What Is Good Jobs Percentage?
Good Jobs Percentage is a threshold-based engagement metric that classifies employees into two groups: those whose survey responses indicate a broadly positive work experience (more than six favorable answers) and everyone else. Instead of averaging all responses into a single score, it counts how many people cleared a minimum bar for positive engagement.
This distinction matters. An average engagement score of 3.8 out of 5.0 could mean everyone is mildly satisfied or that a vocal group of highly engaged employees is masking a large disengaged population. Good Jobs Percentage cuts through that ambiguity. It tells you what share of your workforce is consistently positive across multiple survey dimensions.
The metric borrows logic from classification-based engagement models. Gallup's Q12 methodology classifies employees as engaged, not engaged, or actively disengaged based on response patterns rather than averages. The Sheila Margolis Engagement Index sorts respondents by whether they gave all favorable, mixed, or unfavorable responses. Good Jobs Percentage applies the same principle with a specific numerical threshold: more than six favorable responses out of the total survey items.
The "six favorable" threshold typically works with surveys containing 10 to 15 items. An employee who answers more than six items favorably has demonstrated positive sentiment across a majority of the measured dimensions: leadership, growth, recognition, safety, belonging, and similar constructs. That breadth is what makes the metric useful. One positive response could be noise. Seven or more suggest a pattern.
For organizations running people analytics programs, Good Jobs Percentage complements traditional engagement scores by answering a different question. Instead of "How engaged is our workforce on average?" it answers "How many of our people are in roles where things are working?"
The Good Jobs Percentage Formula
(Employees with more than 6 favorable responses / Total survey respondents) x 100
Here is how to calculate it step by step.
Step 1: Define "favorable." Decide which response options count as favorable on your survey scale. On a 5-point Likert scale, "Agree" and "Strongly Agree" (the top two boxes) are the standard threshold. On a 7-point scale, the top three boxes are typical.
Step 2: Count favorable responses per employee. For each respondent, tally how many survey items they answered favorably. If an employee answered "Agree" or "Strongly Agree" on 9 out of 12 questions, their favorable count is 9.
Step 3: Apply the threshold. Identify every employee whose favorable response count exceeds six. An employee with exactly six favorable responses does not qualify. The threshold is "more than six," meaning seven or above.
Step 4: Calculate the percentage. Divide the number of employees who exceeded the threshold by the total number of survey respondents, then multiply by 100.
A note on the threshold: Six is a common default for surveys with 10 to 15 items because it represents a majority of favorable responses. Organizations with longer surveys (20+ items) may adjust the threshold upward. The principle stays the same: the threshold should represent broad positive sentiment, not just a few good answers.
Worked Example
Cedar Ridge Hospitality Group is a PE-backed hotel and resort operator with 1,400 employees across 18 properties. The CHRO runs a 12-item annual engagement survey using a 5-point Likert scale. "Favorable" is defined as top-two-box: Agree or Strongly Agree.
After the survey closes with 1,260 respondents (90% response rate), the people analytics team counts favorable responses per employee.
The distribution looks like this:
- 0 to 3 favorable responses: 126 employees
- 4 to 6 favorable responses: 378 employees
- 7 to 9 favorable responses: 441 employees
- 10 to 12 favorable responses: 315 employees
Employees with more than 6 favorable responses: 441 + 315 = 756
Good Jobs Percentage = (756 / 1,260) x 100 = 60%
Sixty percent of Cedar Ridge's respondents gave favorable answers on more than half the survey. That leaves 40% with six or fewer favorable responses, a segment worth investigating.
The CHRO segments the data further:
- Corporate office (180 respondents): 78% Good Jobs Percentage
- Full-service hotels (540 respondents): 64% Good Jobs Percentage
- Limited-service properties (540 respondents): 49% Good Jobs Percentage
The gap between property types is 29 percentage points. Limited-service properties, where frontline staff density is highest and manager span of control is widest, are the drag on the overall number. The CHRO now has a focused question: What is different about working conditions at limited-service properties, and which managers are beating the average there?
