Engagement Index: Option 1

One way to calculate the engagement index is to compute three numbers. These numbers are 1) percent
engaged, 2) percent responsive to engagement, and 3) percent disengaged. To clarify, you can compute
these numbers this way:

 Engaged: percent who give top two box responses to the Level of Engagement questions. To clarify,
see the numbers in yellow in the image below.

o All positive responses–Strongly Agree and/or Agree

o No Neutral response

o No negative responses–Disagree and/or Strongly Disagree

 Responsive to Engagement (Passive): percent of employees who give top three box responses to
the Level of Engagement questions. That is to say, there is at least one Neutral response but no
negative responses.

 Disengaged: percent of employees who give at least one bottom two box response to the Level of
Engagement questions. In other words, there is at least one negative response–Disagree and/or
Strongly Disagree.

Option 2

Employees answer these questions using a five or six-level Likert Scale. If you’ve responded to a
survey before, this will look familiar.

They go like this:

Employees respond to each question with one of the following statements (we’re using a six-stage
Likert Scale in this example).
 1. Strongly disagree (1)
2. Disagree (2)
3. Slightly disagree (3)
4. Slightly agree (4)
5. Agree (5)
6. Strongly agree (6)

Each response is linked to a numbered score. If an employee responds with “Agree” for example,
they score 5 points for that question.

As you can see, we’re getting closer to our goal of turning qualitative data into quantitative data. But
we’re not there yet.

Let’s find out how you can turn these survey scores into easy-to-interpret EEI values.
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How to convert survey scores into EEI values

After an employee has answered all of the questions they’ll be awarded a score.

Let’s imagine your survey contains 28 questions. The survey score will range from 28 (min.) to 168
(max.). Answering “strongly disagree (1)” for every question will score 28 whereas answering
“strongly agree (6)” for every question will score 168.

Now, it’s time to convert these scores into an EEI value.

To do that, we calibrate the scale so that the highest possible EEI value is 100 regardless of how
many questions you ask in your survey.

So, let’s divide 100 by the maximum survey score (in our example, that’s 168) to find the
conversion factor.

100 / 168 = 0.5952

In this example, to convert a survey score into an EEI value, all you need to do is multiply the
survey score by 0.5952.

E.g. 96 (survey score) x 0.5952 = 57.1 (EEI value)

The EEI value ranges from 16.67 to 100, regardless of whether you’re measuring an individual, a
department or an entire team.

Let’s look at how this works in practice for a team of 6 employees.

(Fig. 1) Calculating EEI Values
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There you have it: a simple formula that converts employee engagement into a numeric value. And
don’t forget, you can use this method to calculate employee engagement for individuals,
departments and teams.

Note: It’s important to phrase your survey questions in a “positive” context. This is because
agreeing with the question must indicate positive engagement (score high), whereas disagreeing
must indicate negative engagement (score low).