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Cross-industry engagement scores, variance ranges, and sector trends from CultureMonkey’s dataset of 10M+ anonymized survey responses across 15+ industries and 4 global regions.
This dataset publishes cross-industry employee engagement scores from CultureMonkey’s longitudinal analysis of 10M+ anonymized survey responses. All scores are on a 5-point scale. Data is sourced from organizations across 15+ industries and 4 global regions: Asia Pacific, Europe, North America, and Middle East & Africa.
Use this data to compare your industry’s engagement score against peer sectors, identify which industries lead and which are declining, and understand cross-sector variance at the aggregate level.
“No industry globally has scored above 4.5. The gap between the top sector (Hospitality, 4.46) and the bottom (Telecom, 3.65) is 0.81 points. That’s a real difference. It reflects structural gaps, not just survey noise.”
Engagement scores are measured on a scale of 1 to 5. But what separates a 3.2 from a 3.8? And why does it matter so much? Here's your plain-language guide — bookmark this section and refer back to it every time you look at survey results.
Employees in this zone are actively engaged, loyal, and likely recommending your company to friends. This is rare — fewer than 15% of drivers globally reach this level.
A team where people stay late not because they have to, but because they love what they do. Where Glassdoor reviews are glowing and referral hiring is easy.
Protect what’s working. Document the practices that got you here so they survive leadership changes and growth.
Employees feel good about this area. They’re not actively complaining, and most feel supported. This is roughly where the top 40% of organizations sit globally.
A team that’s happy day-to-day, hits their targets, and doesn’t have dramatic turnover — but might still have a few frustrated voices that aren’t being heard.
Run focus groups to understand what’s driving the score. Small improvements here can push you to exceptional.
This is the ‘meh’ zone. Employees aren’t outright unhappy, but they’re not enthusiastic either. Research shows employees in this range are 2x more likely to be passively job-hunting.
A team member who does their work, doesn’t complain in meetings — but quietly updates their LinkedIn profile every few months. Disengagement is quiet before it’s loud.
Act now before scores drift lower. Pulse surveys, manager 1:1s, and quick wins on specific complaints can turn this around in one quarter.
At this level, disengagement is active. Employees are noticing the problem every day. Absenteeism creeps up, quality drops, and voluntary turnover begins to rise measurably.
The team that sighs in Monday morning stand-ups. The ‘quiet quitters’. The colleagues who’ve emotionally checked out even if they haven’t physically left yet.
Don’t wait for the annual survey. Convene a working group and set a visible 90-day improvement plan with named owners.
Scores below 3.0 signal a systemic problem employees experience every day. At this level, you’re likely already seeing high turnover, difficulty hiring, and burnout.
A hospital ward where nurses feel invisible and unsupported, and only come to work because they love their patients, not because their organization supports them.
Escalate to senior leadership immediately. This requires a dedicated task force, external benchmarking, and a transparent recovery plan communicated to employees.
Engagement surveys measure several ‘drivers’ — the different dimensions of the employee experience. Here’s what each one really means in plain English, plus what a low or high score tells you.
People feel their pay doesn’t match their effort. Often the first thing blamed when someone resigns — even if the real issue is something else.
Employees feel their salary, bonuses, and benefits are competitive and fair. Pay transparency conversations are happening.
Good work goes unnoticed. Employees feel invisible. This is often a manager behavior issue, not a company-wide one.
Employees regularly receive specific, timely praise from peers and managers. Small wins are celebrated, not just big ones.
Employees don’t believe in where the company is heading. Cynicism about decisions from the top and lack of trust in leadership capabilities.
Employees feel inspired by their leaders, understand the company’s direction, and believe leadership makes fair, thoughtful decisions.
Employees feel stuck. No clear career path, no training, no investment in their future. One of the top reasons for resignation in knowledge-work industries.
Clear career ladders, regular development conversations, access to learning, and real opportunities to grow into new roles.
Workloads are unmanageable, boundaries are routinely crossed, and employees feel the organization takes more than it gives. Burnout risk is high.
Employees feel they can disconnect after hours, take leave without guilt, and manage personal commitments without penalty.
Mental health is a taboo. Sick days are stigmatized. Employees don’t feel safe raising personal struggles with managers.
Psychological safety is high. People feel comfortable being honest about stress, access support resources, and aren’t penalized for needing help.
Rewards is the lowest-scoring dimension globally. Not a single industry or region scored above 4.0 on Rewards. The entire global dataset sits in the 3.0–3.9 range, with Healthcare in Asia recording the lowest regional score at 2.95 — the only data point in this dataset below 3.0.