Drilling into the limited-service segment reveals that three properties with recently promoted general managers have Good Jobs Percentages above 65%, while two properties with the highest turnover rates sit below 35%. The metric becomes a diagnostic tool, pointing to specific locations and leaders, not just an overall score.
What Data Do You Need to Calculate Good Jobs Percentage?
Individual-level survey responses. You need access to each respondent's answers at the item level, not just aggregated scores. Most survey platforms (Qualtrics, Culture Amp, Glint, Lattice, Perceptyx) export this data, but you may need to request raw exports rather than relying on pre-built dashboards.
A defined favorability scale. Document which response options count as "favorable" before the survey launches. Changing the definition after the fact makes trend comparisons unreliable.
A clean respondent count. Total survey respondents means completed surveys, not invitations sent. Exclude partial completions where the respondent answered fewer than 75% of items. An employee who only answered 4 out of 12 questions and happened to answer 3 favorably should not be counted against the threshold.
Employee identifiers for segmentation. Anonymous surveys can still produce Good Jobs Percentage at the aggregate level, but segmentation (by department, location, manager, tenure) requires linking responses to HRIS data. Confidential surveys, where responses are identifiable to the analytics team but not to managers, provide the best balance.
Common data quality issues:
- Acquired entities running different surveys. If a recently acquired company used a 10-item survey while the parent runs a 15-item survey, the threshold needs adjustment or the populations need separate calculations.
- Survey fatigue in multi-survey environments.** Organizations running pulse surveys alongside annual surveys may have respondents who completed some items hastily. Response pattern analysis (straight-lining detection) can flag these.
- Contractor and contingent worker inclusion. Decide before launch whether non-employee workers are included in the denominator. Including them changes the metric's meaning from "percentage of employees in good jobs" to "percentage of workers in good roles."
Why HR Leaders Need to Track Good Jobs Percentage
It Converts Engagement Data into a Workforce Quality Metric
Most engagement scores tell leadership "our average is 4.1 out of 5." That number lacks intuitive meaning for executives and board members. Good Jobs Percentage translates the same survey data into a statement anyone understands: "62% of our people are in roles where things are working." That framing drives better conversations about where to invest.
It Exposes Hidden Workforce Segments
Averages hide distributions. An organization with a 75% overall favorability rate might have 80% of employees with seven or more favorable responses and 20% with two or fewer. Or it might have everyone clustered around six. Good Jobs Percentage reveals the shape of the distribution by drawing a clear line and counting who is above it.
It Connects Directly to Retention Risk
Employees below the threshold are signaling dissatisfaction across multiple dimensions. Research consistently links multi-item disengagement to turnover intent. Tracking Good Jobs Percentage by segment lets HR identify which teams, locations, or tenure bands have the highest concentration of at-risk employees before they show up in exit data.
It Supports PE and M&A Due Diligence
For PE-backed companies, Good Jobs Percentage provides a standardized way to compare workforce health across portfolio companies or acquisition targets. A target company reporting a Good Jobs Percentage of 45% tells a different story than one at 72%, even if both claim "strong engagement." The metric is harder to game than a single average score.
It Creates Accountability at the Manager Level
When Good Jobs Percentage is reported by manager, it becomes a coaching tool. A manager whose team has a Good Jobs Percentage 20 points below the company average is either dealing with structural issues (understaffing, poor tools) or behavioral ones (communication, recognition, fairness). Either way, the metric surfaces the conversation.
It Tracks the Spread of Good Conditions, Not Just Their Existence
A company might have pockets of excellence surrounded by mediocrity. Good Jobs Percentage tracks whether positive conditions are spreading across the organization over time. A 5-point increase year over year means more people are experiencing work that works. That trajectory matters more than any single score.
Benchmarks and Interpretation
External benchmarks for Good Jobs Percentage are limited because the metric is not universally standardized. Threshold definitions, survey length, and favorability criteria vary across organizations. That said, reference ranges based on engagement research provide useful context.
