"This willingness to further develop the product together with the customer is what I really appreciated about Honestly."

When the former employee survey tool suddenly shut down, the WBS Group was faced with a serious challenge: as a provider of high-quality professional training and qualifications, going back to improvised, manual solutions was not an option—the workload for the HR team would have been enormous. When three alternative software solutions were proposed, the WBS Group was initially skeptical, as their requirements were very specific. However, they ultimately chose Honestly—and for several good reasons.

Summary

• When Lysann Nikolopoulos took over as Head of HR at the WBS Group, she quickly realized that the existing system of large-scale employee surveys conducted every two years was no longer up to date and was placing excessive strain on the HR department. She therefore introduced a new approach based on small, dynamic feedback surveys conducted every three weeks.

• When the initially used survey tool was discontinued, the WBS Group switched to Honestly. Lysann Nikolopoulos and her team were initially critical, as the organization had very specific expectations and requirements. Honestly, however, won them over with its ease of use, powerful analytics dashboards, and automatic employee data updates—all of which significantly reduced the HR team's workload.

• Another key factor was Honestly's willingness to adapt to the WBS Group's needs. Today, the WBS Group can make well-founded decisions, respond flexibly to employee needs, and invest its limited budget in the right initiatives—ones that receive strong acceptance across the workforce.

About WBS Training

For more than 40 years, the WBS Group has been a leading provider of high-quality professional training and qualification programs. Innovative learning methods and practice-oriented content help participants achieve their individual goals. They are supported by experienced trainers and prepared for the demands of the labor market. Whether enhancing existing skills, acquiring new competencies, or successfully pursuing a complete career change, the WBS Group offers the right support.

Dynamic Feedback Instead of Overwhelming Surveys

The WBS Group recognized early on the opportunities offered by digitalization. Not only has the company successfully offered online training programs since 2011, but it has also conducted company-wide employee surveys digitally since 2018. Before that, employee surveys often placed significant pressure on the HR department.

When Lysann Nikolopoulos became Head of HR, she quickly realized that the existing approach was no longer appropriate.

"The biggest challenge was that HR suddenly received an enormous amount of feedback. At the same time, there were many topics that ideally needed to be addressed immediately."

This led to high expectations within the organization: Are we finally going to see something happen as a result?

She was convinced that a faster solution was needed—one that would make even small improvements visible.

"In addition, we were growing rapidly at the time, and I no longer had a direct feel for all teams. We wanted to establish a new feedback culture."

The WBS Group initially chose Teambay, a feedback tool that has since been discontinued, and successfully changed the survey rhythm from large, infrequent surveys every two years to smaller, dynamic surveys conducted every three weeks.

Honestly Offered the Best Usability

"Unfortunately, Teambay as a startup didn't develop in the way its founder had hoped," says Lysann Nikolopoulos. "But we were informed early on."

Three alternative solutions were evaluated in detail.

"We had very clear requirements and expectations, because high acceptance within the organization is essential to ensure that switching to a new tool doesn't feel too disruptive. So we focused strongly on usability."

After extensive testing, the WBS Group ultimately chose Honestly. From the very beginning, Lysann Nikolopoulos was particularly impressed by the analytics dashboards, which can be created quickly and easily. This ease of use greatly simplifies collaboration with other departments, which naturally require different reports for their work.

"It quickly became clear to us that we could meet those needs very well—and that was a decisive factor."

Another major advantage was Honestly's integration capabilities, which allow the software to connect directly with the WBS Group's internal systems. Previously, employee data had to be updated manually—a time-consuming and error-prone process that has now been completely eliminated.

The Right Mindset: Listening to and Acting on Customer Feedback

It wasn't just the platform itself that impressed the WBS Group—the mindset behind Honestly did as well. When Lysann Nikolopoulos was unable to find a feature she had particularly appreciated in Teambay, she raised this with Honestly.

"We told Honestly about it, and they immediately said they found it exciting and would look into whether it could be implemented."

For the WBS Group, this was a strong signal that Honestly genuinely values customer feedback and takes it seriously. And it wasn't just lip service: the feature is now scheduled to be implemented and tested together with the WBS Group.

"This willingness to further develop the product together with the customer is what I really appreciated about Honestly."

Return on Investment? Definitely.

Thanks to the ease of creating surveys, powerful analytics, and system integrations, the workload previously borne by the HR department has been drastically reduced. At the same time, the overall process has become far less error-prone.

But Lysann Nikolopoulos highlights another important change:

"A progressive feedback culture has developed across all teams."

At all levels of the organization, there is now a strong awareness of the importance of employee feedback—both top-down and, in particular, bottom-up. The fact that teams are still willing to give feedback is evident in the high number of qualitative text responses.

Equally important is drawing the right conclusions from the feedback and implementing appropriate measures. When the WBS Group's health team was planning to introduce a new benefit, it was unclear which of two options would resonate more.

"We were in the middle of budget planning, and I suggested we simply ask employees what they preferred."

The results contradicted internal assumptions. Without the survey, the company would have invested in a benefit with little employee resonance—a costly mistake with 1,800 employees.

"Thanks to the survey with Honestly, we knew exactly which investment would pay off."

The return on investment is clear: implementing the right initiatives at the right time instead of spending limited budgets blindly. Clear dashboards also enable fast reactions and empower managers and departments to work independently with the data.

Conclusion: A Real-Time Pulse of the Organization

For Lysann Nikolopoulos, Honestly has strong strategic value. Thanks to intuitive dashboards, she always has a clear overview of the organization's current mood and can analyze employee satisfaction by location, department, or team at any time.

"We design our surveys in a very topic-specific way and repeat certain questions to track trends over time. This keeps me very close to the organization and has a major impact on my strategic work."

Well-founded decisions require not just intuition, but also data to support it.

Lysann Nikolopoulos and the WBS Group are happy with Honestly:

"If the cultural fit is already right, we can overcome challenges together. We were critical at the beginning—and that's perfectly fine. But there was always a sense that we could work through things together with Honestly."