Healthcare (Asia) Rewards score: 2.95 / 5.0. This is the only data point across all industries and regions in this dataset that falls below 3.0, placing it as a statistical outlier at the lower bound of the Rewards distribution.
Lowest Rewards data point: Healthcare (Asia), 2.95 out of 5.0, the only score below 3.0 in the entire dataset.
The gap between the highest Rewards score (Hospitality, 4.33) and the lowest (Healthcare Asia, 2.95) is 1.38 points. That’s the widest spread of any driver we track, making Rewards the dimension where industries differ most from each other.
On the surface, the difference between a Leadership score of 4.18 (Asia Pacific) and 3.89 (MEA) looks small. But those two numbers tell very different stories about what employees experience at work every day.
Employees trust their leaders, feel aligned with the company’s direction, and believe decisions are made fairly. They don’t dread Monday mornings.
Employees are lukewarm on leadership. Cynicism about top-level decisions is creeping in. Passive job-hunting is likely elevated among this workforce.
Finance companies in Asia Pacific lead globally on Leadership. Their managers hold regular 1:1s, communicate strategy clearly, and give employees room to question decisions. The result: employees feel heard, even when they don’t get what they asked for.
At 3.57, MEA Tech employees are in the ‘Watch Closely’ zone on Leadership. Without action, better manager coaching, clearer communication, and more visible town halls, this will slide into ‘Act Now’ territory within two survey cycles.
Asia Pacific and North America are both holding steady or improving on Growth and Development. Europe’s Technology sector, though, is showing a concerning dip. A falling score is often more worrying than a low but stable one.
A score of 3.87 that’s held steady for 12 months is manageable. But a score that drops from 3.87 to 3.74 in 6 months is a different story. Something changed, and employees noticed. When people see things getting worse, they start quietly planning their next move.
When companies cut learning and development budgets during tough times, employees notice within 3 to 6 months. The message it sends is hard to walk back: ‘Your future here doesn’t matter to us.’ Once that belief sets in, rebuilding trust takes a long time.
Overall engagement scores ranked from highest to lowest across 8 industries in CultureMonkey’s 2025–2026 dataset. Scores represent the aggregated mean across all survey responses within each sector. The 0.81-point spread between the top and bottom industries (Hospitality 4.46 vs Telecom 3.65) represents the total cross-industry variance range in this dataset.
Hospitality (4.46) and Food and Beverage (4.33) are the only two industries scoring above 4.3 in this dataset. Both have large frontline workforces. The other six industries sit between 3.65 and 4.10, a tight 0.45-point range.
Telecom (3.65) and Healthcare (3.72) are the two lowest-scoring industries in the 2025-2026 dataset. Both sit below the 3.75 mark. Healthcare’s overall score is pulled down further by its Rewards outlier in Asia (2.95), creating the biggest gap between a sector’s overall score and its worst-performing driver of any industry in the dataset.
Regional scores within each industry where CultureMonkey data is available. All figures are aggregated means from the 2025–2026 survey cycle. Blank cells indicate insufficient sample size for statistical confidence at that intersection.
Asia Pacific records the highest regional score in Finance (4.18), Technology (4.06), Healthcare (3.72), Manufacturing (4.01), and Hospitality (4.52). North America leads in Retail (3.91) and Food & Beverage (4.38). MEA records the lowest regional score across the dataset in Technology (3.57).
Europe Technology dropped from 3.87 in early 2025 to 3.74 in early 2026, a 0.13-point decline over 12 months. Every other region-industry pair in this dataset is either stable or improving slightly. Europe Tech is the only one moving in the wrong direction across back-to-back survey cycles.
Now you can read the scores. Here’s how to act on them.
Pull up your last survey results. For every driver, identify which zone you’re in — not just whether it went up or down. A score of 3.9 that’s been stable is very different from 3.9 that dropped from 4.2.
A Healthcare Rewards score of 3.5 might feel like progress internally — but our benchmark shows it’s still in the danger zone for that sector. Industry context changes everything.
Employees are more sensitive to deterioration than to low baselines. A score declining from 3.8 to 3.6 is a bigger early warning signal than a score that’s been 3.4 for three years.
The biggest trust-builder in engagement is not a perfect score. It’s showing employees that you read the results, took them seriously, and are doing something about them. Even small visible actions move the needle.
