Drivers of Engagement

Positive Divergence Analysis and Priority Focus Areas 

Engagement is an outcome of the work experience. By studying this work experience, the perceptions of the most highly engaged employees can be compared to those of the less engaged employees, allowing leaders to pinpoint the critical barriers to engagement that need to be addressed. Positive Divergence Analysis provides these specific insights in a quick and scalable way. 

Positive Divergence Analysis is the Perceptyx approach to identifying “drivers of engagement.” It is done by:

• Identifying the most highly engaged employees within an organization or team and comparing them to the remainder group consisting of everyone else who was less engaged. High engagement is defined as those who responded favorably (Strongly Agree or Agree) to all items within the Engagement Index. 

• Percent favorable scores are calculated for each of the actionable survey items for both the highly engaged and remainder groups.

• The difference in percent favorable between the two groups is calculated, and items with the largest gap between the groups represent the drivers of engagement. 

There are two minimum threshold requirements for running this analysis.

1. There must be at least 25 respondents in the group overall.

2. Both the highly engaged and remainder groups must meet the pre-defined n-size threshold for reporting results (in most cases n=5). 

When these thresholds are not met for the focal group, the Perceptyx platform will display the drivers for the next level up in the hierarchy that does meet both requirements, and report the focal team’s scores on those items. This will ensure leaders focus on the most relevant topics for their team.

Once the top drivers of engagement are identified through Positive Divergence Analysis, the Perceptyx platform prioritizes them based on additional negative factors. The top five drivers are ranked in order of priority, with emphasis on those that are trending downward, scoring below benchmark, performing worse than the internal comparison group, or exhibiting low percent favorable scores.

These Priority Focus Areas are the differentiators for engaging employees and the areas of opportunity that leaders should action plan on to have the greatest impact on engagement. Addressing these key barriers will help create a more consistent and engaging work experience for all employees.