Engagement surveys tell you how people feel. That is valuable. The PED tells you whether the structure underneath your organization is strong enough to sustain what those feelings produce.
Think of it this way. Your engagement survey is the annual physical. It gives you readings. The PED is the diagnostic that tells you what is causing those readings and what to treat. No physician prescribes from a physical reading alone. No manager should make structural decisions from an engagement score alone.
The PED gives managers specific direction to enhance their engagement scores by identifying which structural dimension is failing and what conditions need to change.
The PED™ is a 36-item instrument grounded in 250 peer-reviewed studies across
111,000+ participants (Li et al., 2025 meta-analysis) and doctoral research confirming structural attachment outperforms satisfaction and engagement as a retention predictor.
What would someone lose by leaving? Compensation, status, relationships, projects, equity, identity, trajectory. The higher the perceived sacrifice, the stronger the anchor.
The alignment between a person’s values, goals, and identity and what the organization provides. When fit is high, leaving means abandoning a place that reflects who you are.
The depth and breadth of connections within the organization. More threads tying someone to a place means more that unravels if they leave.
Were the commitments made during recruiting, onboarding, and employment delivered? Grounded in Rousseau’s 35+ year research on psychological contracts. Every gap between what was promised and what was delivered degrades this dimension.
The PED enhances your engagement scores by diagnosing the structural conditions
your engagement program is designed to detect but cannot locate.
Engagement surveys are necessary. They tell you how your people feel. The PED™ tells you where that structure is strong and where it is failing.
| Engagement SurveysWhat They Measure | The PED™What It Measures | |
|---|---|---|
| 01 | Measure how employees feel about their work, manager, and growth. | Measures whether those feelings are structurally anchored enough to produce sustained behavior. |
| 02 | Capture sentiment at a point in time. | Identifies the four structural forces that determine whether sentiment converts to performance and retention. |
| 03 | Tell you a score is low. | Tells you which structural dimension is driving the score and what to fix. |
| 04 | Produce organization-wide averages. | Produces heat maps by team, tenure, and role showing exactly where structural attachment is failing. |
| 05 | Identify disengagement after it surfaces. | Identifies structural detachment before it shows up in engagement scores or turnover data. |
| 06 | Cannot detect Phantom Retention. | Surfaces the structurally detached employees your survey already scores as retained. |
| 07 | Give leadership a number. | Gives managers specific direction to enhance their engagement scores. |
Your engagement survey tells you how your people feel. The PED tells you whether those feelings are structurally anchored enough to produce sustained performance and retention. You need both. You have been running on one.
