Sentiment analysis in Perform & Engage 365

Introduction

Required role: Super admins can view sentiment data for the entire organization. Department admins can view sentiment data for employees who belong to the departments they administer or teams they lead.

In Perform & Engage 365, sentiment represents the collective mood, attitudes, and feelings expressed by employees across the organization via check ins. Sentiment analysis offers insight into how employees feel about their work environment, management, and company culture, as well as how they respond to different internal and external events.

Perform & Engage 365 analyzes employees’ responses using machine learning and natural language processing algorithms, and calculates monthly average sentiment - a value that can be viewed in a chart, filtered by specific group or date, and tracked over time. By making qualitative data measurable, sentiment analysis enables managers to identify trends, address concerns before they escalate, and make informed business decisions.

For information about the methods employed by Zensai to manage data, ensure privacy, and maintain security in the context of AI-powered features, see this article.

Sentiment analysis and 10Pulse

While sentiment analysis provides a snapshot of moods and attitudes in the organization as well as the changes to sentiment over time, 10Pulse provides a more specific, multi-factor view of employee engagement measured against five key criteria. Together, these two metrics provide a comprehensive view of the organization’s health.

How sentiment analysis works

Sentiment data is automatically gathered from open-text responses to check in questions, and becomes available on the Sentiment tab of the Organization dashboard once users start submitting check ins.

The responses are processed and converted into an average sentiment value for every round of check ins. For more information about configuring check in questions, see this article.

Sentiment can be positive, neutral, or negative, and is presented as a value between 0 and 1. A score above 0.7 is considered positive, while below 0.3 might indicate a negative sentiment for the selected group. A score between 0.3-0.7 is considered neutral or mixed sentiment.

Positive sentiment may suggest employees’ enthusiasm and strong alignment with company goals, while neutral or negative sentiment may indicate dissatisfaction with a recent change, disengagement, or an underlying issue that requires your attention.

To protect employees’ privacy, you can view sentiment data for groups only - not individual employees. By default, sentiment is displayed when there is data available from five or more employees within a selected group, such as a team or department. When data is excluded from the chart because there are too few members in the selected group, the “Some of the data has been removed to maintain anonymity of the question” message is displayed.

View and filter the sentiment analysis chart

On the Organization dashboard, select View details on the bottom right-hand side of the Sentiment tab.

The Sentiment & Engagement per <period> page opens. Here, the organization's sentiment data is presented in a bar chart. The average organizational sentiment (Avg. Sentiment) from the current year, displayed as a blue bar above the columns.

Hover over the month columns on the chart to see the number of submitted and unsubmitted updates. Select Submitted updates, Unsubmitted updates, or Avg. Sentiment to show or hide data from these metrics.

By default, the per month filter is selected. To change this, select the current period filter then Week, Month, Quarter, or Year to view the sentiment from the respective period.

To change the reporting period, select the required dates from the calendars in the top right-hand corner. From the calendars, you can also select specific full years or quarters.

By default, the chart displays all available data for the selected period. You can refine the information shown by setting additional filters (Filtered by) and Grouping parameters. The Team, Department, 1st through 4th Department filter and grouping options are available by default. The department fields can be mapped to different Microsoft Entra ID (Azure Active Directory) fields, such as location or job code. Depending on your sync settings between Perform & Engage 365 and Microsoft Entra ID, you might see other filtering and grouping options here.

Select Showing all data to expand the Filtered by section. Select a filtering parameter from the drop-down menu, as well as a value. To add more filters, select the + icon. Select the x icon to remove a filter. 

You can select more than one value for some filtering parameters.

Select the Exclude checkbox to exclude the selected parameter from the chart. 

Select None next to the Grouping option, and select a grouping parameter - for example, Team or Department - from the drop-down menu. To remove grouping, select None from the list.

To export the sentiment analysis chart, select the drop-down next to the export icon in the top right-hand corner of the page and choose Export to PDF or Export to PNG.

View and export the sentiment data table

Scroll down to the All data table, which shows the data that is used to build the chart, according to grouping and filtering parameters you've selected. The Period, Avg. sentiment, Unsubmitted updates, and Submitted updates are displayed.

Here, you can sort the information by selecting a column heading and rearrange the column order using drag and drop.

Select the three horizontal bars icon on a highlighted column heading for further options: pin the selected column, auto-size one or all columns in the table, or reset the columns.

To save the data in the table to your device, select Export to CSV.

Use the navigation controls at the bottom of the screen to move between pages.