Engagement: Feature Overview

This visualization shows the comparison of Performance Ratings and Engagement and is intended to display how engaged your top performers are.

• Y-axis (vertical): # of employees.
• X-axis (horizontal): Timeframe by quarter.
• Color key: Engagement level (based on results from engagement surveys).

This visualization shows the engagement level of employees within your organization.

• Y-axis (vertical): # of employees.
• X-axis (horizontal): Timeframe by quarter.
• Color key: Engagement level (based on results from engagement surveys).

Our recommended core EngageSurvey is designed to provide leaders with a full picture of engagement in their organization. It contains 58 statements, including the 7 statements that we use to calculate your organization's Engagement Score and questions used to measure Engagement Drivers. Participants are asked to rate their agreement to each statement question on a 5-scale Likert scale (strongly agree > strongly disagree) and also have the option to provide open-text responses to questions that are automatically generated based how they responded to Driver questions. View the core engagement survey in-app here.

Statements included in the core engagement survey are broken down into four sections:

1. Your Work Experience: Asks respondents to reflect on their work experience.
2. Organization Leadership: Asks respondents to reflect on the culture of leaders within the organization.
3. Your Manager: Asks respondents to reflect on the working relationship they have with their manager.
4. Your Coworkers: Asks respondents to reflect on the working relationship they have with their immediate coworkers.

On average, this survey takes 6 minutes to complete. This number of statements, and the "I feel" wording we use, are necessary to statistically cast a net wide enough to highlight high and low engagement within a team.

Engagement reporting makes it easy to decide where to focus your engagement strategy. Understand engagement at the company, department, or team level, and slice and dice the data to identify wins and challenges across any demographic. Plus, compare progress over time and against other companies in your industry with benchmarking. Learn more about reporting options in Engagement.

In today’s competitive business landscape, employee engagement is more crucial than ever. Yet, identifying and prioritizing the right areas to improve engagement can be challenging. 15Five’s Predictive Impact Model revolutionizes this process, giving HR leaders and managers precise insights into the factors that influence engagement. Leveraging advanced machine learning, this model allows organizations to make data-driven decisions that drive meaningful improvements in employee satisfaction, productivity, and retention.

Action Plans enable leaders to turn insights into tangible improvements. Based on Predictive Impact Model insights, Action Plans allow HR and managers to target specific engagement drivers and statements with high impact scores, focusing efforts where they will make the biggest difference. Leaders can set clear objectives, assign ownership, and track progress over time, creating accountability and ensuring that engagement efforts are both strategic and measurable. Action Plans bridge the gap between data and action, helping to drive continuous improvement in employee engagement.

We understand that flexibility is key to getting the insights you need. Engagement admins can create custom campaigns to fit the needs of their organization. A custom campaign can include any of the various survey options we offer. You can also create targeted campaigns, which only go out to specific subsets of your organization.

Express surveys allow you to quickly launch an engagement campaign that contains our three most popular and science-backed engagement surveys (Engagement + Drivers, Manager Effectiveness, and eNPS). You can also create an engagement campaign that features just the seven questions that are a part of the calculation for the engagement score. Learn more about each of these survey options.

The Engagement Score is an overall measurement of how engaged employees are within your organization— think of it as a "pulse" on employees’ current emotional and psychological state. This score reflects employees' personal and emotional psychological motivations for their work.

The Engagement Score is based on participant responses to 7 statements:

1. The work that I do gives me a sense of pride.
2. I feel a sense of happiness when I am working very hard.
3. I find it very easy to stay focused on what is most important for me to accomplish at work.
4. I find my work to be full of meaning and purpose.
5. When I wake up, I feel like going to work.
6. I am able to get into a state of complete focus while working.
7. I love the feeling of working.

Learn more about the Engagement Score and other reporting options.

Engagement admins have the option to add eNPS (employee Net Promoter Score) to engagement campaigns. When eNPS is added, respondents are asked: "On a scale from 0-10, how likely are you to recommend {Organization Display Name} as a great place to work?". Respondents also have the option to provide an open response to the prompt, "What was the primary reason for your answer?".
Measuring eNPS internally is a good practice for organizations because it provides a simple and effective way to gauge employee satisfaction and engagement and track progress over time.

