What’s New with Viva Glint Benchmarks?

Viva Glint has some exciting news! We’ve streamlined the benchmark generation process and released new global benchmarks for 2025. Read on for the latest about our benchmark types, automated generation methodology, and a review of how scores have evolved since our last release in 2024.

Viva Glint maintains a rich normative database of these cross-company scores. With over 10+ years of benchmarking experience, Glint’s database includes data from 700+ global customers across virtually every industry. Because most Viva Glint customers use a common set of core survey questions, Viva Glint can calculate robust benchmarks on a large number of survey items using customer data exclusively. This extensive dataset provides breadth (many companies, regions, industries) and recency (rolling 12-month data) for each benchmark comparison.  The Viva Glint benchmarks are only generated for Viva Glint standard items.

Our benchmark suites give you options for the best score comparison

Viva Glint offers a variety of benchmark datasets, called “suites” for different contexts, all drawn from that common dataset. Key benchmark suites include:

• Global benchmark – An average of scores across all Glint customers (all industries and regions).
• High-Performing benchmarks – Top 10% or top 25% of organizations (sometimes called “global top 10% / 25%”) for a given item, providing an aspirational norm. (Note: These are calculated as the threshold score to be in the top tier, not a simple average of top companies.)
• Industry benchmarks – Norms computed from companies in a particular industry (e.g. Tech, Healthcare, Finance, etc.).
• Country or Regional benchmarks – Norms from companies in a given country or geographic region (available for common regions like North America, Europe, etc.).
• Employee Lifecycle (i.e., onboarding and exit) are included in the Global, Industry, Country and Region suites when there is sufficient data.
• Specialized benchmarks – For specific use cases, such as Nursing Excellence in healthcare, Viva Glint provides tailored comparisons for those populations.

Getting your 2025 benchmarks

Note that in Viva (the M365 environment), organizations must opt in to use external benchmarks. Opting in ensures your company consents to your data being used in the anonymous pool for benchmarks – which also enables you to see the benchmarks.

Opt-in is a one-time step by survey administrators which allows external benchmark processing for their survey data. This ensures benchmarks will be available in their company reports.

To opt in and gain access to the 2025 benchmarks,
follow the steps outlined in this Learn document.

If a company has not opted in, they will not see benchmark comparisons in any reports. They will only see internal comparators. Admins can Opt-in or Opt-out at any time.

Viva Glint’s new benchmark generation process ensures greater confidentiality

In compliance with Microsoft data security standards, the People Science team has implemented an automated process that enables us to generate and review benchmark suites without accessing or seeing customer data directly.

Here’s an overview of how Viva Glint automatically creates and refreshes the benchmark suites:

Note: Customers who opt out are not included in this process.

This new process ensures that Viva Glint’s benchmarks are robust, current, and reflective of real-world data. A few important points about our benchmark methodology:

1. Refresh Cadence: Viva Glint refreshes Global benchmarks twice yearly (for example, “2024 Global June” and “2024 Global December” versions). High-performing global benchmarks (top 10% / 25%) are also refreshed twice a year.
   The industry and country benchmarks refresh annually.
2. Rolling 12-Month Data Window: Viva Glint uses a rolling one-year window of data for benchmark refreshes to ensure recency. The database contains hundreds of millions of responses – so one year of data provides a reliable sample for most norms*. This 12-month cadence provides:
3. Statistical Stability: Ensures benchmarks capture true norms but are not overly reactive to short-term fluctuations.
4. Planning Alignment: Annual updates align with organizational planning and goal-setting cycles.
5. Actionability: Frequent enough to reflect change, but stable enough to guide decisions.
6. Client-Only Data: With Viva Glint’s robust customer base, we’ve used a client-only approach for benchmark data since 2021.
7. Representativeness: Thanks to hundreds of organizations and millions of employee responses in the data, Viva Glint’s benchmarks are very robust across industries and regions. Industry suites similarly aggregate dozens or hundreds of companies in each sector.
8. Coverage: Benchmarks are only provided for items that meet a strict usage threshold. At present, over 175 survey items are benchmarked, covering all the common engagement and experience topics in Viva Glint’s surveys.
9. Survey response confidentiality and data security: The benchmarks generation process is completely eyes-off. This automated process generates only aggregated scores. This process ensures data security and individual respondent confidentiality.

