Research Drop: What Organizations Ask in Employee Surveys (Plus Three Untapped Opportunities for 2025)
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 25 th 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 work 1 , and the U.S. Surgeon General released a framework for workplace mental health & wellbeing, underscoring systemic support for holistic employee health 2 . 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 items 3 . 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 employee 4 . 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 transformation 6 , 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 behaviors 7 . 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 mobility 8 . 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. 7 Kundu, S. C., Kumar, S., & Lata, K. (2020). Effects of perceived role clarity on innovative work behavior: a multiple mediation model. RAUSP Management Journal, 55(4), 457-472. 8 LinkedIn. (2022). Workplace Learning Report: The Transformation of L&D
An update on Copilot in Viva Glint
Microsoft 365 Copilot in Viva Glint became publicly available for Viva Glint customers in November 2024. This AI feature was developed as Human Resources (HR) users and leaders of large organizations historically spend a lot of valuable time interpreting Glint survey results and comments. Copilot in Viva Glint enables leaders to understand and act on employee feedback by quickly summarizing large quantities of comments. Five months into this feature being used by our customers - how are we doing? What are our customers' experiences? What can we learn from our customer experiences as we continue to move forward and enhance Copilot in Viva Glint? To collect feedback from our first set of users, we used the following assessment criteria: Is Copilot in Viva Glint simple to understand? Is Copilot a seamless, frictionless experience that doesn’t require additional effort? Does Copilot provide insights that you trust? Does Copilot help drive action? Overall, we’re thrilled to receive ongoing customer feedback and appreciation for this new feature. This quote from one of our largest enterprise customers says so much, “We could not perform thorough comment analysis before, but [Copilot] has allowed us to study groups we couldn’t before.” In the past, this customer had to manually read thousands upon thousands of comments. Now, they are able to summarize 8,000 comments on a theme of their choice - in just a matter of seconds! We’re encouraged by what we’ve learned: Who’s using it: As expected, HR and senior leaders are diving in first. Engagement: 86% of our enabled tenants had active usage within the last five months. We can see that once Copilot is enabled, it’s getting frequent use. User satisfaction: We’re thrilled to report users are very satisfied with Copilot in Viva Glint! The Copilot chatbox experience provides comment summarization and helpful question prompts to drill down on specific themes within the summary leading to helpful data and insights. First-time users are awed by the speed and comprehensiveness of the summaries. Fueled by early customer feedback, we have made some positive changes since our initial launch, including expanding the comment summarization limit to 8,000 comments. Retention: We see increased month-to-month retention among active Copilot in Viva Glint users. It provides insights that our customers find authentic and useful, and they’re going back to see more. As we continue to build out Copilot in Viva Glint, this is what we are working toward: Copilot to be localized: We want users to be able to ask questions in their preferred language and for Copilot to respond back to them in their preferred language. Copilot to summarize all survey results: We know that if Copilot summaries can include survey scores, in addition to comment summarization, use cases for it can increase indefinitely. Each organization would have the ability to filter their data summaries to meet their unique needs. Copilot for all managers: We want Copilot to ebb downstream to empower managers of medium to small teams. With results summarization, we can reduce the response threshold for Copilot summary from 10 to 5, giving managers of smaller teams the ability able to dive right in. Copilot to encourage action taking: We need to ensure that our feedback insights are useful and then can guide managers to use feedback to improve the employee experience and business outcomes. The Microsoft People Science team and our product teams are committed to this outcome. Copilot in Viva Glint to be ‘on’ as the default setting: With Copilot turned on as the default setting, users can be encouraged – or at least curious – to give it a try. We know once they begin to use it, they will love what Copilot can do. We’re energized to be part of the AI generation. I look forward to our next Copilot in Viva Glint check-in! Hao Liu is a Senior Product Manager at Microsoft. Hao leads the Copilot in Viva Glint product, an innovative tool designed to transform enterprise employee listening programs through generative AI. Hao is a seasoned product leader experienced in driving high-performing cross-functional teams to launch enterprise SaaS products for Fortune 500 companies.January 2025 Viva Glint Customer Town Hall: Recap & Recording
On January 22, 2025, we held our first Viva Glint customer town hall with the goal of informing and inspiring attendees by sharing new and upcoming Viva Glint features, Viva People Science thought leadership, and programming. We started off by sharing what’s “in” and “out” for 2025. HR and IT collaborating on solving business challenges, taking advantage of all the features that Glint has to offer, and applying research from the Viva People Science team are all “in” for this coming year! Liz Pierce, Head of Product for Viva Glint and Viva Pulse, shared product updates including the importance of commercial and technical migrations to Viva Glint for those still on the LinkedIn Glint platform. She also highlighted our commitment to customer data security and privacy. Liz spoke about five key features new to Viva Glint, including self-service employee ID updates, the ability to edit questions in live surveys, the Glint and Insights integration, Copilot in Viva Glint for comment summarization, and the availability of Glint survey results in the Copilot Dashboard. We wrapped