Improve Employee Feelings Around Work by 17% – Here’s How Payroll Vault Did It
Payroll Vault participates in both Franchisee and Employee Satisfaction surveys with FBR, boasting an impressive rise in their 2025 employee satisfaction results.
In the same way that Franchisee Satisfaction surveys give franchise teams insights into improving franchisee training, operations, support, and more, Employee Satisfaction surveys help franchise teams (like Payroll Vault) improve culture and satisfaction with their employees.
Payroll Vault is an example of a franchise brand that uses BOTH franchisee and employee satisfaction surveys to improve their company and find new growth opportunities. In their 2025 employee survey results, they saw a 17% increase in the “Employees feeling positively about their work” area of the survey.
We spoke with Tricia Petteys, CEO of Payroll Vault, to discuss how they created this improvement and to dig deeper into some of the other notable scoring areas of their brand.
Meet the Brand: Payroll Vault Franchise
Payroll Vault Franchise is one of the leading payroll and HR companies for small businesses in the United States. As an emerging leader in a $75 billion industry, Payroll Vault continues to grow with its unique B2B model with a focus on franchisee lifestyle flexibility.
Payroll Vault has participated in FBR’s franchisee surveys since 2014 and employee surveys since 2021. They have made multiple award lists over the years, including recognition as an FBR Hall of Fame award winner and a 5-time Franchising at WORK award finalist.
“One of our five core values as a company is communication & collaboration,” shares Petteys.
“The FBR surveys speak to that core value. Every time we ask for feedback, we know there may be some areas we could be improving. A lot of the time, the data gives us validation on the areas that are going well, but sometimes it tells us something new!”
The Challenge: Improve Employee Satisfaction Scores
Payroll Vault has always been very intentional about culture as a brand. “Validating what’s working and taking feedback for what’s not working is CRUCIAL to keeping company culture strong,” explains Petteys.
The FBR surveys were the perfect match for Payroll Vault’s approach to culture and feedback when they first started with the surveys back in 2014. Since then, the Payroll Vault team has done some really cool things with the survey data that have contributed to the score improvement in recent years.
“We share the FBR survey summary slides with our entire franchise team in a call each year,” shares Petteys. “We like to share any specific kudos or names that were positively mentioned to highlight people doing amazing things in our system.”
In those calls, Petteys explains that the whole team goes through the challenges, ideas, and critical feedback from last year’s survey data. They ideate and workshop solutions together, asking questions like “What would THIS solution look like in action?” and “Where would challenges arise with this solution?”
By workshopping ideas and solutions as a team, the survey data is viewed as a valuable tool for growth, and employee engagement increases.
Here’s a great example of how Payroll Vault has seen improvements in its employee engagement by listening and responding to their team’s feedback:
Based on past survey feedback and requests from employees, Payroll Vault had separated the EOS® frameworks for two of their home office departments.
But after the leadership team received some new feedback and data from their employees, they are starting to discuss the idea of combining the EOS frameworks for those departments again.
Petteys explains the takeaway from this example:
“We believe it is okay to make changes when something doesn’t work. It’s never about blame. It’s always about growing together. That’s what surveys and feedback opportunities create as a team.”
Listening to feedback, making adjustments, and then surveying the results of that change to see if further improvements are needed is such a powerful way to create trust and engagement with employees and team members.
Franchisee Satisfaction: How Training Scores Went Up 21%
Another notable result from the Payroll Vault 2025 survey was an increase in the Training Programs score for franchisees.
The Payroll Vault team had made a major software change back in 2022 and, like any franchisor knows, that comes with challenges.
“We were all learning together, really, and the training around the new tool was definitely lacking back then,” explains Petteys.
Improving training and support around the new software and other elements of franchisee operations was a big step in improving their Franchisee Satisfaction Index (FSI) scores since 2022. But another result from implementing this new software? Feedback from franchisees about the success and interest in focus groups.
“We had tried creating an FAC [Franchise Advisory Council] when we had maybe 20-ish units,” shares Petteys. “It didn’t work out amazingly, so we put a pause on it. But for the software decision, we brought together a franchisee focus group and it worked great!”
After the success of the focus group for the software decision, the Payroll Vault franchisees thought it would be great to have more groups like it for different parts of the business. Now, Payroll Vault uses focus groups for all kinds of initiatives.
“Even when franchisees don’t participate in the FAC or focus groups, just being asked to join these groups creates that sense of involvement that helps increase franchisee engagement. I think that’s a part of the increase to those FSI scores,” shares Petteys.
See the Results
Payroll Vault continues to amaze us with its high satisfaction scores from both franchisees and employees. Although their scores have been high consistently, the scores from 2025 still showed some fantastic improvements, showing the Payroll Vault team’s continuous efforts to grow and refine their business.
Employee satisfaction results:
- Employee engagement is up 4%
- All employee survey categories are up year over year
- Employees feeling positively about their work is up 12 points (16%)
- Communication from senior management is up 6 points (7%)
- 94% agree that senior management is fostering teamwork, inclusion, and diversity (up 6 points)
Franchisee satisfaction results:
- Leadership score is up 6 points (8%) year over year
- Training & Support section is up 9 points (9%) year over year
- Training & Support programs are up 12 points (21%)
- System-wide communications are up 9 points (14%)
- 98% agree that senior management encourages a strong team culture
- “Involves franchisees” is up 16 points (24%)
Interested in getting results like these for your own system? Franchise Business Review helps franchise brands at all phases of growth to understand franchisee and employee satisfaction and identify areas to improve. Contact us to get started!
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