Research Drop in Brief:
- Across 729 customers, the top 20 taxonomy items included on employee surveys remained relatively stable between 2022-23 and 2023-24. eSat, our single-item engagement metric (How happy are you working at <COMPANY_NAME>?), was the most frequently utilized item across customers.
- All six of the People Success elements are represented among the top utilized survey items, illustrating that organizations are capturing a holistic view of the employee experience.
- Heading into 2025, we identified three underutilized survey items with direct links to business and employee outcomes that can offer a potential edge in the year ahead: Role Clarity, Career Paths, and Speak My Mind.
#Flexibility #DEI #SkillsEconomy #AI – we are constantly presented with new trends and topics to focus on in the employee experience space that are aligned with societal influences, technology advancements, or economic changes. But are these trends reflected in the most frequently used employee survey items? How much variance do we see in the top utilized items year-over-year? To better understand these questions, we turned to our customers to learn what items they have been prioritizing on their surveys over the past two years. The answer? Of the top 20 most utilized items between 2022-23 and 2023-24, 95% of them are the same.
In essence, there seems to be a core set of employee experiences and outcomes that customers across industries are consistently measuring, forming a foundational sense of employee sentiment to track and evaluate year-over-year (YoY). Beyond the top 20 most utilized items, we start to see some changes in item utilization, with items varying up to 5 percentage points in more or less customer utilization YoY. These shifts show the flexibility within employee surveys for organizations to seek feedback on experiences that may be unique to their context or to trends that are particularly relevant to their industry or size.
In the top 20 most utilized items, one item broke into the top 20 in 2023-24, up 5 spots from the 25th most utilized in 2022-23. This was our Wellbeing item (<COMPANY_NAME> takes a genuine interest in the employees' well-being).
Employee wellbeing is a multi-faceted experience and continues to gain traction as a top priority for organizations and employees, and we see this reflected in the increase of customer utilization in the past year. More organizations are recognizing the tangible benefits of employee wellbeing at work1, and the U.S. Surgeon General released a framework for workplace mental health & wellbeing, underscoring systemic support for holistic employee health2. With the uptick in Wellbeing utilization, we see an example of societal changes reflected in topics of focus for our customers.
Employee engagement remains the north star, but retention intentions remain relatively unexplored
We recommend that your employee surveys include at least one outcome item – something to capture whether the overall employee experience promoted thriving. The current analysis showed that the most frequently utilized survey item year-over-year is eSat, our employee engagement item (How happy are you working at <COMPANY_NAME?), with 90% of customers including this item on their surveys. This aligns with our People Science recommendations, as eSat captures the end result we hope employees feel at work and has been validated as the strongest general predictor of talent and business outcomes of all 11 of our outcome items3. Our research shows that, on average, each additional point of engagement (via eSat) reported by employees correlated with a +$46,511 difference in market cap per employee4. Therefore, we are encouraged by the consistent utilization of this item by our customers as it can help them continue to measure and understand their organization’s engagement levels.
Beyond engagement, our research has also shown that understanding the intended behaviors of your employees can provide a pivotal insight into whether they currently feel committed enough to the organization, their team, or their role to plan to stay onboard for the foreseeable future. Our Intent to Stay item (I plan to be working at <COMPANY_NAME> two years from now) captures this employee intention and we previously found that employees who rate this item unfavorably (Strongly Disagree or Disagree) are 10x as likely to leave their organization within 90 days as those who rate it favorably (Strongly Agree or Agree)5.
However, we discovered that only 24% of our customers included this item in their surveys in the past year. With an ever-present competition for talent, especially within the context of AI workplace transformation6, it can be vital for organizations to get a pulse on the current long-term intentions of their employees. Keep an eye out for our January Research Drop where we will dive deeper into measuring and predicting employee retention!
The top 10 most utilized driver items include all six People Success elements
On the Viva People Science team, we ground our work in our foundational research on what makes employees happy and successful at work. We found six People Success elements that organizations can use to build their own thriving People Success culture: Wellbeing, Connection, Clarity, Empowerment, Growth, and Purpose (learn more here).
Our research shows that these elements are imperative to a holistic and successful employee experience and when we took an even closer look, this time at the top ten driver items included on customer surveys last year (i.e., excluding outcome items such as eSat), we see that these items covered all six of the People Success elements.
