Empiricon

What Empiricon does

Empiricon AG is a privately held Swiss HR consulting and survey services firm headquartered in Bern, founded in 2001 by Dr. Adrian Blum and Prof. Robert Zaugg. The company provides employee surveys (full-scale engagement surveys, pulse checks, 360-degree management feedback, employer attractiveness and exit monitoring), adjacent stakeholder and customer surveys, and HR consulting services covering HR strategy, organization design, and process optimization. It also co-owns the "Employers We Trust." quality label, developed with the University of Fribourg, which certifies organizations that use employee feedback systematically.

Empiricon's technology platform is the Empiricon Connect Suite (ECS), launched in 2024, which unifies survey administration, real-time response monitoring, customizable interactive dashboards, and the Follow-App for tracking implementation measures under a single login. The platform incorporates AI-based categorization for automated thematic classification of open-ended survey comments, used as a productivity tool within the consulting workflow. The firm serves a diversified Swiss client base of more than 200 organizations across five verticals: public administration (federal, cantonal, municipal), healthcare, education and research, NGOs, and business/industry, with notable long-tenure enterprise and government clients including Swiss Post, the Swiss Federal Personnel Office, the City of Zurich, ETH/EPFL, Helsana, and the Liechtenstein national administration.

The business model is predominantly project-based professional services revenue (customized survey design, fieldwork, analysis, and consulting engagements) supplemented by quality label certification fees. Go-to-market is consultative and enterprise-focused, with dedicated project managers assigned per engagement and direct sales targeting HR leadership. Multilingual delivery (German, French, Italian, English, Chinese) supports both domestic coverage and limited international engagements. Headcount is approximately 20 staff and the company has remained independent and founder-controlled throughout its 25-year history, with no disclosed external funding.

Name

Empiricon

Legal name

Empiricon AG

Website

https://empiricon.ch

Company type

Private

Founded year

2001

Operating status

Operating

Headcount range

11–50 employees

Short description

Empiricon AG is a Swiss HR consulting and survey services firm, founded 2001 in Bern, providing employee surveys, 360-degree feedback, HR strategy consulting, and the ECS platform to 200+ public and private sector clients across Switzerland.

Ownership category

akta.pro rank

Product category

HR Consulting and Employee Survey Services

NAICS

Human Resources Consulting Services (541612), Marketing Research and Public Opinion Polling (541910)

SIC

Services-Management Consulting Services (8742)

akta.pro primary industry

Survey, Panel & Fieldwork Services (BPAHALAJ)

Keywords

• Employee survey services
• HR consulting
• Management feedback
• Pulse check surveys
• Employer branding

Headquarters

HQ city

Bern

HQ country

Switzerland

HQ region

Europe

Offices1 record

Markets served

GTM type

B2B

Offering type

Services

Cost components

Personnel, Operations, Technology or R&D, Marketing or Sales, Infrastructure

Revenue model

1. Survey Services: Core revenue stream from designing and conducting employee surveys, pulse checks, management feedback, employer attractiveness surveys, and target-group/customer surveys. Project-based engagements with customized questionnaire development, fieldwork, analysis, and reporting.
2. HR Consulting Services: Advisory services including HR strategy development, HR organization design, process optimization, HR check-ups, and organizational development. Provided by experienced consultants in interdisciplinary teams.
3. Quality Label Certification: The 'Employers We Trust.' quality label certification program developed in partnership with University of Fribourg. Companies meeting systematic survey and follow-up standards receive the label.

Go-to-market motion2 records

Distribution channels2 records

Marketing channels6 records

Core offering

Empiricon designs and conducts employee surveys (full employee surveys, pulse checks, 360-degree management feedback, employer attractiveness, and customer/target-group surveys) and delivers HR consulting services spanning strategy, organisation, processes, and the full employee lifecycle. Survey delivery is supported by the proprietary Empiricon Connect Suite (ECS) platform launched in 2024, which combines data transfer, live response monitoring, customizable dashboards, AI-based comment categorisation, and the Follow-App for tracking implementation measures.