This table shows how overall engagement scores shifted across industries from 2024 to 2026. Each delta reflects the change in aggregated mean score across consecutive 12-month survey cycles. Positive means the industry improved. Negative means it declined.
All scores in this dataset are sourced from CultureMonkey’s longitudinal employee engagement survey platform. Data reflects anonymized, aggregated responses collected between January 2025 and March 2026.
10M+ anonymized employee survey responses across all industries and regions in this dataset.
All scores are on a 5-point Likert scale. Industry scores represent the aggregated mean across all responses within each sector.
January 2024 – March 2026. Year-on-year trends reflect 12-month rolling averages per survey cycle.
Asia Pacific, Europe, North America, Middle East & Africa. Regional sub-scores require minimum sample thresholds to be published.
Hospitality, Food & Beverage, Finance, Technology, Manufacturing, Retail, Healthcare, Telecom. 15+ sub-sector classifications in the full dataset.
All data is fully anonymized at the individual and organization level. No company-identifiable data is published in this dataset.
CultureMonkey’s platform automatically benchmarks your organization’s engagement score against your industry. See exactly where you stand in this dataset, broken down by sector, region, and survey cycle.
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Data from CultureMonkey's 10M+ response dataset across 8 industries and 4 global regions.
Which industry has the highest employee engagement score?
Hospitality leads all industries in CultureMonkey's 2025-2026 dataset with an overall engagement score of 4.46 out of 5.0. Food and Beverage is second at 4.33. These are the only two industries in the dataset scoring above 4.3. Both have large frontline workforces, which appears to correlate with stronger team-level engagement despite lower average pay.
What is the average employee engagement score by industry?
The cross-industry mean in CultureMonkey's 2025-2026 dataset sits at approximately 3.95 out of 5.0. Scores range from 3.65 (Telecom, lowest) to 4.46 (Hospitality, highest), a 0.81-point spread across 8 industries. Six of the eight industries cluster between 3.65 and 4.10, a tight 0.45-point band.
What is a good employee engagement score?
On a 5-point scale, a score of 4.0 to 4.4 is considered healthy, meaning employees feel good about their work environment and most feel supported. Scores of 4.5 and above are exceptional and rare globally. Scores between 3.5 and 3.9 warrant close attention, while anything below 3.0 signals an active retention and employee health crisis. Context matters: a 3.8 in Healthcare is a different signal than a 3.8 in Hospitality.
Why does Healthcare score low on employee engagement?
Healthcare scores 3.72 overall in CultureMonkey's 2025-2026 dataset, making it the second-lowest industry. Its Rewards score in Asia Pacific is 2.95, the only data point in the entire dataset below 3.0. Healthcare employees consistently rate pay and recognition below other sectors, and the combination of high workload, emotional labor, and perceived undervaluation drives the gap. The industry has shown a declining trend across three consecutive survey cycles.
How does the Rewards score compare across industries?
Rewards is the lowest-scoring dimension globally across every industry in the dataset. Not a single industry or region scored above 4.0 on Rewards. The spread between the highest (Hospitality, 4.33) and the lowest (Healthcare Asia, 2.95) is 1.38 points, making Rewards the driver with the widest cross-industry variance. This means no industry has fully solved compensation perception, though some are significantly better positioned than others.
Which region has the highest employee engagement scores?
Asia Pacific leads in 5 of 8 industries in CultureMonkey's dataset, recording the highest regional score in Finance (4.18), Technology (4.06), Healthcare (3.72), Manufacturing (4.01), and Hospitality (4.52). North America leads in Retail (3.91) and Food and Beverage (4.38). MEA records the lowest regional score in the dataset in Technology at 3.57, the weakest leadership signal of any region-industry pair.
Is employee engagement declining in the Technology sector?
At the global level, Technology sits at 3.98 with a marginal decline of 0.03 points over two years. At the regional level, Europe Technology is the only region-industry pair in the entire dataset showing a confirmed downward trend, dropping from 3.87 in early 2025 to 3.74 in early 2026, a 0.13-point decline in 12 months. Every other region-industry pair is either stable or improving. Asia Pacific Technology remains above 4.0.
How does CultureMonkey collect its benchmark data?
All data is collected passively through CultureMonkey's employee engagement survey platform from companies that were actively running surveys with their own employees. There are no commissioned panels, no recruited respondents, and no synthetic data. Each industry classification uses the organization's self-reported sector at survey setup time. Industries are only included in published benchmarks once they meet a minimum sample size threshold. The 2025-2026 dataset covers 10M+ anonymized responses across 8 industries and 4 global regions.
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