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External Benchmarking

David Walsh
  • Updated

Overview

External Benchmarking introduces scientifically-grounded external benchmarks across the Employee Insights experience, so you can see how your Engagement score, 12 Engagement Drivers, and individual Workvivo question scores compare to similar organisations.
 
Benchmarks are drawn from a completed panel study and are available at Global, Country (top 20 GDP), and Industry (15 sectors) level, including Best-in-Class cuts (Average, Top 25%, 10%, 5%). This gives you the external context to identify what is genuinely strong, weak, or average -and adds credibility to the insights you present to leadership.
 
Note: External Benchmarking applies only to the standard Engagement question set (Overall Engagement Score and the 12 Engagement Drivers). Custom Questions, Custom Drivers, and Values questions are not mapped to external benchmarks.

 

Devices: Available on Web

 

Roles & Permissions: 

Seer Insights Admin 

Managers: Read-only - can view benchmarks on Manager Insights dashboards if enabled by the admin.

 

How-To Guide

1. Configure External Benchmarking for Seer Insights (Admin)

Once Workvivo has enabled External Benchmarking for your organisation, a Seer Insights Admin can configure it as follows:
  1. Navigate to Manage Seer Insights in your admin settings.
  2. Locate the External Benchmarking section.
  3. Select your preferred benchmark — choose from Global, a specific Country, or a specific Industry, along with your preferred Best-in-Class cut (Average, Top 25%, Top 10%, or Top 5%).
  4. Save your selection. If no benchmark is chosen, the system defaults to Global Average.
External Benchmarking Screenshot 1 .png

 

2. Configure External Benchmarking for Manager Insights

Manager Insights has a separate benchmark configuration, allowing you to show benchmarks to leaders without surfacing them to managers - or vice versa.
  1. Navigate to Manage Seer Insights → Manager Insights → Anonymity & Advanced Settings.
  2. Scroll to the Advanced Settings section, located below Secondary Internal Benchmark.
  3. Enable or disable External Benchmarking for manager dashboards and select the benchmark to display.
  4. Save your changes.

3. View Benchmark Deltas on Dashboards

Once External Benchmarking is enabled and configured, benchmark comparisons appear across the following areas:

  • Engagement Dashboard — high-level Engagement score and individual question scores

    External Benchmarking Screenshot 2 .png
  • Driver Dashboards — high-level Driver score and individual question scores
  • Driver Tab Cards

  • Strengths & Focus Areas — the external benchmark delta feeds the Driver Impact calculation that ranks Strengths and Focus Areas

    External benchmarking Screenshot 3 .png

4. Download the Executive Summary Report with Benchmarks

Benchmark comparisons are automatically included in the Downloadable Executive Summary Report once External Benchmarking is enabled. Benchmark data will appear on:
  • Engagement score slides
  • Driver score slides
  • The results table
To download the report, navigate to your Seer Insights dashboard and select the Executive Summary Report export option.