As an all-remote company, there are several surveys we run to better understand the GitLab culture, team member engagement, and overall health of the organization.
Seeking inputs from team members by surveying people is a key part of GitLab's engagement strategy and helps the People Group to align our priorities to the areas team members care about most.
There are different survey types that we run at different times throughout the year, each with different intended outcomes:
In Q3 FY'23, our Talent & Engagement team ran our first organizational health survey.
GitLab used McKinsey & Company’s Organizational Health Index "OHI" survey to help us understand where we have opportunities to help our organization and team members execute better and increase their impact. The OHI survey is separate from our CultureAmp Engagement survey; learnings from the former will complement the latter and also help inform workplace practices beyond GitLab.
We’ve summarized high level results of the OHI survey for all GitLab team members in this document.
The document linked above is only available to GitLab team members.
Great Place to Work recognizes companies for their outstanding workplace culture, benefits and performance through successful completion of a regional team member survey and culture brief application. They partner with Fortune to produce the Fortune 100 Best Companies list annually. The survey is based off of the following components:
FY24 Great Place to Work Survey Results GitLab received Great Place to Work Certification for the 3rd year in a row in the US in May 2023 and was recognized for our outstanding company culture.
FY23 Great Place to Work Survey Results GitLab received Great Place to Work Certification for the 2nd year in a row in the US in December 2021 and was recognized for our outstanding company culture.
Team Member Engagement is important to the continued success of GitLab making the Engagement Survey an important element within the annual People Group calendar. Engagement strategies have been shown to reduce attrition; improve productivity and efficiency; further embed the company values and ultimately enhance role satisfaction.
We partner with CultureAmp to run our Engagement Surveys. CultureAmp provides a platform to gather feedback confidentially, benchmark against external comparables, and uses algorithms to highlight which areas matter most to our team members.
Engagement surveys are geared toward giving team members an opportunity to provide feedback in terms of their experience within GitLab touching on pertinent elements such as Company Culture, Teamwork, Management and Inclusion among others.
Feedback from the survey in turn allows Leadership within GitLab to gain insight into what is most important to team members, in particular what the business is doing well and what may need future iteration with the intention of improving the underlying team member experience and ensuring healthy levels of attrition are maintained.
In an effort to ensure team member confidentiality is upheld, only managers with >5 respondents will be able to view quantitative results - this is carried across to demographic filtering in teams with population sizes which exceed the minimum too. The survey is wholly administered by Culture Amp on a secure external website and the survey data will not be stored on any local computer. If you'd like to know more, check out CultureAmp's FAQ guide.
To make sure we hear from as many team members as possible, the People Group will provide Divisional leaders and People Business Partners with access to participation rates at the Divisional level and to managers with 5 or more direct reports.
We will share with individual managers how close they are to recieving enough responses to view a detailed report noting that managers can only see individualized results for their teams if 5 or more of their direct reports complete the survey. We will not report participation statistics for managers with fewer than 5 direct reports.
The GitLab Team Member Engagement Survey is comprised of eleven sections each of which is aligned to a specific area of focus otherwise known as a factor.
The survey factors for FY24 were as follows with each section including three to five questions and the survey was comprised of fifty seven questions in total. The format of the survey was predominantly Likert or Rating Scale with a handful of free text questions or comments toward the end. The favorable score is the percentage of participants who selected 'agree' and 'strongly agree'.
Once the GitLab Team Member Engagement Survey has been closed out, reports will be dissementated to the E-Group and Divisional Heads for review i.e. only those with team populations >5. These will form the basis of discussion when collaboratively compiling the people strategy for year ahead in conjunction with additional data such as attrition reports etc.
For the FY23 Engagement Survey, all divisions are recommended to create an Epic to store Engagement Survey Action Issues. Every Division should create an Epic that gives an overview of the engagement survey results that includes: highlights, lowlights, recommended actions, and resources. Epic's can be created in division issue boards or projects that are applicable to the organization.
In addition, Managers can create an Engagement Survey Action Issue that links to the division wide epic. In the Issue, managers can link team wide actions to the division.
See the example epics from FY22 for inspiration.
FY23 Division-Wide Engagement Survey Action Epics:
Engagement Survey Manager Toolkit - GitLab Learn pathway
Managers Guide to Taking Action
Take Action with Action Framework
Our Pulse Engagement Survey FY'23 Q2 ran from 2022-05-16 to 2022-05-25. The survey was opened to team members hired before 2022-04-30.
