FAQ
Frequently asked questions
Plain answers about Anchor, the analysis, privacy, and getting started. If your question isn’t here, it’s a quick one on a call.
The basics
What is Anchor?
Anchor is an employee retention program that a company runs, not a platform it logs into. HR runs the program, and every analysis is written for the manager who has the conversation. It reads one person at a time and gives that manager a clear picture of where they stand and a simple plan to keep them. Not a company-wide score. One person, one read, one plan. The software behind it is Employee Retention Intelligence Software.
Who is Anchor for?
The manager. Most tools in this space report to HR. Anchor is built for the person who actually has the conversation with the employee, the team lead or department head who can do something about it. HR still gets value, but the manager is who we build for.
How is Anchor different from an engagement survey?
An engagement survey tells you the company averaged a 7.2. It doesn’t tell you which person is about to leave, or what to do about it. Anchor works the opposite way. It reads one employee, not the whole group, and it ends with a plan for that person, not a chart for a meeting.
How is Anchor different from a stay interview?
A stay interview is one conversation, done well if the manager knows what to ask. Anchor gives the manager that preparation for every person on the team, every cycle. It shows what’s going on before the conversation, and it hands over the questions worth asking. It makes the stay interview better, it doesn’t replace the human having it.
How it works
How does Anchor work, start to finish?
HR provides a roster once. Each employee gets a private survey about their experience. Their manager fills out a short parallel survey about that same person. New employees also take a one-time personality assessment. Once those are in, Anchor writes a single analysis for that one employee and hands it to their manager.
What are the inputs?
Three things. The employee’s own answers about their experience. Their manager’s answers about how they see that person. And a one-time personality profile. Together they give a fuller picture than any one source alone.
How long do the surveys take?
Plan for roughly 20 to 30 minutes. Most people finish sooner, and finishing early is a bonus, not a problem. The personality assessment also takes roughly 20 to 30 minutes and happens only once, when someone first comes on. After that, they never take it again.
How often does Anchor run?
In cycles, three times a year for standard customers, about once every four months. Each cycle is a fresh read on every person, so a manager is never working off a picture that went stale months ago. People change, and the read keeps up.
Do managers need training to use it?
Not to operate it. The analysis is written in plain language, for the manager, ready to act on. There is no dashboard to learn and no scores to interpret. Whether a manager is ready for the conversation itself is a fair and separate question, and Anchor answers it by supplying the scripts and Pneuma Whisper rather than by sending managers on a course first.
What if my managers have never done a stay interview?
That is the normal case, and it is the reason Anchor is built the way it is. Most retention tools hand a manager a score and assume the skill is already there. Anchor hands them the words. Every analysis carries six conversation scripts written for that one person, each with when to use it, so nobody starts from a blank page. Pneuma Whisper sits on the same brief and answers what a manager wants to think through before they walk in. The method is built into the words rather than taught in advance, which is why buying a manager coaching program first is not a prerequisite for Anchor. Being straight about the limit: a script does not make someone a natural at a hard conversation, and the manager still owns the room. What Anchor removes is the part that actually stops most managers, which is not that they do not care, it is that they do not know what to say.
The analysis
What does a manager actually receive?
A short, written analysis about one person. It covers where that employee stands, where the manager’s view and the employee’s view differ, how likely the person is to leave in the near term and longer term, the best way to reach them, conversation scripts for the talks that matter, and a plan of specific moves for the quarter.
What makes the analysis different from a report?
A report tells you something is wrong and stops. Anchor never does that. Every analysis ends with something to do, and the words to do it with. No flag without a next step. The analysis is a plan, not a problem statement.
What is Pneuma Whisper, and can a manager ask it questions?
Pneuma Whisper, labeled Ask Pneuma inside the product, is a private question-and-answer layer that sits on that person’s brief and ships with every analysis. A manager can ask it anything about that one person. It opens with a few suggested questions and answers anything else the manager wants to think through before the conversation. It is grounded only in that one person’s analysis, so it stays specific instead of drifting into general advice. It never sees raw survey answers, nothing asked is shown to leadership or HR, and no transcript is kept.
Does the analysis tell me why someone might leave?
Yes, in plain terms specific to that person. It draws on what the employee actually said, not on how they compare to a benchmark. That’s the difference between “engagement is down” and “here’s what’s going on with this person and here’s what to say.”
Privacy and trust
Does the employee’s manager see their raw answers?
No. The manager never sees raw survey responses or raw personality scores. They see only the finished analysis. That separation is deliberate, and it’s the reason people answer honestly.
Is the personality assessment shared with the manager?
Never in raw form. No trait numbers, no scores, no “here’s exactly how this person rated.” The assessment only helps shape how the analysis is written. The manager gets the guidance, not the raw data.
Why should an employee answer honestly?
Because honesty is protected by design. Only the analysis engine reads the raw answers. No manager sees them. People tell the truth when they’re sure it’s safe, so we protect that on purpose. A tool people lie to is worthless, and we built Anchor to be worth trusting.
Who can see what?
Employees answer privately. Managers receive a written analysis about each of their own people, and nothing about anyone else’s. Raw responses stay with the engine. The finished analysis is the only thing that reaches a human.
Fit and scope
What size company is Anchor for?
Mid-sized companies, roughly the range where there are real managers running real teams but the organization is still small enough that losing one good person genuinely hurts. If you’re not sure whether you fit, that’s a quick answer on a call.
What industries does Anchor work for?
Any industry where people report to a manager and losing a good one is costly. The clearest fit is the corporate office, where a departure hits the company’s own P&L, HR is staffed, and the manager sits at a desk: professional services, technology, finance, and the corporate side of larger operating companies. Anchor also handles hourly, on-call and deskless teams, so a field arm, a warehouse or a clinical floor works on the same product. The product reads people, not industries.
What do we need to get started?
A roster from HR with the basics, name, role, manager, hire date, and the willingness to send your team a couple of short surveys. That’s the starting point. The setup is light on purpose.
How Anchor fits with what you already use
We already pay for an engagement or survey platform. Why add Anchor?
Those are good tools, and they do a different job. They give HR a dashboard and a company-wide view. Anchor gives a manager a plan for one specific person. You can keep your current platform for benchmarks and use Anchor for what to actually do about the people you don’t want to lose. The two sit beside each other without conflict.
Does Anchor replace our engagement survey?
It doesn’t have to. Keep your engagement survey if you want company-wide benchmarks. Anchor does the thing those surveys can’t: tell a manager what’s happening with one person and what to do about it. Some organizations eventually let the old survey go, but that is a call for later, not a requirement to start.
Does Anchor work alongside our HR system?
Yes. Anchor doesn’t ask you to rip anything out. It adds the manager-facing piece that most HR stacks are missing.
Getting started
Is Anchor available now?
Yes. Anchor is live. The best way to start is to get Anchor for your team.
What happens after I request a conversation?
I follow up within two days, once I have done my homework on your company. Then we spend about twenty minutes on where you are losing people and what Anchor would put in front of your managers. If it is a fit, we take it from there.
How much does Anchor cost?
One fee for your organization, set by the size band it falls in. It is not a rate per person and it is not a count of who you choose to cover. Anchor starts at $8,000 a year and covers a minimum of 25 people; above 800 the number is built in a conversation. We walk through it with you on a call, priced to sit under the cost of a single departure. The full picture is on the pricing page.