What Is a Favorable Score? How to Calculate and Interpret It

A favorable score (percent favorable) is the share of employees who answer "Agree" or "Strongly agree" to a survey item, out of all employees who gave a valid answer to that item. It is also known as "favorability" or the "top-2 box." For example, if 124 of 200 employees agree or strongly agree with the item "My manager gives me regular feedback," the favorable rate for that item is 62%. It is the most widely used metric in employee satisfaction and engagement surveys because it is easy to understand and directly answers the question "What share of our employees feel positive about this?" In this article we explain how the favorable rate is calculated, how it differs from the mean score and how it should be interpreted.

What Does a Favorable Score Measure?

In employee surveys, items are usually answered on a 5-point agreement scale running from "Strongly disagree" to "Strongly agree." We explain the structure of the scale and why the 5-point version is recommended in what is a Likert scale.

The favorable score splits these five options into three groups:

The favorable rate is the combined share of the first two options. The logic is the same if the scale runs in the other direction: what matters is not the numeric code but whether the answer expresses a positive view. In a negatively worded item (for example "My workload is not sustainable"), "agree" signals a negative situation, and such items need to be reversed for reporting.

How Do You Calculate Percent Favorable?

The calculation has three steps:

1. Identify the valid responses: Remove those who skipped the item and those who chose the off-scale "No opinion / Don't know" option.
2. Count the favorable responses: Add up "Agree" and "Strongly agree."
3. Calculate the rate: Divide the favorable count by the number of valid responses and express it as a percentage.

Worked Example

Suppose 210 employees answered the item "My manager gives me regular feedback." Ten of them chose "No opinion," leaving 200 valid responses:

• Favorable rate: (38 + 86) / 200 = 62%
• Neutral rate: 40 / 200 = 20%
• Unfavorable rate: (24 + 12) / 200 = 18%

The mean score for the same item is (38×5 + 86×4 + 40×3 + 24×2 + 12×1) / 200 = 3.57. "62% favorable" clearly tells a manager far more than "3.57."

Why Three-Way Reporting Matters

The favorable rate alone gives an incomplete picture. Of two items that are both 62% favorable, one may be 8% unfavorable and the other 30%. In the first, some employees are undecided; in the second, there is serious dissatisfaction. That is why a good report shows all three rates together for every item and category:

• Favorable rate: Shows the strengths and what needs to be protected.
• Neutral rate: Shows the group that has not yet been won over and is waiting to be convinced.
• Unfavorable rate: Shows problems that may need urgent attention.

In reports these three rates are usually shown as stacked bar charts in green, gray and red. We also stress in our guide how to analyze employee survey results that of two categories with the same favorable rate, the one with the higher unfavorable rate is the more urgent problem.

Favorable Score or Mean Score?

Some reports present results as a mean score from 1 to 5. The mean is useful for statistical analysis, but it hides how employees' answers are distributed. The three items below have the same mean:

All three have a mean of 3.60, but they tell very different stories:

• In item A, most employees are moderately positive and there is no serious objection.
• In item B, employees are split: two-thirds are favorable, but almost a third are unfavorable. This usually points to different units or managers providing very different experiences, and calls for a look at breakdowns and heatmaps in employee survey results.
• In item C, unfavorable responses are low, but 40% of employees are undecided. The problem here may not be open dissatisfaction but uncertainty or a lack of information.

The strengths and weaknesses of the two metrics can be summarized as follows:

Practical advice: use the favorable score in reports and communication, and keep the mean score in the background for statistical work such as key driver analysis.

Favorable Scores at Category and Index Level

Surveys are usually divided into categories (relationship with manager, career development, recognition and so on) and an engagement index. The category-level favorable rate can be calculated in two ways:

• Average of item rates: Calculate the favorable rate of each item in the category and take their average. For example, if the four items in the "Relationship with my manager" category are 72%, 68%, 55% and 61% favorable, the category score is 64%.
• Pooling all responses: Add up all favorable responses to every item in the category and divide by the total number of valid responses.

When every item has the same number of valid responses, the two methods give the same result. When "No opinion" answers cluster on some items, the results may differ slightly. Which one you choose matters less than using the same method every year.

