What is a “Good” Employee Survey Participation Rate?
If you run employee engagement surveys, you’ve probably asked yourself: is our participation rate actually good, or does it just feel good?
TMA Performance analyzed participation rates across thousands of engagement survey campaigns run over the past four years. The overall average across all campaigns was 78% and the top 10% of campaigns (“Best in Class”) hit 86%. That 8-point gap is a useful target: it’s roughly what separates a solid survey program from an exceptional one.
But the more interesting story is in the breakdown by company size and industry, where participation rates swing from a low of 63% to a high of 91%. Here’s what the data shows, and what it means for your own survey strategy.
The Headline Numbers
- Highest industry: Hospitality — 84%
- Lowest industry: Retail — 69%
Breakout By Company Size
Company size turns out to be a surprisingly weak predictor of participation. All three tiers land within 2 points of each other. Small companies edge out the others slightly, which tracks with intuition: leadership visibility is higher, survey requests feel more personal, and there’s less “someone else will fill it out” diffusion of responsibility.
What’s more notable is that medium-sized companies are the weak spot, not large ones. This is often the “awkward middle” zone organizationally — big enough that leaders aren’t personally asking every employee to participate, but not yet mature enough to have the dedicated internal communications infrastructure (intranet banners, manager cascades, HRBP follow-up) that large enterprises use to drive participation.