up the product section by outlining three key areas for future product investments: frictionless deployment and management, manager empowerment, and Copilot and AI transformation. We were proud to share a customer story featuring ICF, a global consulting firm. Nicole Mroczek, Senior Project Manager at Microsoft, interviewed Kate Zhdan and Colleen Scout from ICF. They shared their experience of collaborating between HR and IT to implement Viva and Copilot. They discussed their continuous listening strategy, the impact of their Viva launch on the business, and their excitement for future Viva and Copilot features. Caribay Garcia, head of Viva People Science Product Consulting and Thought Leadership, shared recent findings and upcoming research from the Viva People Science team. She discussed the importance of manager effectiveness, insights for organizations to consider in AI transformation, and provided recommendations for 2025 by highlighting their new monthly Research Drop series. We wrapped up the town hall by sharing upcoming events and programming, including the Ask the Experts series, Learning Circles program, and additions to our popular manager sessions on psychological safety. Rewatch the session here, and we welcome comments and feedback below.Harness the power of Viva Glint and Viva Pulse to drive continuous improvements
Empower your managers and leaders to gather additional information and check in on team progress by using Pulse after an org-wide Glint engagement survey. Using the Glint-identified top strengths and opportunities, the Pulse survey recommends questions that managers and leaders can use to gather a timely understanding of the team’s progress in addressing key focus areas, make mid-point adjustments if needed, and maintain momentum in their efforts to improve engagement and employee experience. This Viva Pulse and Viva Glint integration has 8 new features! Glint follow-up template: A Glint question topic will be added to the question library. When creating a survey, questions are automatically selected based on Glint drivers chosen by the author. Automated Glint email: 6 weeks after an org survey, Glint sends an email with a Pulse call-to-action to remind managers to follow up with their teams to track team progress to date. Pre-populated recipient list: Pulse prefills the survey recipient list based on the direct recipients from the Glint survey program. Glint admin controls: The Glint admin can configure which Glint survey programs the Pulse follow-ups are enabled for, the Glint roles who will receive the email notification, the timing of the Glint email notification, and preview and edit the content in the email notification. Pulse content admin: The Pulse content admin can configure the content in the Glint follow-up template and question topic by editing, removing, or deactivating content. Glint banner entry point: In addition to the Glint email notification for managers to start a Pulse follow-up, managers can access the Glint banner in the team summary and executive summary pages to start a Pulse follow-up. Confidential team conversations: Managers can use in-app support in Pulse to ask their team for more feedback around specific questions for further engagement to make progress on results. Copilot report summarization: A Copilot-powered summary based on the team’s question scores and open-ended responses is displayed at the top of the Pulse report. We’re encouraged by what we’ve learned so far: Internally, Microsoft has enabled Pulse follow-ups for the biannual Glint engagement surveys to empower managers to show their employees what matters to them. We saw a 7x increase in Pulse follow-ups sent in February 2025, compared to January 2025 and a 7.5% clickthrough rate on the email we sent to Microsoft managers. We had 9 customers participating in our Private Preview. Both within Microsoft and through our Private Preview, managers have reported feeling like this capability fills a much-needed gap between survey cycles. Customers previously reported managers were sending their own surveys to collect data between engagement surveys, but now they can collect data with a standardized, HR-sponsored method across their teams. We continue to receive feedback that highlights how this feature makes it easier to share results and obtain continuous and honest feedback between managers and their teams. As we continue to iterate on this integration between Viva Pulse and Viva Glint, we’re working towards: Inline survey creation in Glint: Managers can follow up with their teams with a Pulse survey directly within Glint, without needing to be directed to a separate app. Copilot authoring to personalize Pulse follow-up: Copilot recommends survey questions and titles based on Glint scores, open-ended comments, and Glint top opportunities and strengths. Pulse follow-up telemetry for Glint admins: Glint admins can see Pulse follow-up usage telemetry in the Glint admin dashboard for a funnel view of number of Pulse follow-ups sent and number of users who have higher scores after using Pulse follow-ups. Delegate access to send Pulse follow-up: Delegates will automatically be granted access to send Pulse follow-ups on behalf of their leaders, without manual configuration required. Pulse data can be analyzed in Glint: Pulse data collected in the follow-up survey, with scores, verbatims, and Copilot report summarization will be visible in Glint alongside the Glint survey results. Managers can slice and dice the Pulse data in Glint. Getting started and resources To use Pulse to follow up with your teams after your Glint engagement results, you must have one of the following subscription licenses: Viva Suite Viva Workplace Analytics and Employee Feedback For more information on what we've released and documentation for how to set up the integration, please review the following Microsoft Learn documentation: Take actions with Viva Pulse after Viva Glint engagement surveys. We’re excited to help you drive continuous improvements in your organization by leveraging the power of Viva Glint and Viva Pulse. Stay tuned as we continue iterating on this feature! Michelle Hu is a Product Manager 2 at Microsoft. Michelle leads the growth strategy for Viva Glint and Copilot Analytics to support HR Copilot transformation efforts, improve M365 Copilot GTM and deployment, and help organizations measure Copilot ROI.
