admins control the AI

Three things count in Personio’s favour. They are surveys that start from dates, AI settings you control and team reports for managers.

New starters and leavers

Dates can add people to onboarding and offboarding surveys on their own, through Workflows. Workflows is Personio’s automation tool. This type of survey is normally visible and does not close.

You control the AI

Admins can switch single AI features on or off at any time. AI processing takes place on Personio’s own AWS servers in the EU.

Managers see their own team

Personio makes supervisor reports on its own. Each one holds only responses from members of that supervisor’s team.

Personio’s own pages give three different company-size ranges

Personio’s own pages disagree on the company size it suits, so check your headcount against all three ranges.

Three ranges for company size

Personio’s FAQ puts the companies it suits at 1 to 5,000 employees. Its pricing FAQ puts them at 10 to 10,000. An October 2026 release puts them at 25 to 5,000. Ask which range covers your headcount for Surveys.

Customers across Europe

Personio has grown to 16,000 customers covering over 1.5 million employees across Europe. On 22 April 2026 it announced that it is profitable and that it bought aurio, a Munich recruiting AI startup.

Surveys in five minutes

Circle Economy can now create employee surveys in five minutes. It is an international team of 60 or more experts.

Answers link to a person, admins see all results and send times are fixed

These are the points where Surveys sets the rules for you. They shape what you can promise staff.

Answers link to a person

Personio runs confidential surveys, not anonymous ones. The system links each response to its respondent in the backend. That link is not visible inside the tool. Nobody can see who answered, whatever their permissions. In a visible survey, the commenter’s name can be seen. A live survey cannot switch between confidential and visible.

You set the group minimum

For a confidential survey, the creator sets the minimum number of responses. Below it, results do not show, and small departments are combined as “Grouped for Confidentiality”. The minimum applies to answers and to comments. Personio notes it cannot guarantee protection against every filter combination.

Admins see all results

Personio admins can see all survey results across the entire company. Survey admins can edit surveys and see all responses. Survey creators see results of their own surveys. Free-text answers show one by one, with no name attached. Report builders can hide free-text answers in a confidential survey.

Assistant reach

Personio Assistant works on data held in Personio. It can use any data the person asking may view, including analytics and reporting data. Ask whether that covers survey results.

Send times are fixed

Personio sets survey times to the Berlin timezone. Up to four email reminders can be set. Check what that clock means for staff in other timezones.

Library wording is fixed

Only the placeholders in a library question can be edited. Once a survey is live, library questions cannot be edited at all. Deleting a survey deletes all its results.

Works councils

Personio advises that software like this may need works council approval in some countries, such as Germany. The two main concerns are keeping sensitive personal data safe and the chance of monitoring performance and conduct.

Recent job cuts

Personio cut about 100 jobs in January 2024. The cuts were limited to Product and Technology. It dismissed 165 employees, about 10 percent of its workforce, in a round reported on 31 October 2025. Its US business is being wound down entirely, as reported on that date.

Price comes from Sales, and a yearly plan runs at least 12 months

Price comes from Sales, and the contract then fixes a user minimum, a term and a notice date. Personio sends buyers to Sales for detailed pricing that fits the company’s needs. It puts a starting price of €7.60 per month per employee above its Core and Core Pro plan cards. Ask Sales what Surveys costs for your headcount.

Without a Surveys subscription, a company has only the AI Fluency Survey template. All active users count toward the number of licences. A one-time set-up fee depends on company size. A trial gives new customers 14 days of free access, with Surveys limited to 50 participants.

Under Personio’s General Terms, the Order Form commits you to a minimum number of users for the Subscription Term. A yearly subscription has a minimum run-time of 12 months. It renews yearly unless either party gives notice at least 90 days before renewal. A monthly agreement renews monthly unless notice comes at least 15 days before the renewal date.

At renewal, Personio may increase the fees by up to five percent. A change to the General Terms counts as accepted unless you object in writing within two weeks of the announcement.

After the contract ends, the data is available for self-service export for 30 days, then deleted. The customer is solely responsible for exporting its data in time. For an open survey, the CSV holds the participants and their answers.

You could also run survey steps with agents built on your own systems. We have mapped what that looks like. The HR Agent Map

Nine questions to put to Personio

What does Surveys cost for our headcount, and which minimum user number applies? Good answer: A written price per employee and the minimum in the Order Form.
Can start times and reminders follow each person’s local time? Good answer: A named setting we can see working before we sign.
Can Surveys group written comments by theme or summarise them? Good answer: A named feature, with the languages it covers.
Which outside data can we compare our engagement results against? Good answer: A named data set, with the number of companies in it.
Which templates do we get? Your pages count eleven in one place and three in another. Good answer: A list of templates written into the order.
Who can see all survey results, and can we narrow that list? Good answer: A named list of roles, and a way to narrow it.
How long do you keep AI input and output data? Good answer: A stated period, written into the contract.
How do we export every survey result inside 30 days of the contract ending? Good answer: A list of export formats and a longer window in the contract.
What do you give us for a works council consultation? Good answer: A document on what Surveys collects and who sees it.

Alternatives to Personio Surveys, including buying nothing

If Personio Surveys stops short for you, look at Lattice. Buying nothing is a second route.

Look at Lattice if you expect many written comments. Personio puts open-text answers in a separate list, one under the other. Once a survey is ended, Lattice AI summarises all open-ended comments into two to seven common trends. Each trend has a summary and a recommendation. Super admins and engagement admins can see Engagement Insights.

Buying nothing avoids the minimum user number commitment in the Order Form. It also avoids a one-time set-up fee that depends on company size. The cost is a survey tool that picks participants from the employee data held in Personio. Our guide for HR system owners covers surveys inside an HR system.

More in this guide

The Employee engagement guide
Compare the 40 researched products how each asks staff, who sees the answers, what it costs and the contract terms.
Mid-market companies which engagement products suit 200 to 2,000 people, what they cost and what to ask.
Enterprise companies which engagement products suit 2,000 people or more, what they cost, how contracts run and what to ask.
Companies whose HR or performance system already runs surveys what the survey part of an HR or performance system covers, what it costs and what else exists.