From this we can see the distribution of driver items across the People Success elements and that over half of customers integrated these top ten items into their surveys last year (even with over 200 Glint taxonomy items included in customer surveys in the same time frame). While every organization is different and has varying priorities that they need to include in their employee surveys, this broad-based distribution of People Success elements illustrates how Glint customers are not solely focused on one aspect of the employee experience, but instead taking a holistic approach to EX.
Beyond the basics: Three metrics to gain an edge in 2025
For the most part, the foundational survey topics remain consistent year-over-year. But it can be helpful to plug-and-play new items into your employee surveys to continue to evolve your understanding of your employee base and their experience at your organization. To get you started thinking about topics to measure in the new year, we looked at our business outcome and engagement analysis to discover potential high-impact opportunities.
Based on this, three items emerged as high value opportunities for survey inclusion:
- Role Clarity: I clearly understand what is expected of me in my role. Aligned with the People Success element of Clarity.
- Career Path: <MY_MANAGER> has meaningful discussions with me about my career development. Aligned with the People Success element of Growth.
- Speak My Mind: I feel free to speak my mind without fear of negative consequences. Aligned with the People Success element of Empowerment.
The current utilization rate for these items ranges from 23-27%, indicating some customer use but room for growth. We may already be seeing an uptick in interest for these items heading into 2025, as Role Clarity and Career Path had the highest YoY increase in usage across customers (up 5 and 3 percentage points, respectively) across all driver items.
In addition to predicting critical business and employee outcomes, research demonstrates the importance of these topics:
- Role clarity is a critical predictor of job performance, efficiency, intrinsic motivation, and innovative work behaviors7.
- Effective career conversations with your managers can impact employee retention, as companies that excel at internal mobility retain employees for 5.4 years, almost 2x longer than companies that struggle with internal mobility8.
- The Speak My Mind item gets at a component of Psychological Safety, which has a positive impact on turnover, stress, and productivity (Watch our recent webinar on Building Psychological Safety).
Heading into 2025, these three survey items could deepen your understanding of your employees’ experience, especially as the workforce continues to undergo an AI transformation and many employees’ job tasks and career paths are being reimagined. Employees may feel uncertain about their changing role expectations and development opportunities, and anxious about sharing their feelings surrounding the changes. Providing your employees with the opportunity to share their perspective can be a differentiator in maintaining a thriving workforce amidst ongoing changes.
Consider whether including one or more of these items on your surveys in 2025 would help you be better informed on your employees’ experience!
The bottom line: find the balance between consistency and flexibility
What we learned from this month’s research drop was that the topics that are top-of-mind for our customers have been consistent, focusing on a wide range of items spanning the six People Success elements. While this stability is helpful in being able to track employee sentiments over time, there is an opportunity to explore additional topics that may be surfacing for your employees. Try not to get caught up in flashy trends and instead focus on experiences that your employees may not have had the opportunity to provide feedback on in the past that could be critical for your organization’s strategy. But don’t forget – the most important aspect of employee surveying is acting on the feedback you receive. Want to learn more about action taking? Check out our September Research Drop on Empowering Managers to Take Action on Survey Results.
Stay tuned for our January Research Drop to keep up with what the Viva People Science team is learning!
The analysis for this month’s research drop examined LinkedIn Glint customer item utilization between two annual time frames, September 2022 to August 2023 (n = 729 customers) and September 2023 to August 2024 (n = 728 customers). Only items in the Glint taxonomy were included in this analysis, therefore custom items were not analyzed.
1 Forbes. (July 30, 2024). The business case for mental health: Investing in employee well-being.
2 U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Workplace Mental Health & Wellbeing.
3 This research draws from employee survey responses from 1,000+ customers, collected from January 1, 2022, to December 31, 2022. The eSat item was utilized in various tests (e.g., multiple regression) to validate its impact on talent outcomes (e.g., attrition, performance) and business outcomes (e.g., stock return, market cap per employee).
4 Microsoft WorkLab. (April 20, 2023). The new performance equation in the age of AI.
5 Cross-customer attrition analysis (n = 33 customers) from June 2023 examining the proportional difference of all employees who have voluntarily left their companies whose item scores were unfavorable compared to those whose scores were favorable.
6 Mercer. (December 11, 2024). Future of work: 2024 global talent trends.
8 LinkedIn. (2022). Workplace Learning Report: The Transformation of L&D
Updated Jan 13, 2025
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Megan_Benzing
Microsoft
Microsoft
