Moving from Google Forms to CultureMonkey
Nothing gets left behind. The same questions move across under the company’s own brand, the first survey launches from a CSV before any HRIS work, and past responses stay safe in Google Sheets.
4.7/5 on G2
SOC 2 ISO 27001 GDPR
Engagement programs that act, not just measure
Trust
Will employees believe the new survey is anonymous?
When a survey runs in house, people assume someone can see who said what. On CultureMonkey the rules below are enforced by the platform, so the answer does not rest on a promise.
Results stay hidden until enough people respond
Dashboards show nothing for any group below the threshold, which defaults to 5 and can be raised at account level.
The floor is enforced in the data, not the interface
The survey-level floor is 3. Nobody can configure it lower, and it covers every score type and the comment list alike.
Who reads free text is a decision, not an accident
Free text can be hidden from sub-admins and the heatmap from managers, so visibility follows roles chosen on purpose.
The move itself is the moment to reset trust
Tell employees what changed, name the threshold out loud, and let the first survey prove it.
Manager visibilityAdmin controls
What your managers can and cannot see
Team scores and trendsHeadline metrics, scores over timeOffOn
Open-text commentsVerbatim employee feedbackOff
HeatmapCross-team score gridOff
Admin sees
Team scores and trends
Open-text comments
Heatmap
Manager sees
Team scores and trends
Field sales · 4 respondents. Results hidden below the anonymity threshold of 5.
Still deciding whether to move?Read the decision guide
Questions
Can the same survey questions move across?
- The wording employees know can stay. Questions from the current form are re-created in the CultureMonkey survey builder, so a question that has run for years reads the same on the new survey.
- Each question is mapped to a driver. The migration team maps the questions to engagement drivers, so results land in driver heatmaps from the very first survey.
- Gaps come from research-backed templates. Anything the old form never asked can come from the CultureMonkey template library rather than being written from a blank page.
- Onboarding and exit forms can move too. The forms sent to new joiners and leavers become surveys of their own, run from the same place as the engagement survey.
Branding
CultureMonkey surveys arrive with the company’s logo and domain
docs.google.com/forms/…
Employee survey 2026Answer every question before submitting.
I would recommend Acme as a great place to work.
12345
My manager acts on the feedback I give.
12345
Employee survey 2026Your response has been recorded.Submit another response
Google Forms The survey ends at submit
survey.acme.com
Welcome, Acme team. Thank you for taking part.
I would recommend Acme as a great place to work.
12345
NextEngagement score7.8+0.4 on last cycle
Participation86%
CultureMonkey The same question, under the company’s brand
- Logo, background and messagesThe company’s logo, background image and its own welcome and thank-you notes on every survey.
- Invites from the company’s domainInvitations and reminders go out from the company’s email domain, with its own sender name.
- Links on the company’s domainSurvey and report links sit on the company’s own web address, set up with the migration team.
- Reports without the CultureMonkey markPDF, PowerPoint and executive summary exports can leave out CultureMonkey branding.
Branding is a choice. Some teams want the survey to read like internal communication; others keep CultureMonkey’s name
visible as the independent party running it. The anonymity rules work the same way either way.
Responses
What happens to responses already in Sheets?
Every response already sits in a Google Sheet the team owns, so nothing is locked away. Four steps settle what moves across and what stays as an archive. Google’s own guide covers where form responses are stored.
- Export your Google Forms responses to CSV or Excel. Download each survey's responses from its Sheet. There is no vendor gate and no deadline: the file is yours the moment you save it.
- Check the columns before anything else. Rows with a name or email address were identified when they were given, so that history cannot be read as anonymous on any platform.
- Accept what does not carry. Charts, pivot tables and slide decks are artifacts of past cycles, not data. Keep them for reference. Only the response rows themselves are worth moving anywhere.
- Decide between bringing history and starting a baseline. Many teams treat the first CultureMonkey survey as the new baseline and keep the Sheets as an archive. Whatever should come across is agreed with the migration team during onboarding.
Analysis
No more building survey reports by hand
Most Google Forms employee survey limitations show up after the survey closes, in the work of turning a Sheet into something leadership can read.
- No more building the deck by hand. Every cycle, one person copies responses into charts and builds the slides, and it is usually the same person who was supposed to be acting on the results.
- A trend line that keeps itself. Each Google Forms survey lives in its own Sheet, so the year-on-year view leadership asks for gets rebuilt every cycle. The chart alongside is that view, kept current without the rebuild.
- A benchmark beside every score. The first question in a leadership meeting is whether the number is good. CultureMonkey’s engagement benchmarks by company size answer it in one row.
