Press Ganey is the name most healthcare HR and quality leaders think of first when the conversation turns to employee experience benchmarking, and for large health systems with the budget and internal analytics staff to match, it is often the right choice. But Press Ganey is not the only option, and for many organizations, it isn’t even an either/or decision. Mid-market hospitals and health systems, generally those with 500 to 10,000 employees, frequently find themselves paying for enterprise complexity they do not need, or waiting on an implementation timeline built for organizations many times their size.
This comparison looks at where Press Ganey genuinely excels, where a more flexible platform like People Element fits better, and how to think through the decision for your organization specifically. It focuses on two dedicated survey vendors; for a broader look at how dedicated platforms compare to HRIS-native survey add-ons, see Employee Engagement Survey Vendors vs. HRIS Add-Ons.
Quick answer: Press Ganey is built for large healthcare enterprises that need the deepest clinical and nursing-specific benchmarking, including NDNQI and Magnet®-aligned specialty surveys, refined from decades of healthcare-only data collection. People Element, through its collaboration with Mercer, benchmarks against more than 7 million healthcare employee responses, and pairs that with flexible pricing, unlimited surveys and admin users, and a dedicated Client Success Manager included, without the enterprise sales cycle and custom licensing that come with Press Ganey.
How People Element and Press Ganey Compare at a Glance
Primary market and ideal organization size
Press Ganey is built primarily for healthcare organizations and large health systems, with an enterprise sales and implementation model to match. People Element serves mid-market organizations, generally 500 to 10,000 employees, across healthcare, manufacturing, and other front-line and deskless industries.
Survey types and employee lifecycle coverage
Both platforms cover the core employee lifecycle. Press Ganey’s platform spans onboarding, lifecycle, pulse, and engagement surveys. People Element covers engagement, onboarding/new hire, stay interviews, exit interviews, manager effectiveness, DEI, and well-being surveys within a single platform.
Pricing model and total cost of ownership
This is one of the clearest differences between the two. People Element uses simple annual pricing based on the number of employees surveyed, with unlimited surveys and unlimited admin users included. Press Ganey typically prices by module or program under an enterprise or custom quote, which can mean a higher total cost of ownership for organizations that do not need every module in the Press Ganey suite. Getting this decision right carries real financial weight; see The $60,090 Problem Most Health System CFOs Have Not Modeled for what turnover alone costs a mid-market health system when retention data doesn’t reach the right people in time.
Feature | People Element | Press Ganey |
Primary market | Mid-market, front-line and deskless industries | Primarily large healthcare systems and enterprises |
Ideal company size | 500 to 10,000+ employees | Large healthcare enterprises |
Lifecycle surveys | Engagement, Onboarding, stay, exit, manager effectiveness, DEI, well-being | Onboarding, lifecycle, pulse, engagement |
Exit interviews | In-house U.S.-based team calls every exiting employee (8+ attempts); 20–30% higher response than email surveys | Survey-based lifecycle feedback |
Dedicated Client Success Manager | Included with every client | Varies by engagement |
Unlimited surveys and admin users | Included | Typically licensed by module or program |
Pricing model | Simple annual pricing by employees surveyed | Enterprise or custom pricing |
Benchmarking | 7M+ healthcare employee responses via Mercer, plus custom benchmarks | 3.4M+ healthcare employee responses; NDNQI clinical database |
Specialty compliance surveys | Well-being surveys aligned to Joint Commission WPV standards | AHRQ, Magnet® 7 Domains, state-level safety culture surveys |
Cross-industry benchmarks | Included | Limited outside healthcare |
Implementation | Guided onboarding with expert support | Enterprise implementation |
Where Press Ganey Wins
Decades of data collected exclusively from healthcare organizations
Press Ganey’s healthcare employee specialty survey platform advertises benchmarking against more than 3.4 million healthcare employee responses, built specifically from healthcare organizations over several decades. People Element’s own benchmark database, powered through its collaboration with Mercer, is larger in raw response volume (more on that below), but Press Ganey’s dataset being purpose-built for healthcare from the outset, rather than a healthcare-specific layer within a broader cross-industry partnership, can matter for large systems doing granular, service-line- or unit-level benchmarking rather than organization-wide comparisons alone.
NDNQI: 2,000+ hospitals and 98% of Magnet-recognized facilities
Through its National Database of Nursing Quality Indicators, Press Ganey works with more than 2,000 U.S. hospitals, including 98 percent of Magnet-recognized facilities, and benchmarks against hundreds of clinical and nurse-sensitive indicators across tens of thousands of inpatient and ambulatory units. For nursing quality and Magnet journey initiatives specifically, this is a genuinely specialized strength.