Below you will find a summary of our overall results, as well as key insights and opportunities.
A huge thanks to everyone who completed the survey and made their voice heard. Your feedback helps us to continually improve the experience of working at GitLab.
| Favourable | Neutral | Unfavourable |
|---|---|---|
| 81% | 13% | 6% |
In addition to Engagement, we asked questions about other factors regarding our workplace and culture. A factor score is the average score of all questions within that factor.
| Factor | Favourability Rating |
|---|---|
| Your Manager | 87% |
| Inclusion | 82% |
| Growth & Development | 81% |
GitLab was rated between 5%-8% percent higher than the industry benchmark i.e. New Tech (1,000+) 2022 across all three factors detailed above.
| Question | Favourability Rating |
|---|---|
| I am proud to work for GitLab | 94% |
| I would recommend GitLab as a great place to work | 91% |
| My manager keeps me informed about what is happening | 90% |
GitLab was rated between 6-8% higher than the industry benchmark i.e. New Tech (1,000+) 2022 across all three questions detailed above.
| Factor | Favourability Rating |
|---|---|
| Action | 59% |
| Your Role | 70% |
| Our Leaders | 77% |
GitLab was rated up to 3% higher than the industry benchmark i.e. New Tech (1,000+) 2022.
| Question | Favourability Rating |
|---|---|
| I have seen positive changes taking place based on recent team member survey results | 54% |
| I believe my Compensation (Base, Bonus, etc.) is competitive relative to similar roles at other companies | 62% |
| I believe action will take place as a result of this survey | 64% |
GitLab scored 4% higher than the industry benchmark i.e. New Tech +1,000 2022 for the lowest scoring question surrounding positive actions, 9% higher than the benchmark regarding compensation and 2% higher regarding actions taken from the survey.
In FY'22 Q4 we launched our first "pulse" survey. To determine these questions we leveraged a combination of Culture Amp's "impact" feature + recommended focus areas + key themes related to the Great Resignation (according to Culture Amp’s People Scientist teams) to determine which rating questions to include in the pulse survey.
Per CultureAmp’s insights related to the Great Resignation, we added questions related to:
Culture Amp determines which questions are "focus recommendations" based on: impact on overall, favorable score, comparison to benchmarks. Here is more information on how Culture Amp determines "focus" recommendations.
"Impact" is a word we use to refer to a statistical technique called a driver analysis. People Intelligence relies on a lot of data and analysis techniques, and one of the most powerful is Driver Analysis. Driver Analysis lets you focus on the most important drivers of outcomes for your culture. The questions that are identified as the top drivers are the questions that are most likely having the biggest impact on Engagement (or whatever measure you have set up as your outcome). So if you were able to improve your scores on these questions, you are likely to improve your Engagement score. You can find more information on how "impact" is determined here.
In addition to leveraging insights from our Engagement Survey tool, Culture Amp, the People Group may add in a couple of additional questions particularly relevant to current business priorities, changes, and/or challenges.
The FY'22 Pulse Engagement Survey included 19 rating questions and 3 open ended text questions. A complete list of questions can be found here.
Note: Only team members hired on or before October 15, 2021 will be eligible to participate in the Pulse Engagement Survey.
Once the GitLab Team Member Engagement Survey has been closed out, reports will be dissementated to the E-Group and Divisional Heads for review i.e. only those with team populations >5. These will form the basis of discussion when collaboratively compiling the people strategy for year ahead in conjunction with additional data such as attrition reports etc.
For the FY22 Engagement Survey, all divisions are recommended to create an Epic to store Engagement Survey Action Issues. Every Division should create an Epic that gives an overview of the engagement survey results that includes: highlights, lowlights, recommended actions, and resources. Epic's can be created in division issue boards or projects that are applicable to the organization.
In addition, Managers can create an Engagement Survey Action Issue that links to the division wide epic. In the Issue, managers can link team wide actions to the division.
See the examples from FY21' for the Product and Development groups for inspiration.
FY22 Division-Wide Engagement Survey Action Epics:
Engagement Survey Manager Toolkit - GitLab Learn pathway
Managers Guide to Taking Action
Take Action with Action Framework
Our Pulse Engagement Survey FY'22 Q4 ran from 2021-11-4 to 2021-11-18 and was open to all team members who started prior to 2021-10-15. We reached 87% participation and an overall engagement score of 85% favorable. This score is 9 pts higher than our New Tech peer group, which consists of ~150 fast growing and disruptive tech companies who have ~1000+ total team members. We also scored 4 pts higher than we did in the 2020 Engagement Survey overall.
Below you will find a summary of our overall results, as well as key insights and opportunities.
A huge thanks to everyone who completed the survey and made their voice heard. Your feedback helps us to continually improve the experience of working at GitLab.
| Favourable | Neutral | Unfavourable |
|---|---|---|
| 85% | 11% | 4% |
In addition to Engagement, we asked questions about other factors regarding our workplace and culture. A factor score is the average score of all questions within that factor.
| Factor | Favourability Rating |
|---|---|
| Company Confidence | 94% |
| Inclusion | 88% |
| Our Leaders | 83% |
GitLab was rated between 4%-12% percent higher than the industry benchmark i.e. New Tech (1,000+) 2021 across all three factors detailed above.
| Question | Favourability Rating |
|---|---|
| I am proud to work for GitLab | 96% |
| GitLab is in a position to really succeed over the next three years | 94% |
| I would recommend GitLab as a great place to work | 94% |
GitLab was rated between 7-12% percent higher than the industry benchmark i.e. New Tech (1,000+) 2021 across all three questions detailed above.
| Factor | Favourability Rating |
|---|---|
| Action | 55% |
| Your Role | 67% |
| Growth & Development | 79% |
GitLab was rated between 1%-10% percent higher than the industry benchmark i.e. New Tech (1,000+) 2021 across all three factors detailed above.
| Question | Favourability Rating |
|---|---|
| I have seen positive changes taking place based on recent team member survey results | 48% |
| I believe action will take place as a result of this survey | 61% |
| I believe there are good career opportunities for me at GitLab | 72% |
GitLab scored 1-2% below the industry benchmark i.e. New Tech +1,000 2021 for the two lowest scoring questions surrounding positive actions however GitLab scored 6% higher than the benchmark regarding career opportunities.
For the FY'22 Q4 Pulse Engagement Survey results, we will be leaning into epics and issues for tracking and planning.
You can find full detail on the process and guidance here.
All links should be added by 2022-01-21 aligned with our timeline.
Growth & Development
Compensation
Resource Allocation
The GitLab Team Member Engagement Survey is managed by the People Connect Team. If you require support or have any questions around the survey please be sure to reach out via #people-connect in Slack or email people-connect@gitlab.com.
The GitLab Team Member Engagement Survey for 2020 (FY21) ran from 2020-11-16 to 2020-12-15 - questions and fine details can be found in the following planning issue.
Bar those who joined on or after 2020-11-01 the survey was extended to all GitLab Team members for completion. Participation for the FY21 survey closed out at 92% with 1,127 team members having taken part.
The FY21 survey was benchmarked against New Tech 1,000+ 2020 in addition to being reviewed against the preceding years results. Preliminary reports were released on 2021-01-08 painting a broad overview afterwhich individual divisional reviews will take place in collaboration with the People Business Partners (PBPs) and respective Group Leaders.
| Favourable | Neutral | Unfavourable |
|---|---|---|
| 81% | 14% | 5% |
The benchmarked favourability score for New Tech 1,000+ 2020 was 73% placing GitLab 8% higher than the norm for this particular bracket.
| Factor | Favourability Rating |
|---|---|
| Your Manager | 88% |
| Wellbeing COVID-19 | 85% |
| Culture | 84% |
| Question | Favourability Rating |
| I am proud to work for GitLab | 93% |
| I feel supported when I need to take time off or make use of flexible working arrangements | 93% |
| I know how my work contributes to the goals of GitLab | 93% |
GitLab was rated between 5-13% percent higher than the industry benchmark i.e. New Tech +1,000 2020 across all three questions detailed above.
| Factor | Favourability Rating |
|---|---|
| Our Leaders | 79% |
| Growth & Development | 70% |
| Action | 54% |
| Question | Favourability Rating |
| I have been provided an opportunity to see and discuss prior engagement survey results | 60% |
| The Learning & Development programs provided by GitLab help me grow my career | 47% |
| I have seen positive changes since the previous engagement survey | 39% |
GitLab scored 5% below the industry benchmark i.e. New Tech +1,000 2020 for the lowest scoring question surrounding positive changes however there was no comparative for the other two questions.
