How to Benchmark Employee Surveys

I spent seven years leading methodology and data science for employee engagement surveys at Peakon and Workday. Over that time, I’ve worked with everyone from tiny tech startups to massive retail brands, mining operations, football clubs, and even government entities. Now that I’m no longer directly involved in survey creation, I can share my honest thoughts on the most effective ways to run employee surveys.

See the complete set of tips & tricks for running employee engagement surveys.

Benchmarking an employee engagement survey by comparing your engagement survey results with external norms can certainly offer valuable context. But it’s not the silver bullet some might expect. Here’s what to keep in mind:

1. Benchmarking Provides Essential Context
   Certain survey topics always score lower. Questions on rewards and workload almost universally come in below team dynamics or culture. That’s not cause for panic. It is just how employee surveys behave. A benchmark helps you see whether those lower scores are par for the course, or if you’ve got a genuine problem.
2. Competitive Comparisons Matter Less Than You Think
   In customer surveys, comparing yourself to direct competitors makes sense. In employee surveys, it doesn’t. People don’t stick neatly within industries anymore. Your top engineer might leave your utility company for a gaming startup, not another utility. So while knowing how you stack up against similar businesses might look nice in a report, it’s often irrelevant for real decision-making. Don’t obsess over competitive benchmarks.
3. Managing Upwards
   Executives and boards will always demand metrics and comparisons. They will poke holes in whatever you present. That means your benchmark quality has to stand up to scrutiny. As a baseline, aim for at least thirty companies in your benchmark. Anything less and you are dealing with shaky averages and potentially misleading conclusions.

Overall, benchmarking is useful and shows you where you stand. Just don’t mistake it for a strategy.

Sunbeam

Sunbeam is a feedback analytics platform designed to make working with open-ended, text-based feedback as straightforward as working with scores. Too many organizations overlook the rich insights hidden in qualitative responses, and Sunbeam aims to fix that. By combining deep industry expertise with cutting-edge AI, Sunbeam makes it simple to analyze and act on text feedback, ultimately helping HR teams unlock the full potential of employee engagement data.