Benchmarking
The Employee Engagement Benchmarks Q4 2023
Gain valuable insights for measuring your team’s engagement levels, drivers, and eNPS trends with our benchmark data – collated from over 500,000 employee responses from various industries and organisations. This data is from October to December 2023 (Q4 2023).
See the latest benchmarking results for your industry
Engagement Index
Hive’s Engagement Index is made up of the responses to 3 core questions measuring Pride, Advocacy and Loyalty across an organisation (measured on a scale of 0 to 10).
Compare your organisation’s Engagement index against the benchmark to get a snapshot of how your employees are feeling.
Not sure what your score is? We can help. We can help.
Our Engagement Index data reveals a slight increase for Q4 of 2023. After some fluctuations throughout the year, we’re thrilled to see this score reaching one of it’s higher points. It’s a clear sign that organisations are actively enhancing their engagement strategies.
The loyalty metric has continued to see a climb from 6.1 in Q3 to 6.4 in Q4 2023. This positive trend indicates that factors contributing to loyalty such as job satisfaction, organisational culture or opportunities for professional growth and development are on an upward trajectory.
Combining the loyalty spike with a quarter-to-quarter increase in advocacy, alongside a consistently high pride score of 7.3, hints at a concerted effort by organisations to foster a robust company culture and cultivate a positive work environment. It appears that the commitment to employee satisfaction and engagement, on the whole, is yielding optimistic results.
Looking at the Engagement Index by industry, there is a notable drop in both Health, and Entertainment and Recreation.
In the Health sector, various factors including ongoing strikes related to pay and hours, compounded by understaffing, elevated stress levels, and prevalent burnout, likely played a role in contributing to this drop.
For the Entertainment and Recreation industry a drop in engagement could be attributed to factors such as increased workload throughout the holiday season, or performance and goal pressures for the last quarter of 2023. To pinpoint the specific reasons for the drop of employee engagement in Q4 2023, it would be important to conduct employee surveys and gather feedback within your organisation during that time frame.
Top 5 engagement themes to emerge from Q4
1. Confidence, Motivation and Communication (Strategic Direction)
2. Autonomy and Empowerment of Meaningful Work
3. Wellbeing and Balance
4. Relationships and Growth and Development
5. <span data-metadata=""><span data-buffer="">Reward and Recognition
Top 5 engagement themes to emerge from Q3
1. <span data-buffer="">Inclusion & Belonging
2. Growth & Development
3. Leadership Behaviours
4. Autonomy & Empowerment of Meaningful Work
5. Confidence, Motivation and Communication Meaningful Work
Top 5 engagement themes to emerge from Q4 :
Relationships
Driver of engagement in 50% of all engagement reports
Confidence, Motivation and Communication (Strategic Direction)
Drivers of engagement in 41% of all engagement reports
Well-being and Balance and Inclusion and Belonging
Drivers of engagement in 38% of all engagement reports
Leadership Behaviours
Driver of engagement in 31% of all engagement reports
Autonomy and Empowerment of Meaningful Work
Drivers of engagement in 28% of all engagement reports
employee Net Promoter Score (eNPS)
October -December 2023
(Q4 2023)
employee Net Promoter Score (eNPS) is an internationally recognised measure of engagement using the question ‘How likely are you to recommend our organisation as a good place to work?’ with detractors, passives and promoters. A positive score means an organisation has more advocates (promoters) than it does detractors. It is measured on a -100 to +100 scale.
Despite increases in Engagement Index data for Q4 2023, eNPS has seen a 5 point decrease, suggesting potential concerns that may not be fully captured by the broader metrics. This decline could be attributed to more specific issues or challenges faced by employees. For example, a communication gap between leadership and staff regarding positive changes, a mismatch between employee expectations and the improvements reflected in the Engagement Index, or potential dissatisfaction arising from recent organisational changes.
During Q4 2023, the Entertainment and Recreation industry experienced a notable decline, warranting attention. Similar to the Engagement Index, this dip could be attributed to a variety of factors, mirroring the challenges often associated with the busy holiday season such as burnout, working hours or stress. Gathering employee feedback is a key tool for organisations to understand what challenges employees are facing and how to address them in this time.
Further analysis from our People Science team
Throughout Q4 numerous free-text questions have been asked to employees so that organisations can deep dive into employees’ thoughts, feelings and opinions surrounding specific topic areas. Of the range of questions asked, the most popular question categories were:
- Enhancing the employee experience
- Feedback and suggestions
- Wellbeing at work
Wellbeing at work
Example questions:
- I rarely worry about work outside of my working hours. If you do worry about work, what do you worry about?
- What makes a good day at work for you?
- What is a healthy work-life balance to you? Are you able to maintain a healthy work-life balance?
Popular themes:
Demands and resources
Meaningful work
Job Security
Support
Relationships
Work-life balance
Enhancing the employee experience
Example questions:
- How might senior managers/leaders improve employee experience here?
- What could we change to make your working experience better?
- If there is one thing you think we should improve, what is it?
- What more can we do to become an even more inclusive employer?
Popular themes:
Pay and benefits
Workload
Improved resources
Recognition
Organisational communication
Progression and development
Feedback and suggestions
Example questions:
- What are the things we are doing really well here?
- What do you feel our company has done well over the past year?
- Is there anything we have missed that you would like to be asked about in future surveys?
- If you could change one thing about your current job, what would it be?
Popular themes:
People-focused environment
Positive working environment
Teamwork
Resources to thrive
Workload and pay
Work-life balance
Further analysis from our People Science team
Throughout Q4 numerous free-text questions have been asked to employees so that organisations can deep dive into employees’ thoughts, feelings and opinions surrounding specific topic areas. Of the range of questions asked, the most popular question categories were:
- Enhancing the employee experience
- Feedback and suggestions
- Wellbeing at work
Enhancing the employee experience
Example questions:
- How might senior managers/leaders improve employee experience here?
- What could we change to make your working experience better?
- If there is one thing you think we should improve, what is it?
- What more can we do to become an even more inclusive employer?
Popular themes:
Pay and benefits
Workload
Improved resources
Recognition
Organisational communication
Progression and development
Feedback and suggestions
Example questions:
- What are the things we are doing really well here?
- What do you feel our company has done well over the past year?
- Is there anything we have missed that you would like to be asked about in future surveys?
- If you could change one thing about your current job, what would it be?
Popular themes:
People-focused environment
Positive working environment
Teamwork
Resources to thrive
Workload and pay
Work-life balance
Effective communication
Wellbeing at work
Example questions:
- I rarely worry about work outside of my working hours. If you do worry about work, what do you worry about?
- What makes a good day at work for you?
- What is a healthy work-life balance to you? Are you able to maintain a healthy work-life balance?
Popular themes:
Demands and resources
Meaningful work
Job Security
Support
Relationships
Work-life balance
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