Build a workforce wellbeing check-in yourself only if you are ready to own the seven jobs behind the survey screen, from anonymity enforcement to crisis signposting and erasure.
The survey screen is the easy part. The table below lists what a platform has to get right to put wellbeing measurement in front of employers, what building each part involves, and how the Intelligent Wellbeing Engine handles it. We sell the second option, so read it knowing that. The last section says when building it yourself is the better choice.
| The job | What building it involves | How the IWE does it |
|---|---|---|
| 1. Anonymity threshold | A minimum group size that no export, admin role, support process or API parameter can get around. If the rule lives in display code, the number still exists in your database and your exports. | A CHECK constraint, aggregates_firewall in migration 0001_iwe_reference_core.sql, means a result for fewer than five people cannot be stored. Why five. |
| 2. Confidence intervals | A 95% interval on every figure, computed with the t-distribution for small groups, stored with the value so a dashboard cannot quietly narrow it. Someone on the team has to own the statistics. | Computed and stored on each result row, with the t multiplier from a lookup function, iwe.t975. The method, with a calculator. |
| 3. Small groups | Labels for fragile results, withheld rows that say why, and no filters that slice a workforce down to a few people. | Results from five to nine people are labelled indicative in the row. Withheld rows carry a coded reason. Units do not nest, so there are no team cuts to slice. |
| 4. Question licensing | Rights to every item you ask. Two widely copied scales need permission for commercial use (details below). Check before you ship. | Pulse items are written by the IWE or come from sources free for commercial use. Each instrument carries a commercial_clear flag, set only with licence evidence on file, and the deep-dive functions refuse any instrument where it is false. |
| 5. DPIA and processor terms | Check-in answers are health data in our reading, so each employer needs a DPIA and your contracts need processor terms. How we read the ICO guidance. | A data processing agreement accepted at go-live, and a DPIA template with the facts about the IWE filled in, on request. |
| 6. Crisis signposting | Help for someone who is struggling, shown every time, worded with care, and impossible for a customer to switch off or put behind a paywall. | The hosted check-in always carries Samaritans, Mind and the person's workplace EAP. The host product cannot edit or remove it. |
| 7. Erasure | Deleting one person's answers and identity on request, proving it happened, and deciding what happens to results already computed. | DELETE /respondents/{id} removes the person's answers and identity and records a receipt. Results for closed rounds are not recalculated. |
WHO-5 Well-Being Index. The World Health Organization publishes the WHO-5 under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 IGO licence (WHO-5, WHO/UCN/MSD/MHE/2024.1). WHO's copyright policy says "Permission is required for commercial uses and licensing of WHO materials, such as using the material in the context of a commercial activity" (WHO copyright). Checked 28 September 2026.
WEMWBS and SWEMWBS. The University of Warwick says its Commercial Licence "is specifically designed for businesses and profit-making organisations", priced each year from £90 for up to 30 participants to £6,000 for up to 30,000 (Warwick, WEMWBS licences). Its FAQ says a third party "developing a system or application including WEMWBS" needs "a full commercial licence in place before including the scale in such systems" (Warwick, WEMWBS FAQ). Checked 28 September 2026.
The IWE uses neither scale in its pulse. Its engine seed replaced the WHO-5 with the ONS-4 personal wellbeing questions, which are Crown copyright under the Open Government Licence.
Either way, the sandbox is free. Try the embed before you decide.