Once an engagement campaign concludes, you can view breakdown and trending eNPS reporting. Learn more about eNPS in Engagement.

There are 17 drivers that employee engagement research identifies as influencers or "levers" of engagement. These engagement drivers collectively contribute to creating a positive and engaging work environment that promotes employee satisfaction, productivity, and overall organizational success.

The Statements report contains all survey statements alongside their associated engagement drivers and Predictive Impact Scores— so you can see how much influence each driver statement had on overall engagement.

Understanding engagement survey results is key to making informed decisions, but not everyone needs access to the same level of detail. There are three levels of results visibility you can assign to employees—Full, Limited, and Limited + Groups. By properly setting up visibility, you can ensure HR leaders, managers, and other stakeholders can access the insights they need to drive meaningful change. Learn how to assign results visibility.

Unbiased and honest survey participation is critical for an organization to receive accurate engagement insights from a survey. For this reason, 15Five intentionally designed our system to provide trust and security to employees. To ensure this, 15Five rigidly enforces our confidentiality policy in a few different ways:

• Participation is confidential: 15Five does not share which employees did or did not participate in an engagement survey. We do, however, allow admins to see the response rates of groups during an engagement campaign.
• No individual survey responses are identified. No one in your organization can see how an individual responded to statements in an engagement survey. Engagement results are only available in aggregate by groups that received no fewer than 3-5 respondents (see "Minimum respondent threshold for engagement results" below for more information).
• Written responses are always anonymous. All written responses, which we call "Dynamic Feedback," are presented anonymously and can only be filtered by a single group type (e.g. by Department). For Dynamic Feedback comments to be available for a group, at least 3-5 employees from that group must have responded to the engagement survey. If the group meets the confidentiality criteria, leaders with results access for that group can read any responses that are received even if we receive fewer than five pieces of Dynamic Feedback.
• Minimum respondent threshold for engagement results. Survey confidentiality within 15Five's Engagement feature prevents engagement data from being displayed for groups with fewer than 3-5 members, or in instances where fewer than 3-5 people from a group respond to an engagement survey. While the default and recommended threshold is 5 respondents, Engagement and Organization Admins have the option to customize the threshold to either 3 or 4 respondents.

Learn more in our "Confidentiality for engagement surveys" and "Set a confidentiality threshold for engagement campaigns" articles.

As renowned management consultant and author Peter Drucker said, "If you can't measure it, you can't improve it." Just as businesses track KPIs quarterly, employee engagement deserves the same attention. In just six minutes every three months, you can capture real-time insights on employee sentiment—ensuring you’re never blindsided by engagement shifts due to new hires, business changes, or turnover.

Frequent feedback gives leadership a competitive edge, allowing for faster course corrections before issues escalate. Employees tend to recall recent experiences, so quarterly surveys provide more relevant data than an annual review.

Most importantly, employees share feedback when they see it leads to action. When managers take accountability for engagement, small improvements across teams drive powerful cultural growth.

That said, flexibility matters. Some companies alternate between performance reviews and engagement surveys each quarter. The key is consistency—ensuring you regularly listen, act, and drive behaviors that strengthen your organization.

Before sending out a survey, it's important to make sure that employee data is accurate and actionable. Starting with good data integrity will help ensure that your results are accurate and insightful.

Keep these tips in mind as you go through employee, group, and attribute data:

• Complete a data clean-up in your HRIS and request employees to update their profiles regularly for any data that they opt-in for (updated locations, demographics, etc).
• If your organization doesn't use an HRIS, do an audit of employee data in 15Five. You can export a CSV of all employee data by clicking Download current structure on the bulk import page in 15Five, make any necessary changes, and then perform a bulk import to get the updated employee data into 15Five.
• Consider any subsets of people you would want to be able to view engagement results for and create groups or attributes that you can use to filter results by. Check out our "People and data management options in 15Five" article for more information about groups and attributes.
• Build your groupings around people responsibility and lines of authority, not around your budget or financial org structure (if the two aren't in alignment). Engagement survey results are nothing if not actionable and meaningfully tied to areas of influence for organizational leaders and teams.

Changing the structure of groups or attributes between surveys will break trending data and prevent you from seeing how engagement is changing over time. Before you launch your first engagement survey, we recommend taking the time to ensure your people data in 15Five is accurate and actionable, then making minimal changes moving forward so that you can view trending data.

