Semantic Analysis: Understand What Your Employees Are Really Saying

Verbatim comments that reveal what scores don’t show.

A survey of 1,000 employees generates hundreds of open-ended responses. No one reads them all. The most valuable signals, the ones no closed question had anticipated, are precisely the ones that get lost.

Zest’s semantic analysis reads every single open-ended response and delivers what matters most: the themes raised, their weight, their tone, and what deserves immediate attention.

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Trusted by more than 400 HR Directors

Closed questions measure. Open-ended responses explain.

Closed questions frame the measurement. Open-ended responses reveal what no scale could ever capture: a frustration taking root, tension within a team, a resignation signal that nothing else would have surfaced.

Zest’s semantic analysis reads every single open-ended response and delivers what matters most: the themes, their weight, their tone, and what deserves immediate attention.

Counting words isn’t enough

A word cloud counts occurrences: it will tell you that “workload” comes up 47 times. Semantic analysis understands meaning: it distinguishes “the workload is well balanced” from “the workload is becoming unmanageable,” links each comment to a theme, measures its tone, and cross references all of it with recurrence.

The result isn’t a list of words, it’s a reading: what topics your employees are raising, what they’re saying about them, and in what order to address them.

What Zest does with your verbatim comments

Categorize

Every comment is automatically linked to the themes it touches on, along with its associated sentiment.

Thematic categorization

Sentiment analysis

Prioritize

Themes are plotted on a matrix crossing recurrence and tone. HR and managers know immediately where to focus their attention.

To prioritize

To value

To monitor

To develop

Alert

Sensitive comments are detected and flagged as alerts without waiting for the campaign to end. The signal never goes unanswered, and anonymity is never compromised.

Real time alert

Psychosocial risks

Anonymity guarantee

Translate

Every employee expresses themselves in their own language, every reader analyzes in theirs. Verbatim comments are translated automatically, without delay.

36 languages

AI trained on the language of work

A team of NLP PhDs and occupational psychologists trained Zest’s models specifically on the language of work: indirect phrasing, sensitive topics expressed in half words, words whose meaning shifts with context. This is what makes it possible to distinguish an awkward turn of phrase from a genuine sign of distress, or a passing frustration from a structural irritant.

The AI operates transparently and under your control. Every theme remains verifiable: one click gives access to the source comments. The frameworks are configured question by question. The AI proposes a structure, HR and managers keep the judgment.

Three situations where semantics change the picture

A score drops with no explanation

An entity’s engagement score loses a point between two campaigns. Closed questions record the drop, verbatim comments reveal the cause: the matrix surfaces a new theme, absent from the previous campaign, concentrating the negative comments.

An alarming comment in the crowd

Among 800 responses, one employee mentions burnout. Without automatic detection, this comment would be read weeks later, or never. With the alert, HR opens an anonymous conversation that same day.

A campaign across 6 countries

Verbatim comments come in across 5 languages. Automatic translation and unified categorization enable consolidated analysis, with no translation provider and no delay.

Your employees are writing to you. Really read them.

Real time analysis. Fast decoding. Proprietary AI.

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Q&A

Frequently asked questions about Zest’s survey and social barometer software

Does semantic analysis compromise respondent anonymity?

No. The analysis focuses on comment content, never on respondent identity. Campaign anonymity rules apply in full, and the open conversation that follows a sensitive comment preserves the employee’s anonymity unless they choose to lift it themselves.

What happens when a sensitive comment is detected?

An alert is sent to authorized personnel, without waiting for the campaign to end. They can open an anonymous conversation with the employee or send them a message pointing to internal support resources.

Does the AI replace human reading?

No, it makes it possible. Across hundreds of verbatim comments, exhaustive human reading simply isn’t feasible in practice: the AI categorizes and prioritizes so that human attention goes where it has the most value. The decision always remains with HR and the manager.

Does Zest’s AI use our data for training?

No, the continuous improvement of our models does not rely on client data. Zest’s AI is proprietary, developed in house by a team led by PhDs in NLP and psychometrics. Your data is hosted in France and never leaves the Zest ecosystem: it is never shared with any external model.

Can Zest be used without AI features?

Yes. AI features can be fully disabled for organizations that prefer it, without losing access to the rest of the platform: analytics, comparisons, exports, and dashboards all remain available.

What does the AI actually do in the analysis of results?

It steps in where manual analysis costs the most time: categorizing verbatim comments, detecting sensitive comments, summarizing interviews, and suggesting action plans. It prioritizes and prepares, but never decides: the manager and HR retain full control.

See Zest in action

The platform to turn feedback into impact