The guide
How the employee sentiment check works
What the sentiment check measures
Six statements cover the things that move engagement most: feeling valued, having the tools to do the job, seeing a path to grow, getting useful feedback from a manager, being willing to recommend the company, and feeling safe to speak up. Each is rated on a five-point scale, so the whole check takes about a minute and still touches every driver that shows up in the large engagement studies.
How the score is read
Each statement scores one to five, for a total between six and thirty. Six to fourteen reads as At risk, fifteen to twenty-two as Mixed, and twenty-three and above as Thriving. The result shows the band, what it usually means, and which statements scored lowest, since those are the ones to act on first. It is a pulse, not a survey: use it to decide where to look, then talk to people.
How to use it with a team
Answer it the way you believe your team would, then ask a few of them to do the same and compare. The gap between a manager's read and the team's is often the most useful number on the page. Run it monthly and watch the direction rather than the absolute score. Nothing is stored, so each run starts clean.
Employee sentiment and employee engagement
Employee sentiment is how people feel about work right now. Engagement is the longer-running commitment and effort that follow from it. Sentiment moves first: a reorganization, a missed promotion round or a new manager shows up in how people feel weeks before it shows up in resignations. That is why a short, frequent sentiment check is useful alongside a longer engagement survey once or twice a year.
What moves each statement
Feeling valued responds to specific recognition, named and close to the work, more than to awards. Tools and support improve when someone owns the friction people complain about and fixes one item at a time. A path to grow needs written criteria for the next level, not a promise. Useful feedback comes from regular one to one conversations that are not cancelled when things get busy. Willingness to recommend tends to follow the other five. Feeling safe to speak up depends almost entirely on how leaders react the last time someone brought bad news.
When a pulse is not enough
Past ten or so people, honest answers need anonymity and results collected in one place, which a pulse run by a manager cannot give. Use a full engagement survey for that, and exit conversations to learn why people leave. If the people leaving are mostly recent hires, look at hiring as well: a role that was oversold, or skills that were never checked, shows up as low sentiment within months of the start date.
