Spradley vs Culture Amp: surveys or AI interviews?
Culture Amp measures engagement with surveys. Spradley asks why on every answer, and each leader's Personal Agent launches the follow-up and checks it.
Culture Amp is an engagement survey platform with scores, a large template library and action plans for managers. Spradley interviews your people one on one with AI, by text or voice, asks a follow-up question on every answer and tells you why. Then it gives each leader a Personal Agent: an AI agent that answers questions about what people said, cites the evidence, launches the follow-up interview and reminds you of what you committed to. It never sees one person’s answer. If all you need is a score once a year, a survey platform does that. If you need to understand your people and act on it, Spradley is built for that.
Quick verdict
| Question to ask | Culture Amp | Spradley |
|---|---|---|
| How does it listen? | Engagement, pulse and lifecycle surveys | One-on-one AI interviews by text or voice |
| Does it ask a follow-up question on every answer? | Every person gets the same items | Yes, on every answer |
| Does it tell you why? | Survey scores and comments | Themes with the quotes and reasons behind them |
| Can a leader ask anything and see the evidence? | Dashboards and reports | A Personal Agent for each leader answers anything and cites the report and quote behind every claim |
| Does it draft the next step? | Action plans for managers, with action ideas from other customers | Messages, conversation guides and decks, as PowerPoint, PDF, Word or Google Docs |
| Does it launch the follow-up for you? | A new survey to set up | Drafts a follow-up interview on one to three themes; sent after one confirmation |
| Does it check that the action happened? | Action plans tracked as current or completed | Reminders on each saved commitment at four and eight weeks, then a follow-up interview to see if it reached people |
| Can anyone be identified, even by the AI? | Minimums set per survey, plus identification protection | The agent never sees one person’s answer, numbers and ratings are never shown under five, and it refuses to identify anyone |
Facts about Culture Amp come from its own product and help pages, read in October 2026. Vendors change these details, so confirm them in your contract.
What is Culture Amp?
Culture Amp is best known for engagement surveys. Its engagement product page lists more than 40 ready-made survey templates, pulse surveys, and onboarding and offboarding surveys.
Its integrations page describes syncing with HR systems of record, a Slack app and a Microsoft Teams integration. For most buyers it is the engine of a yearly or twice-yearly engagement programme, with pulses in between.
What is Spradley?
Spradley runs one-on-one interviews moderated by AI. People get an invitation by email or Slack and answer on their own phone or computer, by text or voice, in their own time. The interviewer asks a follow-up question on each answer, so a short reply such as “the new rota is a mess” turns into which rota, what changed and who it affects.
Within days the report groups what people said into themes, with the quotes and reasons behind them, compared across departments and followed across interview rounds. You can export it to PowerPoint, PDF, Word or Google Docs. On top of that, each leader gets a Personal Agent that works for them on what their people said. The database is in Frankfurt and the AI runs in Google Cloud’s EU regions. Spradley was built in Copenhagen and is part of Copenhagen Fintech and DTU Skylab.
What should you ask before you choose?
Does it ask why?
Culture Amp asks everyone the same items on the same scale, and comments add colour, but nobody can ask a comment a follow-up question. Spradley asks open questions and follows up on every answer, so each person explains what they mean. You learn the reasons in your people’s own words: that the warehouse team rates “I have the tools to do my job” low because the handheld scanners drop their connection in aisle 9, for example.
How fast do you get the reasons, not just a score?
Within days. Spradley’s report groups the answers into themes with the quotes and reasons behind them, compared across departments and followed from one interview round to the next, so you can see whether a problem is shrinking after you act on it.
What happens after the results come in?
Culture Amp gives managers action plans and ideas from other customers. Spradley gives each leader a Personal Agent, an AI agent that works for them on top of what their people said:
- Ask anything. Ask in plain language, such as “why is the Aarhus plant unhappy with scheduling?”, and every answer cites the themes, quotes and reports it rests on. Broad questions fan out to research agents working in parallel, and their findings merge into one answer.
- Run the numbers. It computes and draw the chart from released results.
- Fill the gaps. When the evidence is missing, it drafts a follow-up interview on one to three themes, and the leader sends it after one confirmation.
- Draft the next step. A message to the team or the company, a team conversation guide, a deck in PowerPoint, a PDF or a Word file, or a document opened in Google Docs.
- Brief leaders. A readout is written for leaders as soon as a company-wide report lands.
- Keep commitments. Save what you committed to, get reminders at four and eight weeks, and run a follow-up interview to check whether the action reached people.
