Here's how we think about Engagement:

About the metrics

Three of the components of engagement, "mastery," "purpose," and "autonomy," are drawn from “Drive,” Daniel Pink’s book on a new theory of motivation. "Impact," "recognition," and "social connection" are primarily developed based on our own research observing teams and making sense of what they’ve told us over the last several years. It aligns well with other models of employee engagement, including the twelve questions Gallup uses in their annual poll on employee engagement. We consider the "perception" component to be a sort of a checksum, a set of subjective assessments that can be expected to trend in alignment with overall engagement.

Each component of engagement summarizes a collection of related measures that we see teams use to describe the most important aspects of an engaged work life. These measures form the key indicators of a motivated and engaged workforce, one that is inspired and energized to produce great results. 

Unlike several other models of engagement, we’ve factored out what we believe to be potential drivers of engagement, such as work place environment, compensation, benefits, etc. and focus only on actual perceived engagement itself. Perception drives behavior. Behavior drives performance.