Specialty compliance surveys: AHRQ, Magnet® 7 Domains, state-level safety culture
Press Ganey offers AHRQ surveys, its own proprietary safety culture survey, and state-level requirement surveys, alongside a Nursing Excellence Survey built to help hospitals generate reports aligned with Magnet Recognition Program requirements. Organizations pursuing or maintaining Magnet status, or that need survey instruments mapped directly to specific accreditation frameworks, will find this depth of specialty coverage hard to replicate elsewhere.
Brand recognition and predictive analytics for large health systems
Press Ganey has decades of brand recognition among hospital executives, particularly on the patient experience side, and offers predictive burnout and turnover analytics built for the scale and complexity of large, multi-facility health systems.
Where People Element Wins for Mid-Market Healthcare Organizations
A larger benchmark database through the Mercer collaboration
Through its collaboration with Mercer, People Element benchmarks against more than 7 million healthcare employee responses, a larger raw dataset than Press Ganey’s 3.4 million. For organizations that want the broadest possible comparison set alongside cross-industry context, that scale is a genuine advantage, even as Press Ganey’s smaller, healthcare-only database offers a different kind of depth in clinical and nursing-specific indicators (see below).
A live phone interview with every exiting employee, not just a survey link
Most exit feedback programs, Press Ganey’s included, are survey-based: a departing employee gets a link and completes it, or doesn’t, on their own. People Element takes a different approach, with an in-house team of U.S.-based, HR-trained interviewers, not an offshore call center or contracted vendor, who call each exiting employee directly and conduct the interview live over the phone. The team makes at least eight outreach attempts per departure rather than stopping at one unanswered call, and the average interview runs 30 to 45 minutes, long enough for an employee to walk through the full story behind their departure rather than clicking through a rating scale.
The results show up in the numbers. Email-based exit tools average an 18 to 22 percent response rate among frontline employees; People Element’s calling approach runs 20 to 30 percentage points higher, and departing employees share 30 to 60 percent more candor with a neutral third-party interviewer than they do with their own manager or a self-reported survey.
Simple, transparent pricing vs. enterprise custom quotes
People Element prices simply, by the number of employees surveyed, so a mid-market hospital knows its cost upfront rather than negotiating a custom enterprise quote across multiple modules.
Unlimited surveys and admin users included, not licensed by module
Every People Element client gets unlimited surveys and unlimited admin users as part of the base platform. Organizations are not paying per module or restricting how many people on the HR team can access the system.
A dedicated Client Success Manager as standard, not an upsell
Every People Element client is paired with a dedicated Client Success Manager from day one. With Press Ganey, the level of dedicated support can vary by engagement size, which matters for a mid-market HR team without a large internal analytics staff to lean on.
Faster, guided implementation without an enterprise rollout
People Element’s guided onboarding is built for HR teams that need to launch a survey quickly without a lengthy enterprise implementation process. For organizations that do not have a dedicated survey administrator or analytics team, that difference in time to launch is often decisive.
Feature-by-Feature Comparison
Employee lifecycle survey coverage: onboarding, stay, exit, manager effectiveness
People Element covers the full employee lifecycle, including engagement, onboarding, stay interviews, exit interviews, manager effectiveness, DEI, and well-being surveys, in one platform with one login. Press Ganey’s lifecycle coverage spans onboarding, lifecycle, pulse, and engagement, with additional specialty modules available depending on the engagement.
AI-powered insights and predictive risk detection
Both platforms offer AI-powered analysis. People Element’s built-in AI data analyst, Analyst Insight, along with comment summaries and Risk Insight for emerging risk and compliance issues, is included as part of the core platform. Press Ganey offers AI summaries, predictive analytics, and comment analysis as part of its broader enterprise suite.
Benchmarking: raw scale vs. clinical specialization
People Element’s Mercer-powered benchmark database is larger by raw response count, more than 7 million healthcare employee responses versus Press Ganey’s 3.4 million, and pairs healthcare-specific benchmarking with cross-industry breadth, which matters for organizations that operate in healthcare alongside other front-line sectors like manufacturing or transportation. Press Ganey’s smaller database is exclusively healthcare-sourced and, through NDNQI, mapped to hundreds of clinical and nursing-sensitive indicators, offering a level of clinical granularity that a broader cross-industry benchmark isn’t built to match.
Exit interviews: live phone interviews vs. survey-based feedback
People Element’s in-house, U.S.-based interview team calls every exiting employee, with at least eight outreach attempts per departure, and conducts the exit interview live over the phone rather than relying on the employee to complete a survey on their own. This runs 20 to 30 percentage points higher than the 18 to 22 percent response rate email-based exit tools typically see among frontline employees, particularly for deskless and shift-based staff, like night-shift nurses and float-pool workers, who are hardest to reach once they’ve left. Press Ganey’s exit feedback is survey-based as part of its broader lifecycle offering. See Exit Interview Vendors: The Business Case for Reducing Nurse Turnover for the full case on why healthcare organizations are moving to third-party, interviewer-led exit interviews.