Every team, six cycles
Every 2 weeks · direction matters more than the number
Design4.4
Engineering4.1
Support3.43 cycles â–¼
Sales3.8
Marketing4.3
C1C2C3C4C5C6
Four teams flat or rising. Support is the only shape that turns down, and it has done for three cycles.
Why not keep Sheets and add ChatGPT?
- ChatGPT does solve the theming. Employee survey spreadsheet analysis now takes an afternoon, not a weekend.
- There is no response threshold. A team of four gets a team-of-four report. CultureMonkey hides any group below 5, with a floor of 3.
- Comments leave the company. Pasting free text into an external model is a data-protection question to settle first.
- Nobody can audit who saw what. Anyone with the Sheet link can read every comment, including the ones about them.
Timing
The first survey can go out before integration
Start with one fileUpload the employee list as a CSV. It is checked before import, and the first survey can go out from that file alone.
No HRIS needed firstThe HR system connects in the background while surveys run, so a launch date already promised can hold.
Full setup in five weeksFrom kickoff to go live: employee data, survey setup, access and test sends.
KickoffOwners, org and target date
Employee dataCSV upload or HRIS sync
ConfigurationAccess, groups, and languages
TestingPreview and test sends
Go liveLaunch and track participation
Cost
Making the case to leadership on cost
| Google Forms | CultureMonkey | |
|---|---|---|
| The tool | Included with Google Workspace | A quote set by headcount and scope |
| Setup | Built and maintained by HR | Implementation, HRMS integration, SSO and templates included |
| Analysis | Charts and decks rebuilt by hand each cycle | Driver heatmaps, trends across cycles and benchmarks, ready on close |
| Whose time | One person, every cycle | That time goes to acting on the results |
Security
What IT and security will ask before approving
- How do employees and admins sign in?
- SAML 2.0 single sign-on, through the identity provider already in place.
- What employee data is held?
- Name, department, business unit, reporting manager, the demographics results are sliced by, and an email or phone number for delivery. No compensation data, no personnel records.
- Can the data come back out?
- Yes. Responses export per survey as CSV or Excel at any time, scoped to the access level of the person exporting.
- Which certifications apply?
- ISO 27001, SOC 2 and GDPR.
FAQ
Moving from Google Forms: frequently asked questions
Your responses
What happens to the data already collected.
Can you load our previous Google Forms responses, or do we start from a new baseline?
Both are real options. The responses sit in a Sheet the team already owns and export as CSV or Excel in minutes. Plenty of teams call the first CultureMonkey survey the new baseline and keep the Sheets as an archive; what comes across, if anything, is agreed with the migration team during onboarding.
What if we never turned on anonymous responses in Google Forms?
Then each row in the Sheet is tied to a person, and that history should be treated as identified wherever it lives. It can still inform which questions to ask next. Reading it as anonymous history would mislead, so the honest move is to let the first CultureMonkey survey be the anonymous baseline.
Timing and cost
The two questions that decide a launch date.
From signing, how long until our first survey goes out?
The first survey waits on a participant list, not a finished integration. Employees load from a CSV upload that is checked before import, and a survey can launch from that file alone. The practical schedule depends on how quickly the list and questions settle, so ask the migration team to commit to a date against the calendar.
Is there a migration or implementation fee?
Implementation, HRMS integration, SSO and survey templates are included in a CultureMonkey quote rather than priced as separate line items after it. What the quote itself looks like depends on headcount and scope, which is a conversation on the call rather than a figure on this page.
Can we start with a single survey or a pilot rather than a full subscription?
Ask for it. A first survey can run from a CSV upload before any integration work, which makes a contained first cycle easy to structure. What a pilot means commercially for a given headcount is the migration team's call to set out, and it is a reasonable thing to request.
Data and access
What is held, what exports, and who can see it.
What employee data do you actually need?
A name, a work email or phone number for delivery, and the attributes results are sliced by: department, business unit, location, reporting manager and any demographics that matter to the program. No compensation data and no personnel records. The list loads from a CSV, and the file is checked before anything imports.
Can we export everything back out, including raw responses?
Yes. Responses export per survey as CSV or Excel at any time, scoped to the access level of the person exporting. Years of running surveys from a spreadsheet teach a team to insist on owning its data, and nothing about moving platforms should ask anyone to unlearn that.
Can results be broken down by department without losing anonymity?
Yes, as long as each group clears the threshold. A department, location or manager's team shows results only when enough people in it have responded, 5 by default and never fewer than 3, so slicing by team never narrows a result down to one person.
The next survey, without the spreadsheet work
A short demo of the move: questions carried over, anonymity employees can trust, and reports that build themselves.
4.7 / 5 on G2