Before adding questions to an engagement campaign, ask yourself: is our leadership ready to take action on the items we're asking employees about? Soliciting feedback via an engagement survey is not a toy or a novelty, and comes with some risk of harm. For example, we do not recommend including the "Diversity & Inclusion Progress" survey in an engagement campaign if you haven't consulted with a DEI consultant/expert (can be internal or external) and can't take action on results. Understand your capacity and desire for change before launching a campaign.

If your people aren't responding to engagement surveys, results won't be reflective of engagement within your organization. Think of creative ways to drive up survey rates. For example:

• Have your CEO share posts in a company-wide communication channel highlighting the percentage of people who have already responded, reminding people why participation is important and how easy is it to participate (takes less than 6 minutes and can be completed from any device), and nudging people who haven't yet responded to submit their surveys
• Offer prizes to the teams or departments that reach a 100% response rate
• If you're in an office, post posters around common areas reminding people to participate and sharing the deadline
• Have managers announce the engagement survey in their team meetings or channels.
• Remind people to submit their surveys in as many channels as possible. Oftentimes, people simply forget to submit their surveys— they're not intentionally declining to participate.
• Act on results following an engagement survey. While this suggestion can't be done in the moment, it's vital to ensure that people remember why participation matters and how it can positively impact their work lives.

Our Global Average Response rate is 82% when following our default recommended reminder cadence. This can vary depending on the accuracy and type of contact information, industry, internal promotion efforts, and of course employee perception of action over time. Really work towards pursuing the highest rate possible!

Employee engagement surveys are only valuable if their results are analyzed, shared, and acted upon. A WorkLeap study found that 29% of employees view engagement surveys as “useless”— likely because survey results are often collected without follow-through.

With 15Five’s enhanced reporting and Predictive Impact Model, your organization can turn survey results into targeted, effective actions that demonstrate commitment to a more engaging workplace. Here’s how:

1. Analyze Engagement Survey Results: With the new reporting tools, take a close look at your engagement data to understand key drivers, strengths, and areas for improvement. Use tools like the Engagement Breakdown and Predictive Impact Scores to focus on the statements most influencing engagement, then identify trends and opportunities by department, team, or demographic.

2. Create Targeted Action Plans: Based on these insights, create focused Action Plans around areas with the highest impact. 15Five’s Action Plans allow you to target specific drivers, assign ownership, and set goals to address issues that matter most to employees. Managers can also create Action Plans tailored to their teams, addressing group-specific needs based on high-impact data.

3. Communicate Results and Action Plans: Share both the survey results and the organization’s action plan with employees, reinforcing that their input drives real change. Present key findings in an all-hands meeting or department meetings, and outline how leadership and managers will act on specific results to make a positive impact on the workplace.

4. Report Back on Progress and Success: Keep employees informed about the progress of post-survey actions with regular updates, whether monthly or quarterly, via company-wide channels or meetings. When announcing future surveys, remind employees of actions taken based on their feedback—reinforcing that their voices matter and encouraging participation.

Following each engagement survey, managers can now leverage 15Five’s predictive insights and targeted recommendations to address specific drivers that impact engagement within their teams. 15Five’s new reporting capabilities, including Predictive Impact Scores, make it easy for leaders to create data-driven, impactful Action Plans based on real employee feedback.

15Five’s HR Outcomes Dashboard provides a reliable way for HR executives to consistently capture, synthesize, and present the outcomes they are measuring and working to improve: manager effectiveness, employee engagement, employee performance, and regrettable turnover. This allows HR leaders to show clear and concise data that directly links programs like employee learning and development to outcomes like employee retention, which can, in turn, be connected to business outcomes like customer satisfaction and revenue.

As you configure the HR Outcomes Dashboard, you can choose to pull in data from engagement surveys in the following ways:

• You can measure Employee Engagement using your organization's most recent Engagement Score.
• You can include scores from your organization's most recent Manager Effectiveness Survey in the calculate of your organization's Manager Effectiveness Indicator.

Pulling engagement survey data into the HR Outcomes Dashboard gives you a fuller picture of employee engagement and allows you to see how HR initiatives impact engagement within your organization.

