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A score tells you where you stand. An assessment tells you why.

Understand how employees experience your organization, manager, team, and job. Get the reasons behind every rating, establish a baseline, and track what changes as you act.

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Engagement scores have been flat for years while turnover kept rising. The annual survey measures the symptom. It was never built to explain it.

What this is

A baseline of workforce health built on reasons, not just ratings.

An assessment is a structured study of your whole workforce, or a defined part of it, using an instrument our researchers built from hundreds of thousands of employee interviews, so it asks about what matters to employees, not only what matters to employers. Every rating is followed by an open question: why. Those reasons are coded and counted, so leadership sees not only that a group scores low on its manager, but what specifically the group means by that.

The first assessment is a baseline. From there, the organization sets targets, acts, and re-measures. The value is in the trend line, and in knowing which conditions moved it.

Who it's for

Executives who need an objective read on the state of the workforce before a decision, a change, or a budget; HR leaders whose engagement survey produces a score nobody can act on; and organizations that want a way to prove that what they did worked.

  • Four conditions measured: organization, manager, team, and job
  • Every rating followed by a coded, countable reason
  • Baseline, then tracked so leadership can see what moved and why
  • Two-way the employer's conditions and the employee's choice, both measured
What an assessment measures

The four conditions that decide whether people choose to engage.

Engagement is a choice. You cannot force it, but you can build the conditions in which it flourishes. Understand what helps your employees engage and where your organization can improve.

The organization

We ask Is this an employer worth committing to?

How employees rate the organization as a place to work, whether they would recommend it, and the specific reasons (purpose, direction, fairness, communication) that shape the answer.

  • Overall employer rating and the why
  • Likelihood to recommend
  • Perceived direction and trust in leadership
Talk with an expert Get the employer engagement guide

The manager

We ask Is my manager someone I want to work for?

The single most influential condition in our data. Ratings of the direct manager, with reasons coded to communication, knowledge and skills, professional behavior, and support.

  • Manager effectiveness by unit and level
  • Where perception, not skill, is the gap
  • Feeds Leadership Insight & Development
Talk with an expert See how we develop better managers

The team

We ask Do the people around me make this work?

Collaboration, workload distribution, respect, and the everyday dynamics that keep good people or quietly push them out.

  • Team cohesion and support
  • Workload and staffing perceptions
  • Early signals of friction
Talk with an expert Get the employee feedback practices guide

The job

We ask Is the work itself worth staying for?

Fit, growth, workload, flexibility, and recognition, including career development, the number one category of reasons people have given for leaving since 2011.

  • Role fit and use of skills
  • Growth and career path
  • Intent to stay, and what would change it
Talk with an expert Get the guide to predicting turnover

Every assessment closes with the question that matters most: do you intend to stay and why or why not.

Talk With an Expert
Depth of approach

Better method, better insight, better action. Choose the depth the decision deserves.

An assessment can be a quick read of the whole workforce or a research program that runs for years. Both are legitimate. The difference is what leadership can do with the result.

  1. Survey baseline

    A workforce-wide instrument with ratings on the four conditions. Fast and broad. Tells you where the low scores are.

    A map of where to look

  2. Ratings plus reasons

    The same instrument with an open why behind every rating, coded to our taxonomy so reasons can be ranked and compared across units.

    What people actually mean by a low score

  3. Research program

    Baseline, targets, and scheduled re-measurement (often paired with stay or exit interviews) so the trend line becomes evidence.

    Proof of what moved, and what did not

  4. Assessment plus action

    Findings connected to manager action plans, leadership development, and an accountability cadence, with our team alongside yours.

    A workforce that is measurably different

Many organizations begin at the second depth and grow into a program once the first results are on the table.

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How it works

Baseline. Targets. Act. Measure again.

  1. Scope

    Decide what the assessment needs to inform.

    A restructuring, a manager development budget, a retention target. We design the instrument and the population around that decision.

  2. Baseline

    Hear from the workforce.

    Employees participate by phone, online, or in person. Ratings and reasons are collected on all four conditions, independently of HR and the manager.

  3. Read

    See the conditions by unit, manager, and tenure.

    A findings briefing with the reasons ranked, the groups that need attention first, and targets set against the baseline.

  4. Track

    Act, then re-measure.

    Managers build plans on their own results. A scheduled re-measure (a pulse or the next full assessment) confirms what moved.

The first assessment is a baseline, not a verdict. Its job is to make the second one meaningful.
Why Work Institute

What is different about an assessment built by researchers.

  • An instrument built from employee interviews

    Our researchers developed the assessment from hundreds of thousands of coded interviews, so it asks about the conditions employees say drive their choices, not a generic engagement index.

  • Mixed-method, not survey-only

    Every rating gets a why. Reasons are classified and counted, which turns a score into something a manager can actually change.

  • Your profile, not a benchmark's

    In our data only a small fraction of organizations share the same top reasons for leaving. A peer benchmark tells you where you stand; your own reasons tell you what to do.

  • We help you resolve, not just diagnose

    Assessment results feed action planning, leadership development, and workforce strategy inside the same firm and we re-measure so you know it worked.

An assessment is the Learn step. What you do next is where the return comes from.

See the full approach 
Your questions, answered

What leaders ask before they commission an assessment.

“We already run an annual engagement survey.”

Keep it if it is useful. Send us the results. In one conversation we can usually show what the score is hiding and whether the fix is an assessment, a set of interviews, or simply acting on what you already have.

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“Our scores are fine compared with our industry.”

Perhaps. But a competitor at 20% turnover does not make your 10% acceptable if half of it is preventable. Your workforce is not like any other; the reasons people give are yours alone.

Explore workforce challenges
“We don't have bandwidth for another initiative.”

An assessment is the opposite of another initiative. It tells you which two or three things are worth doing and which you can stop funding. Our team runs the fieldwork; yours makes the decisions.

See how action planning works
Proof, adjacent to the claim

Organizations that measured, acted, and measured again.

View all case studies 
Dialysis network
24% → 12%
turnover over four years

A workforce-wide baseline after a merger, then biannual re-measurement. Supervisors built action plans on their own results. Employees rating the employer 'excellent' rose 22 points; first-year intent to leave fell from 22% to 16%.

Read the case study 
Children's hospital
Up to −70%
turnover in the units that acted

Exit interviews and engagement studies, reported by department with coded and verbatim reasons, gave five high-turnover units their own plans. The reasons people gave for leaving shifted away from supervisors.

Read the case study 
Engineering firm
Under 8%
dissatisfaction after one targeted study

A current-employee study with probing why questions traced widespread dissatisfaction to the benefits program. The redesign found immediate savings and cut discontent to single digits.

Read the case study 

You cannot force engagement. You can build the conditions in which people choose it and you can measure whether you have.

The Work Institute belief
The next step

Tell us what you need to decide. We'll tell you what an assessment would show you.

One conversation with a retention expert, not a salesperson. Bring your current survey results if you have them and the decision in front of you. You will leave with a clear view of whether an assessment fits, what it would measure, and what we have seen in organizations like yours.

  • Scoped to your decision Whole workforce or one division, baseline or program — we will say which.
  • An expert, not a rep You will talk with the people who design the instruments and read the data.
  • No proposal unless you ask for one If an assessment makes sense, we will say so. If it does not, we will say that too.

Talk with a retention expert

We reply within one business day. No automated sequence.

We don't sell or share your information, and you won't be added to a drip campaign.