Most workplace scores tell you how your organisation is doing. A benchmark tells you how your organisation is doing compared to others. The two things are not the same and conflating them is one of the most common mistakes leaders make when they start measuring how people feel about working for them.
If your score is 72, is that good? Without context, it is almost impossible to say. Is it high for your sector? Low for your size? Typical for this time of year? A score without a reference point is useful for tracking movement over time, but it cannot tell you where you stand relative to your peers.
This is the problem a benchmark solves. It gives your score a frame of reference - not by comparing you to every organisation in the country, but by comparing you to organisations doing similar work, in similar conditions, asking the same question.
Benchmarking only works when the question is consistent. If one organisation asks employees how they feel about their pay and another asks how they feel about their manager, and a third asks how they feel about working there generally, the resulting scores are not comparable. They are measuring different things.
This is why the same single question is used across every organisation that participates - how people feel about working at their company, asked the same way, to the same scale, every time. The consistency of the question is what makes the benchmark defensible. It means when you see where your score sits relative to your sector, you are comparing the same thing across every entry.
The benchmark works across three dimensions:
Sector - hospitality, legal, retail, healthcare, logistics, financial services and others. Your score is compared to organisations operating in the same industry.
Size - small (under 50), SME (under 250) and large (250-plus). A ten-person team and a 500-person business face different pressures and the benchmark reflects that.
Every organisation that participates contributes anonymously to the benchmark average for their cohort. Individual scores are never published. The rankings only celebrate the top performers publicly - there is no league table of the worst, no public comparison of who sits at the bottom. Every entrant sees their own position privately and can act on it. Only the top tier is recognised externally.
When an organisation can see that its score sits in the top quartile for its sector, that is meaningful information for recruitment, retention and leadership decisions. When a score is below the sector average, that is equally useful - it identifies a gap worth closing before it becomes a problem.
The benchmark is most powerful when measurement is continuous rather than annual. A score taken once a year shows you a snapshot. A score that updates with each check-in, measured against a sector benchmark, shows you a trend - and trends are what give leaders enough time to act before the situation changes.
A benchmark only means something when every organisation in the comparison is measuring the same thing the same way. Sector-specific benchmarking gives your score context - not just how you are doing, but how you are doing compared to organisations like yours. The organisations that benefit most are the ones measuring continuously, because they can see movement in that context over time, not just a single point in a calendar year.
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Related: Why your score means more when you can compare it