• Quick-launch guide: Launch an engagement campaign
• Create an engagement campaign
• Configure Engagement feature settings
• Analyze engagement results using the HR Outcomes Dashboard
• Predictive Impact Model: Tool Overview
• Action Plans: Tool Overview
• Confidentiality for engagement surveys
• Engagement for employees
• Engagement for managers

You can access role-specific Engagement articles by navigating to the "Using 15Five" section of the Help Center, selecting your role, and then clicking "Engagement surveys."

• Engagement Survey Prep & Launch for Admins
• Engagement for HR Admins
• Engagement for Managers

• Engagement Feature Overview (2 min): This video provides a high-level overview of how 15Five’s Engagement feature helps you measure and improve employee engagement with science-backed surveys, actionable insights, and data-driven tools to drive higher performance and retention.
• Create and Launch an Engagement Campaign (3 min): This video from our "Engagement Survey Prep & Launch" Admin Academy course shows you how to create and launch an engagement campaign in 15Five, using either express surveys or custom campaigns to gather valuable insights from your employees.
• Reporting options for engagement surveys (6 min): This video provides an overview of the reporting options available for engagement surveys in 15Five, including how to analyze results, uncover key trends, and identify actions to improve engagement, performance, and retention.
• Access your company's engagement results (Admins) (1 min): This video from our "Engagement survey analysis for admins" Academy course shows admins how to access and navigate engagement survey results in 15Five.
• Access your company's engagement results (Managers) (1 min): This video from our "Engagement for Managers" Academy course shows managers how to access and navigate engagement survey results in 15Five.
• Engagement Action Plans: Process Overview (3 min): This video explains how managers can create and manage Engagement Action Plans in 15Five to address survey results and take meaningful actions that improve team engagement.

• Increasing Engagement in 2025: Start the Year Off Strong (60 min): Discover how 15Five's advanced analytics and predictive impact model empower HR leaders to interpret engagement data, prioritize impactful actions, and drive meaningful improvements in employee performance and retention. Live event held on December 5th, 2024.
• Welcome to the Predictive Era 🔮 Unlock What Truly Drives Engagement (60 min): Learn how to use 15Five's new Predictive Impact Model to predict, prioritize, and take strategic actions to drive meaningful improvements in your organization. Live event held on November 19th, 2024.
• Why Engagement is the Key to High Performance and Reaching Your Full Potential (60 min): Join 15Five's Courtney Bigony, MAPP, and Jeff Smith, Ph.D., as they introduce a new and differentiated approach to engagement that measurably unlocks the potential of your workforce.
• Engagement, Elevated: New Ways to Identify and Engage High Performers (60 min): Top performers are vital to every company’s success. Now more than ever organizations are scrambling to define outstanding performance, while also rewarding and recognizing the employees who consistently move the needle forward. In this webinar, Jennie Yang, VP of People & Culture at 15Five, and Vince Huang, former Chief Product Officer at 15Five, sit down and discuss innovative ways for organizations to identify and engage their high performers.

• How to Recognize Employee Disengagement in The Workplace (And What To Do About It) (8 min)
• How to Implement Manager Enablement to Boost Employee Engagement (6 min read)
• 6 Steps to Creating an Employee Engagement Plan (7 min read)
• Creating Employee Engagement: Concrete Examples in Action (7 min read)

Check out all of our engagement-centric blog posts here.

• Engage to Excel: 15Five’s Employee Engagement Playbook: In this eBook, you will explore the strategic impact of employee engagement—how it drives innovation, retention, and business success. You’ll also learn how to measure engagement, turn insights into action, and make a compelling case for executive buy-in.
• 15Five Insights for Executives: The Employee Engagement Trends Report: In this eBook, we analyzed engagement data for nearly 13,000 employees and distilled our findings into actionable takeaways, insights, and tips to help you understand and drive employee engagement.
• Your 6-Step Guide to Boosting Employee Engagement: In this guide, we map out the six steps an organization should take to consistently increase their employee engagement over time.
• The Power of Engagement: Measuring Behaviors that Fuel Performance: Employee engagement is vital to keeping your business afloat and an important metric for leaders to focus on. But most organizations are measuring factors that don’t impact engagement and definitely don’t impact performance. In this eBook, you’ll discover how you can measure behaviors that drive engagement and support your people in reaching their full potential.

Check out all of our engagement-specific content here.