General reference ranges (12-item survey, top-two-box favorability, threshold of 6):
- Below 40%: Significant engagement gap. A majority of the workforce is not consistently positive. Investigate survey design, workplace conditions, and management effectiveness.
- 40% to 55%: Below average. Common in organizations with high frontline density, recent M&A activity, or leadership transitions.
- 55% to 70%: Moderate. Roughly aligned with median engagement survey outcomes across industries. Room to improve but not in crisis.
- 70% to 80%: Strong. Most employees are clearing the favorability threshold. Focus shifts to closing gaps in specific segments.
- Above 80%: Top quartile. Sustained at this level, the organization has created broadly positive conditions. Watch for ceiling effects in future surveys.
Industry context matters. Hospitality and retail organizations with high turnover and large frontline populations typically run 10 to 15 points lower than professional services or technology companies. Manufacturing sits somewhere in between.
Internal trends are more valuable than external benchmarks. A company that moves from 48% to 57% in 18 months has meaningful signal. Comparing that 57% to another company's 65% on a different survey with a different threshold is less useful.
Common Mistakes
Using the metric without controlling for survey length. A 20-item survey with a threshold of 6 is far easier to clear than a 10-item survey with the same threshold. Always express the threshold relative to the total number of survey items when comparing across surveys or time periods.
Including incomplete surveys in the denominator. Employees who abandoned the survey after three questions will almost certainly fall below the threshold, artificially dragging down the percentage. Set a minimum completion threshold (75% of items) before including a respondent.
Treating the threshold as a universal standard. "More than 6" is a starting point, not a rule. Organizations should calibrate the threshold to their survey instrument. The goal is to identify employees who are broadly positive, which means the threshold should represent a majority of items answered favorably.
Ignoring the population below the line. Good Jobs Percentage tells you how many cleared the bar. It does not tell you how far below the bar the rest fell. An organization at 60% where the remaining 40% averaged 5 favorable responses is in better shape than one at 60% where the remaining 40% averaged 1. Pair the metric with a distribution analysis.
Changing the favorability definition between survey cycles. Switching from top-two-box to top-one-box (only "Strongly Agree") between years will drop Good Jobs Percentage dramatically and make trend data useless. Lock the definition and document it.
Reporting only the company-level number. The aggregate Good Jobs Percentage is the least useful version of the metric. The value comes from segmentation: by department, location, tenure band, manager, and job family. Always report the segments alongside the total.
Confusing Good Jobs Percentage with percent favorable. Percent favorable calculates the share of all responses that were favorable across all employees and all items. Good Jobs Percentage classifies employees based on their individual response patterns. They answer different questions and can move in different directions.
Related Metrics
Employee Net Promoter Score (eNPS): Measures willingness to recommend the organization as a workplace. Both metrics gauge employee sentiment, but eNPS uses a single question while Good Jobs Percentage uses multi-item threshold classification.
Percent Favorable: Calculates the overall share of survey responses that were favorable across all items and respondents. Good Jobs Percentage is person-level; Percent Favorable is response-level. They complement each other.
Employee Turnover Rate: Tracks the rate at which employees leave the organization. Employees below the Good Jobs Percentage threshold are more likely to appear in turnover data within 6 to 12 months.
Retention Rate: The inverse of turnover, measuring the share of employees who stayed. High Good Jobs Percentage correlates with high retention, particularly in frontline roles.
Good Jobs Score: A composite metric measuring job quality across four dimensions (Leadership, Purpose, Growth, Fairness) on a 1-5 scale. While Good Jobs Percentage is derived from engagement survey response patterns, Good Jobs Score evaluates structural job quality through a separate assessment framework.
Stability Index: Measures the percentage of employees with more than one year of tenure. Organizations with rising Good Jobs Percentage often see Stability Index improve in subsequent periods as engagement drives retention.
Revenue per Employee: Connects workforce engagement to productivity outcomes. Tracking Good Jobs Percentage alongside revenue per employee helps quantify the financial impact of engagement improvements.