Which Platform Is the Right Fit for Your Organization?
When Press Ganey is the better choice
A large health system with a dedicated analytics team, a need for the deepest possible healthcare-only benchmark data, and active Magnet or NDNQI participation is likely to get more value from Press Ganey’s specialized depth, and has the budget and internal resources to use it well.
When People Element is the better choice
A mid-market hospital or health system, generally 500 to 10,000 employees, that wants one platform covering the full employee lifecycle, transparent pricing without a custom enterprise quote, and a dedicated Client Success Manager without needing a large internal analytics team, is a strong fit for People Element.
Why some healthcare organizations use both
This isn’t always an either/or decision. Many healthcare organizations keep Press Ganey for patient experience surveys, and sometimes employee engagement, while bringing in People Element specifically for exit interviews, pairing Press Ganey’s established patient satisfaction benchmarking with People Element’s live, phone-based exit interview program. For an organization with an existing Press Ganey investment it isn’t ready to replace wholesale, adding People Element for exit interviews is often the lowest-friction way to get higher response rates and more candid departure data without disrupting an established patient experience program.
Questions to ask before switching employee survey vendors
- Does the pricing model scale with what we actually need, or are we paying for modules we won’t use?
- How much internal analytics staff time will this platform require versus provide for us?
- Do we need Magnet-specific or NDNQI-aligned nursing survey instruments, or general healthcare benchmarking?
- What level of dedicated support is included by default, not as an add-on?
- How long is implementation, and does that timeline fit when we need results?
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the difference between People Element and Press Ganey?
People Element is built for mid-market organizations, generally 500 to 10,000 employees, with simple pricing, unlimited surveys and admin users, and a dedicated Client Success Manager included. Press Ganey is built for large healthcare enterprises, with a deeper healthcare-only benchmark database, specialty compliance surveys, and enterprise pricing.
Is there a more affordable alternative to Press Ganey?
For mid-market healthcare organizations, People Element offers simple annual pricing based on employees surveyed, with unlimited surveys and admin users included, which is typically more predictable and often more affordable than Press Ganey’s enterprise or custom pricing model.
Does People Element offer healthcare benchmarking like Press Ganey?
Yes, and at a larger scale by raw response count. Through its collaboration with Mercer, People Element benchmarks against more than 7 million healthcare employee responses, compared to Press Ganey’s 3.4 million. Press Ganey’s smaller database is exclusively healthcare-sourced and offers deeper clinical and nursing-specific indicators through NDNQI, which can matter for large systems doing unit-level clinical benchmarking.
Can mid-market health systems use Press Ganey, or is it built for enterprise only?
Press Ganey can serve organizations of various sizes, but its pricing, implementation, and support model are built primarily around large healthcare enterprises. Mid-market organizations without a dedicated analytics team often find a platform built specifically for their size, like People Element, a better operational fit.
How does People Element pricing compare to Press Ganey?
People Element uses simple annual pricing based on employees surveyed, with unlimited surveys and admin users included. Press Ganey typically prices by module or program under an enterprise or custom quote, which can add cost and complexity for organizations that only need core survey functionality.
Does Press Ganey offer Magnet® and NDNQI-specific nursing surveys?
Yes. Press Ganey’s Nursing Excellence Survey and National Database of Nursing Quality Indicators (NDNQI) are built to support Magnet Recognition Program requirements and nursing-sensitive quality benchmarking, and are used by the large majority of Magnet-recognized facilities.
Does People Element conduct exit interviews by phone?
Yes. People Element’s in-house, U.S.-based interview team calls each exiting employee, with at least eight outreach attempts per departure, and conducts the exit interview live over the phone rather than relying on a survey link. This runs 20 to 30 percentage points higher than the 18 to 22 percent response rate email-based exit tools typically see, and captures 30 to 60 percent more candor than a manager-conducted or self-reported exit interview. Press Ganey’s exit feedback is survey-based.
Can healthcare organizations use both Press Ganey and People Element?
Yes, and many do. A common pairing is Press Ganey for patient experience surveys, and sometimes employee engagement, alongside People Element specifically for exit interviews, taking advantage of People Element’s live phone interview program without replacing an existing Press Ganey patient experience investment.
See Why Mid-Market Healthcare Organizations Choose People Element
People Element delivers enterprise-level employee listening without enterprise complexity. If your organization wants a flexible platform, dedicated partnership, unlimited surveys, transparent pricing, and AI-powered insights that help HR teams move from data to action faster, request a demo or explore plans and pricing to see how People Element compares for your organization specifically.