Another approach used for the engagement index is a person-level calculation: each employee's answers to the index items are averaged, and those above a certain threshold are classified as "engaged." This produces a different metric, such as "percentage of engaged employees," and its results can differ from the item-based favorable rate. This distinction is critical when comparing against a benchmark.

You can find short definitions of core terms such as category and index in our employee survey glossary.

How to Interpret a Favorable Rate

There is no single right answer to "What percentage is good?" Even within the same organization, items differ naturally: items about relationships with coworkers usually get high favorable rates, while items about pay and career opportunities usually get lower ones. That is why fixed thresholds such as "anything below 70% is bad" are misleading.

Three comparisons make a favorable rate meaningful:

1. External comparison (benchmark): The result for the same item in the same industry or in similar organizations. The benchmark must also be calculated as a favorable rate on the same scale. We explain how to choose the right benchmark in employee engagement benchmarks.
2. Comparison over time: The change in the item compared with previous measurements. In small groups a change of a few points may be chance; we show which differences are real, with a table, in comparing engagement survey results year over year.
3. Internal comparison: The difference between the organization as a whole and units, locations or tenure groups. Each group needs at least 10 responses to be reported.

These questions help when interpreting:

• How high is the unfavorable rate for this item? If the favorable rate is low but the unfavorable rate is also low, the issue may be indecision.
• In which groups does the favorable rate drop noticeably?
• How much impact does this item have on engagement? A low favorable rate does not always mean a priority.

What About "No Opinion" Answers?

"Neither agree nor disagree" and "No opinion" are not the same thing. An employee who chooses the neutral option knows the topic but does not express a clear positive or negative view. An employee who says "No opinion" or "Don't know" is not in a position to judge. For example, a new hire may not yet have experienced the process behind "Our performance review process is fair."

Therefore:

• "No opinion" should be offered as a separate option outside the scale.
• These answers should not be included in the denominator of the favorable rate. In the example above, adding the 10 "No opinion" answers to the denominator would give 59% instead of 62%, and the organization would read a lack of information as dissatisfaction.
• The "No opinion" rate should be tracked separately. A high rate on an item is a finding in itself: employees do not know the process, or the item is not meaningful to them.

Why Neutral Is Not "Good"

Some reports combine favorable and neutral responses into a "not unfavorable" rate. This makes the results look better than they are. A neutral answer often means:

• A quiet reservation: The employee does not want to say something negative but does not feel positive either. This tendency grows in surveys where trust in anonymity is low.
• An inconsistent experience: Sometimes good, sometimes bad.
• A lack of information or interest: The topic is not on the employee's radar.

The neutral group is where action plans can gain the most. Convincing an employee with a negative view is hard; moving an undecided employee to the favorable side with small but visible improvements is often easier. That is why it helps to list items with a high neutral rate separately.

Common Mistakes

• Looking only at the favorable rate: Interpretation without the unfavorable rate misses polarized results.
• Adding "No opinion" answers to the denominator: This artificially lowers the favorable rate and makes a lack of information look like dissatisfaction.
• Adding neutral to favorable: Statements such as "85% of employees are not unfavorable" hide the real situation.
• Comparing different methods: Comparing the favorable rate one year with the mean score the next, or comparing an item-based favorable rate with a person-based engaged percentage, leads to wrong conclusions.
• Changing the scale and still comparing: When you move from a 5-point to a 7-point scale, the "top-2 box" no longer means the same thing, and comparisons with previous years lose their validity.
• Not reversing negatively worded items: Counting "agree" as favorable on a negatively worded item flips the results completely.
• Interpreting small differences in small groups: In a 12-person team, a single person's answer moves the favorable rate by more than 8 points. Such differences do not indicate a trend on their own.
• Using fixed "good" thresholds: Judging every item against the same target makes areas that naturally score lower look unfairly problematic.

Conclusion: The Favorable Rate Is a Starting Point

The favorable score translates employee survey results into a language everyone understands. Its real value, however, emerges when it is read together with the neutral and unfavorable rates, interpreted with the right comparisons and assessed alongside its impact on engagement. The favorable rate shows "where we are"; the neutral and unfavorable rates tell us "where to start."

Frequently asked questions