If you run employee engagement surveys, you’ve probably asked yourself: is our participation rate actually good, or does it just feel good?
TMA Performance analyzed participation rates across thousands of engagement survey campaigns run over the past four years. The overall average across all campaigns was 78% and the top 10% of campaigns (“Best in Class”) hit 86%. That 8-point gap is a useful target: it’s roughly what separates a solid survey program from an exceptional one.
But the more interesting story is in the breakdown by company size and industry, where participation rates swing from a low of 63% to a high of 91%. Here’s what the data shows, and what it means for your own survey strategy.
The Headline Numbers
- Highest industry: Hospitality — 84%
- Lowest industry: Retail — 69%
Breakout By Company Size
| Size | Employees | Participation |
|---|---|---|
| Small | 1–100 | 79% |
| Medium | 101–500 | 77% |
| Large | 500+ | 78% |
Company size turns out to be a surprisingly weak predictor of participation. All three tiers land within 2 points of each other. Small companies edge out the others slightly, which tracks with intuition: leadership visibility is higher, survey requests feel more personal, and there’s less “someone else will fill it out” diffusion of responsibility.
What’s more notable is that medium-sized companies are the weak spot, not large ones. This is often the “awkward middle” zone organizationally — big enough that leaders aren’t personally asking every employee to participate, but not yet mature enough to have the dedicated internal communications infrastructure (intranet banners, manager cascades, HRBP follow-up) that large enterprises use to drive participation.
Breakout by Industry
| Industry | Participation | Notable Sub-Industries |
|---|---|---|
| Hospitality | 84% | Hotels 84%, Food Services 83% |
| Finance | 80% | Credit Unions 81%, Insurance 80%, Banks 77% |
| Wholesale Trade | 82% | |
| Education | 79% | Higher Ed 81% |
| Healthcare | 79% | Hospitals 82%, Individual/Family Services 79%, Outpatient Care 78% |
| Manufacturing | 79% | Pharma/Biotech/Chem 79%, Food Manufacturing 74% |
| Oil and Gas Extraction | 79% | |
| Professional Services | 79% | Technology 78% |
| Construction | 79% | |
| Other Services | 78% | Trade Associations 83%, Social Advocacy/Non-profits 77% |
| Real Estate | 77% | |
| Agriculture | 76% | |
| Communications | 74% | |
| Entertainment | 74% | |
| Admin Services | 73% | Staffing 75%, Landscaping 73%, Waste Mgt 63% |
| Public Administration | 73% | |
| Utilities | 72% | |
| Transportation | 70% | |
| Retail | 69% |
Good Participation Needs Good Software
Most participation problems are access problems. TMA Performance lets you run a single engagement survey across every channel your workforce actually uses: email invitations for desk-based staff, open links and QR codes for phones, tablet kiosks in break rooms and on plant floors, and paper surveys where nothing else fits. Every response, no matter how it arrives, arrives in the same confidential data set and the same dashboards, so your frontline employees count exactly as much as your headquarters team.
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