Why a 0-10 Scale Works Best for Employee Engagement Surveys

Employee engagement surveys are a valuable tool for assessing how connected and enthusiastic employees feel about their work. However, the scale used to measure engagement can impact the quality of the results. A scale ranging from 0-10 is an optimal choice for employee surveys for several reasons:

More Room for Nuance

A 0-10 scale allows employees to provide more nuanced ratings to reflect subtle differences in their level of engagement. For example, an employee may distinguish feeling a "7" from feeling an "8" out of 10. That level of precision gets lost with a smaller 1-5 scale. The additional response options give employees the flexibility to convey variation that more accurately depicts their mindset.

Prevents Skewing

Academic research on survey methods shows smaller scales lead to skewed results. People tend to avoid extremes on a 5-point scale, clustering responses toward the middle. A 0-10 scale allows better dispersion across the range, producing a truer picture of variation in employee sentiment. The 0-10 provides room for employees at different engagement levels to spread out instead of gravitating to the middle.

Easy to Understand

The 0-10 rating scale aligns with familiar systems people use to quantify opinions, like rating movies, restaurants, or products. Employees instantly recognize that a 0 means completely unfavorable and a 10 means the most favorable on whatever engagement element is being rated. The familiarity of this scale takes less effort to grasp for survey respondents, enabling more accurate self-assessment through an innate comfort level with the measurement system.

Better Benchmarking

Because the 0-10 scale is widely used and recognized across survey domains, it allows for easier comparisons of results. Employee engagement surveys aim to benchmark against previous performance or against other companies' scores. Using the standard 0-10 approach, a company can better contextualize whether a score of 7.2 represents a high or low engagement level based on established frameworks for interpretation.

The 0-10 scale balances simplicity with expanded choice to empower employees to accurately convey their feelings. The scale's broader use also provides helpful benchmarks. For these reasons, a 0-10 range stands as the most effective approach for employee engagement studies.