Product overview

Empiricon is a Swiss HR consulting and survey company founded in 2001, offering a portfolio of survey products and consulting services along the employee lifecycle. The core offering consists of six survey products: Employee Survey (Mitarbeitendenbefragung), Employer Attractiveness, Pulse Check, Management Feedback (360-Degree), Target-group and Customer Surveys, and the Employers We Trust quality label. These are complemented by consulting services for HR Strategy and Organisation and HR Topics. The Empiricon Connect Suite (ECS) serves as the central platform unifying all survey functions including data transfer, response monitoring, report downloads, interactive dashboards, and the Follow-App for measure tracking. Add-on modules include Offboarding Monitoring, Knowledge Maps, and HR-Check-up Plus. The company integrates AI-based text categorization for automated analysis of open-ended survey comments.

Differentiator

Problem solved

Functional benefit

Brands

• Employers We Trust: A quality label developed together with various Swiss companies and the University of Fribourg, awarded to companies that use surveys in a systematic and targeted manner to gain qualified feedback about work situations.
• Empiricon Connect Suite (ECS)

Products and services

• Employee Survey (Mitarbeitendenbefragung)
• Employer Attractiveness (Arbeitgeberattraktivität)
• Pulse Check
• Management Feedback (Führungsfeedback)
• Target-group and Customer Surveys (Zielgruppen- & Kundenbefragungen)
• Quality Label "Employers We Trust."
• HR Strategy and Organisation (HR-Strategie und HR-Organisation)

Quantifiable outcome

• 200+ companies served with 200+ survey and consulting assignments per year
• +2 more outcomes

Named customers9 records

Segments5 records

Ideal customer profiles5 records

Technology focussed No

API detail

Has API

No

API docs

API detail

Core technology

AI maturity

App detail

AI capability4 records

Feature3 records

Partnerships

One partnership is on record.

• University of FribourgcoreStrategic or Co-development Partner · 1 January 2016Strategic partnership with University of Fribourg to co-develop the 'Employers We Trust.' quality label. The label establishes quality criteria for companies using employee surveys systematically and has become a recognized Swiss certification for organizations committed to employee feedback and continuous development.

Scale indicators4 records

Recent moves6 records

Expansion highlights5 records

Broad incumbents

• Willis Towers Watson: Global HR, risk, and benefits consulting firm with an established employee-survey and engagement practice serving large Swiss employers across financial services, public sector, and industry.
• PwC Switzerland: Big 4 firm with a People & Organisation advisory practice in Switzerland, providing HR strategy, organisational design, and survey-related consulting to large enterprises and public-sector clients.
• Aon: Global professional services firm with a sizeable Human Capital practice and employee-survey offering; competes for HR consulting mandates at large Swiss enterprises and public-sector organisations.
• KPMG Switzerland: Big 4 firm with an established People Consulting practice offering HR transformation, organisational development, and employee-experience advisory to Swiss enterprise and government clients.

Direct peers

• Gallup: Global employee engagement survey and consulting firm with a strong Swiss presence (Gallup Switzerland). Directly competes for the same enterprise employee-survey, management-feedback, and engagement-benchmark engagements.
• HR Campus: Swiss HR software and consulting provider serving HR departments with workforce management and HR technology services; overlaps with Empiricon's HR strategy/HR organisation consulting practice within the same Swiss enterprise and public-sector market.
• Great Place to Work Switzerland: Swiss operator of Best Workplaces certification and workplace culture surveys; offers employer-branding certification analogous to Empiricon's 'Employers We Trust.' label and competes for the same HR-survey budgets.
• Workday Peakon (Employee Voice): Employee listening platform acquired by Workday; offers SaaS-style employee engagement surveys and benchmarking to enterprise customers globally, including Switzerland, and competes directly with Empiricon's ECS platform.
• Culture Amp: Pure-play SaaS employee engagement and feedback platform increasingly adopted by mid-market and enterprise customers in Switzerland; competes for the same employee-survey and pulse-check budgets via a software-led model.

Emerging players

• Lattice: Cloud-based people management and engagement platform growing in European enterprise accounts; competes for portions of the same employee-feedback/engagement budget as Empiricon's ECS offering, primarily on the SaaS-led end of the market.

Market position

Strengths5 records

Weaknesses5 records

Competitive moat4 records

Key risks7 records

Key highlights7 records

Customer concentration

• LinkedInch.linkedin.com/company/empiricon-ag

Revenue estimate

Valuation estimate

Number of profiles

Profiles7 records

Funding overview

Funding rounds

Investors

Funding detail is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →

M&A

Investments

M&A and investment is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →

Frequently asked questions about Empiricon