*To ensure adequate data coverage, some specialty benchmark suites may use a 24- month data window.

Using your benchmarks in the Viva Glint reporting experience

In Viva Glint’s reporting dashboard, benchmark comparisons are integrated into the results views so that managers and leaders can easily see them. Here’s a brief review of key features.

• Default Comparison: When a survey is configured, the program admin selects a default comparison setting for reports. This could be an internal baseline (like “Company Overall”) or an external benchmark (such as “Global benchmark”).
• Report Settings – Changing Comparators: Users with access to reports (e.g., HRBPs, managers) can change the external benchmark suite (or select another comparison group) interactively in the Reports tab for a survey
• Accessing Specific Benchmark Values: In some parts of the Viva Glint report (such as detailed views for each question), you might see the actual benchmark score provided for reference. For example, clicking on a particular question could show a breakdown like: Team X score: 60; Company: 65; Benchmark: 70.
• Benchmark Suites Names: The specific benchmark being used is often identified by name/year. For example, you might see “Global 2024 (Jun)” or “Tech Industry 2023” as the benchmark label. Viva Glint updates these names with each refresh (see the latest nomenclature in the ‘benchmark suites’ section above). Typically, the admin will choose the most appropriate suite (often the overall Global benchmark or a high-performing global) as the default external comparator. If needed, multiple external benchmarks can be made available.
• Heatmaps and Exports: Benchmark data can also be included in heatmap reports and Excel exports.

In summary, Viva Glint makes benchmarks readily visible within the reporting experience. Benchmark scores are integrated as another comparison lens, alongside internal and historical comparators. As a user, you don’t need to go to a separate place to “get” the benchmark data – it’s right there in the context of the scores you’re examining. More details about setting up your benchmarks here.

Tip: As an admin or power user, ensure you’ve enabled external benchmarks (opted in) and selected the appropriate default comparator for your audience.

What 2025 benchmark data trends tell us

As with all new benchmark releases, we typically see most of the items are either flat (no year-over-year score changes) or may tick up or down by a point. Comparing the 2025 score patterns to our last run (2024), about half the items had no change, and half the items had a 1 point change.

Drawing from prior benchmark trend analyses, several factors likely explain the patterns observed in the latest benchmark refresh:

Customer Composition: The 2025 refresh was the first in which customers could opt out and be excluded from the data set. A small number of  Viva Glint customers opted out, changing the mix of customers included in this refresh which could have impacted the scores.

Separate Time Window: Global benchmarks are typically generated every 6 months and include 12 months of data, ensuring a 6-month overlap in the data between a current refresh and last refresh. But given the LinkedIn to Microsoft Viva migration, we paused the regular refresh in December 2024. Therefore, the current 2025 refresh (July 2024 - June 2025) is comparing against the 2024 refresh, which was more than a year ago (April 2023 - March 2024) instead of 6 months.

Shifts in item utilization:  Item score changes can be due to existing customers dropping and adding items and new customers adding new items to their surveys which presents a different mix of customers from which the data is pulled YoY.

Note: The change for benchmark generation from 2024 to a completely eyes-off process in 2025 did not affect calculations.

Next Steps

Learn more about Viva Glint’s benchmarks on MS Learn:

Viva Glint benchmark collateral | Microsoft Learn

Survey Admins, don’t forget to Opt-in and gain access to the 2025 benchmarks by following the steps outlined in this Learn document.

For more detailed information on Viva Glint Benchmarks, comparison types, and tips on usage, download our People Science Explained - Benchmarks Document: