Pulse Reviews
The Employee Pulse & Growth review — structured 1-on-1s that track whether deployed engineers feel stretched, supported, and growing, and the timeline chart that turns individual reviews into a trend.
What is a pulse review?
A pulse review is a structured 1-on-1 between a manager and a deployed engineer. Unlike an annual performance review, it is lightweight, regular, and consistent in structure — which means the data is comparable across time. It captures the engineer's experience of the placement, not a judgment of their performance.
Pulse reviews are created from the engineer's Talent Profile under the Pulse tab, or from an active deployment. Each review is timestamped and attributed to the conducting manager.
The three core dimensions
Every pulse review captures 1–5 slider ratings on three dimensions:
| Dimension | The question it answers |
|---|---|
| Stretched | Is the engineer being challenged at the right level — not bored, not overwhelmed? Persistent low scores may mean the placement is a poor fit; persistent high scores may mean they are ready for a more senior role. |
| Supported | Does the engineer feel supported by the account manager, the client team, and their access to resources and feedback? Low scores are an early signal of isolation, a common precursor to disengagement. |
| Growing | Is the engineer learning and developing in this placement? Consistently low scores on a long-running placement predict that the engineer will start looking elsewhere. |
Additional context fields
Beyond the three core sliders, a pulse review captures structured notes and scores across five further areas:
- Blockers — what is actively impeding the engineer (access issues, unclear requirements, interpersonal friction, tool gaps)
- Skill alignment — how well the current work matches the skills the engineer was placed for; drift here flags a mismatch
- Operations — the day-to-day operational experience: meetings, processes, tools, clarity on priorities
- Delivery — the engineer's own assessment of how their delivery is tracking against expectations
- Open notes — free text for anything not covered by the structured fields
The pulse-score timeline chart
The Talent Profile includes a timeline chart that plots the three core dimensions across every recorded pulse review for that engineer. A single review is a snapshot; the timeline is the story. The chart reveals patterns that individual data points hide:
- A downward trend in Supported across consecutive reviews is more significant than a single low score
- A sudden drop in Growing after a stable period may coincide with a project or team change at the client
- High Stretched combined with low Growing is a specific pattern — the engineer is overloaded but not developing
Below the chart, the history log lists every review with its scores and notes in chronological order. This log is the data you bring to a placement renewal conversation.
Pulse reviews vs. performance reviews
Important distinction. The pulse review captures the engineer's experience of the placement, not an evaluation of their performance. The scores on Stretched, Supported, and Growing are the engineer's self-assessment, elicited through conversation. This makes engineers more likely to be honest and makes the data a leading indicator of placement health rather than a backward-looking grade.
Analytics integration
The analytics module aggregates pulse review data into an average pulse score per engineer and across the firm, and contributes to the employee experience distribution. This lets you spot systemic issues — for example, if engineers placed at a particular client consistently score low on Supported, that is an account-level signal worth investigating.
Relationship to health signals
The pulse review is the internal counterpart to the Weekly Engagement Health Signal. The health signal tells you how the client thinks the placement is going. The pulse review tells you how the engineer thinks it is going. Together they form the two-sided feedback loop that keeps a placement healthy.