- Use your own context. Add PDFs, CSVs, text files or Google Drive documents. It works on a phone too.
Does it launch the follow-up for you?
Culture Amp suits a fixed rhythm: an annual census, quarterly pulses, lifecycle surveys that trigger on start and leave dates. Spradley runs whenever you have a question, after a reorganisation, when a score drops or before a big decision. When the evidence on a question is thin, the Personal Agent drafts a follow-up interview and the leader sends it after one confirmation. The answers come back as a new report that joins the others. There is no new survey project.
Does it check that the action happened?
Culture Amp’s action plans page lists each plan as current or completed. In Spradley a leader saves what they committed to, and reminders come at four and eight weeks until it is done. A follow-up interview then shows whether the change reached people, not just whether the task was ticked off.
Can anyone be identified, even by the AI?
In Culture Amp each survey has a reporting group minimum and a separate comments minimum, both set by your organisation. On top of that there are three levels of indirect identification protection: none, basic and strong, with basic as the recommended default. In Spradley privacy is built into the agent itself. Numbers and ratings are never shown for fewer than five people, and a privacy judge checks each written finding. The Personal Agent never sees one person’s answer, sentences naming an employee are cut, and it refuses to identify anyone, pick a team to cut or monitor intent to leave. Open answers can identify someone more easily than a tick on a scale, so read our post on anonymity thresholds before you set either up.
Does it work where leaders already are?
Spradley’s MCP server brings each leader’s Personal Agent into Claude, ChatGPT or Microsoft 365 Copilot, read-only and under the same privacy rules as the reports. Invitations go out by email or Slack, with the employee list from HiBob.
When does Spradley make the difference?
Whenever the question starts with “why” or “what”, and whenever you need to act on the answer. Your engagement results show that the Aarhus plant fell and the comments don’t explain it. A merger closed and you need to hear what people in the acquired company worry about before day 100. A new system went live and you want to know what gets in the way. Spradley interviews the people involved, shows you the reasons within days, and your Personal Agent drafts the message to the team, the conversation guide for managers and the deck for the board, then remind you to check that the change landed.
It also works for small or specific groups, such as night shift or a single site, where a survey returns too few answers to read.
Can you use Spradley and Culture Amp together?
Yes. If you already run Culture Amp, pick the two or three results that worry you most and invite the affected teams to a Spradley interview on exactly those topics. Within a couple of weeks you have the reasons, and your Personal Agent helps you tell people what you heard and what you will change before the next pulse goes out.
Our post on AI-moderated interviews vs surveys covers when to use each method. For the wider shortlist, see employee listening platforms compared, and if you are weighing Peakon too, read Spradley vs Workday Peakon. Our employee engagement page shows how interviews and the Personal Agent turn engagement results into action.
Frequently asked questions
Is Spradley a Culture Amp alternative?
Yes. Spradley interviews every employee one on one with AI, asks a follow-up question on every answer and reports the reasons within days. Each leader's Personal Agent then answers questions with cited evidence, launches the follow-up and drafts the next step. It can also run alongside a survey you already have.
Does Spradley ask why, where Culture Amp asks for a score?
Yes. Spradley interviews people one on one with AI and asks a follow-up question on every answer, so you get the themes and the reasons behind them in people's own words. It also works alongside an existing Culture Amp survey, on the results you most need to explain.
Can a leader ask questions of the results?
Yes, with a Personal Agent for each leader. It answers questions with cited evidence, runs the numbers, drafts follow-up interviews you send after one confirmation, drafts messages, conversation guides and decks, and reminds you of your commitments at four and eight weeks.
Can anyone be identified, even by the AI?
Spradley never shows numbers or ratings for fewer than five people, its Personal Agent never sees one person's answer, and it refuses to identify anyone. Culture Amp lets your organisation set a minimum group size for reports and for comments, with extra protection against indirect identification.
Key terms
- Engagement survey
- A questionnaire that asks every employee the same rated items, so scores can be compared across teams and over time.
- AI-moderated interview
- A one-on-one conversation run by software, where the interviewer asks a follow-up question based on each answer.
- Follow-up question
- A question the interviewer asks based on what someone just said, to find out what they mean and why.
- Personal Agent
- Spradley's AI agent for each leader. It answers with cited evidence and drafts the next step, never seeing one person's answer.
- Follow-up interview
- A short interview on one to three themes, drafted when the evidence is missing and sent after the leader confirms. Its report joins the others.
- Minimum group size
- The fewest people who must answer before results for a group are shown. It protects individuals in small teams.
- Theme with quotes
- A topic that came up across several answers, shown together with the words people used.
