What it measures
Engagement on its own tells you how people feel. Pairing it with job demands and job resources tells you why, and points to something you can change: workload, manager feedback, development or voice.
Job demands are scored the other way round from everything else: a high score means more strain. Dashboards and reports flag a rising workload as bad news, not as an improvement.
Absorption
Being fully focused and caught up in the work.
Dedication
Finding the work meaningful, inspiring and worth being enthusiastic about.
Job demands
Workload, pace and emotional demands. Higher means more strain, a burnout risk signal.
Job resources
Useful feedback from the manager, chances to grow, and a real say in decisions.
Vigour
Energy and resilience at work: feeling able to keep going.
The 15 questions
Exactly what respondents see, grouped by theme. Each statement is answered on a five-point scale:
Absorption
- Once I start on a piece of work, I become fully focused on it.
- I often get so engrossed in a task that I lose track of the clock.
- When I’m working on something that matters, distractions fade into the background.
Dedication
- The work I do here feels worthwhile to me.
- I care about doing this job well, beyond what is strictly required.
- I look forward to the challenges my role brings.
Job demands
- I regularly have more work than I can comfortably complete. (higher means more strain)
- I often have to work at a very fast pace. (higher means more strain)
- The emotional demands of my job are high. (higher means more strain)
Job resources
- My manager gives me useful feedback on my work.
- I have real opportunities to develop new skills here.
- My opinion is genuinely considered in decisions that affect my work.
Vigour
- I start most working days with plenty of energy for what’s ahead.
- I can keep going on demanding tasks without running out of steam.
- After a setback at work, I recover my energy quickly.
In the live survey, questions are shown one at a time.
How it is scored and kept anonymous
- Each theme’s score is the average of its statements on a 1–5 scale, worked out per person first and then averaged, so everyone counts equally.
- Every score shows a 95% confidence range, so a small team’s result isn’t read as more precise than it is.
- Any team or group with fewer than 5 responses is hidden on every chart and export. Their answers still count in the organisation-wide score.
- Answers are stored against a single-use survey link, never a name or email. Leaders see averages and how answers are spread, never an individual’s answers.
- When you run the survey again, each organisation-wide change is tested for statistical significance and marked as a real change or as noise.
When to use it
Use it as your main engagement measure once or twice a year, with a short eNPS pulse in between. It is especially useful in delivery-heavy teams where workload is the first thing to slip.
Research basis
The Utrecht Work Engagement Scale structure of vigour, dedication and absorption (Schaufeli & Bakker), and the Job Demands-Resources model (Bakker & Demerouti). The statements are written for this module rather than taken from the UWES.
See what leaders get
The sample report shows a full run of this survey for Meridian Tech Services, a fictional 800-person IT services company with simulated responses, scored by the same engine your organisation would use: scores with confidence ranges, team comparisons, real-versus-noise changes since the last round, and where to act first.
Questions about this survey
How is this different from a generic engagement survey?
Most engagement surveys stop at “how engaged are people?” This one also measures the demands and resources behind that score, so the report can point to the specific levers that drive engagement in your organisation.
How is burnout risk shown?
Job demands are scored the other way round: a high or rising score is shown as a decline, so a team under growing workload pressure rises to the top of its focus areas. Reading it next to job resources shows whether that team also lacks the support to cope.
How long does it take to answer?
Fifteen statements on a five-point agree-disagree scale, usually three to four minutes.