The GitLab Team Member Engagement Survey is managed by the People Connect Team. If you require support or have any questions around the survey please be sure to reach out via #people-connect in Slack or email people-connect@gitlab.com.
The GitLab Team Member Engagement Survey for 2019 (FY20) ran from 2019-10-14 to 2019-11-04 - questions and fine details can be found in the following planning issue.
Bar those who joined on or after 2019-10-01 the survey was extended to all GitLab Team members for completion. Participation for the FY20 survey closed out at 87% with 812 team members having taken part.
The FY20 survey was benchmarked against New Tech Size >500 2019 in addition to being reviewed against the preceding years results. Preliminary reports were released in the week of 2019-11-07 painting a broad overview afterwhich individual divisional reviews will take place in collaboration with the People Business Partners (PBPs) and respective Group Leaders.
| Favourable | Neutral | Unfavourable |
|---|---|---|
| 88% | 9% | 3% |
A benchmarked favourability score for New Tech Size >500 2019 was not available for this particular survey.
| Factor | Favourability Rating |
|---|---|
| Culture | 87% |
| Your Manager | 87% |
| Teamwork | 86% |
| Question | Favourability Rating |
| I would recommend GitLab as a great place to work | 95% |
| GitLab is in a position to really succeed over the next three years | 94% |
| I am proud to work for GitLab | 94% |
GitLab was rated between 11-17% higher than the industry benchmark i.e. New Tech Size >500 2019 across all three questions detailed above.
| Factor | Favourability Rating |
|---|---|
| Your Role | 84% |
| Growth & Development | 80% |
| Action | 46% |
| Question | Favourability Rating |
| I believe action will take place as a result of this survey | 64% |
| I have been provided an opportunity to see and discuss prior engagement survey results | 46% |
| I have seen positive changes since the previous engagement survey | 29% |
GitLab scored 15% below the industry benchmark i.e. New Tech Size >500 2019 for the lowest scoring question surrounding positive changes however there was no comparative for the other two questions.
The GitLab Team Member Engagement Survey for 2018 (FY19) ran from 2018-10-14 to 2018-11-04 - questions and fine details can be found in the following planning issue.
Bar those who joined on or after 2018-08-17 the survey was extended to all GitLab Team members for completion. Participation for the FY19 survey closed out at 94% with 308 team members having taken part.
The FY19 survey was benchmarked against 2018 New Tech Size - Large Companies (500+). Preliminary reports were released in the week of 2018-11-06 painting a broad overview afterwhich individual divisional reviews will take place in collaboration with the People Business Partners (PBPs) and respective Group Leaders.
| Favourable | Neutral | Unfavourable |
|---|---|---|
| 83% | 12% | 5% |
The benchmarked favourability score for 2018 New Tech Size - Large Companies (500+) was noted at 70% i.e. 13% lower than that of GitLab overall.
| Factor | Favourability Rating |
|---|---|
| Company Confidence | 84% |
| Management | 84% |
| Collaboration and Communication | 84% |
| Work / Life Balance | 84% |
| Question | Favourability Rating |
| I am proud to work for GitLab | 95% |
| I know how my work contributes to the goals of GitLab | 94% |
| GitLab is really in a position to succeed over the next three years | 93% |
GitLab was rated between 4-14% percent higher than the industry benchmark i.e. 2018 New Tech Size - Large Companies (500+) across all three questions detailed above.
| Factor | Favourability Rating |
|---|---|
| Alignment and Involvement | 74% |
| Feedback and Recognition | 63% |
| Action | 41% |
| Question | Favourability Rating |
| I believe my total compensation (base salary+any bonus+benefits+equity) is fair relative to similar roles at other companies | 43% |
| My manager or someone else has communicated clear actions based on recent team member survey results | 33% |
| I have seen positive changes taking place based on recent employee survey results | 32% |
GitLab scored 12% below the industry benchmark i.e. 2018 New Tech Size - Large Companies (500+) for the lowest scoring question surrounding positive changes however there was no comparative for the other two questions.
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