How to Use the Key Driver Analysis

Note: that we recommend at least 30 responses for a statistically meaningful Key Driver Analysis. If your organization size is smaller than 30, please send your Key Driver Analysis-supported survey to "All Company” when creating the survey.


Our Key Driver Analysis (KDA) is an advanced statistical analysis that identifies which elements of a survey’s results have the most impact on the primary outcome that the survey is intended to achieve. The KDA then recommends areas for you to prioritize so that you know where to invest your time and energy for the most return on your investment. 

Want to learn more about how the KDA works and why you should trust it? Click here!

Want a quick overview of some of our KDA best practices? Click here!

How to access our Key Driver Analysis

To access our KDA, you first need to create a KDA-supported survey template and make sure that it includes the outcome and driver questions. You can add more questions to the survey, but they will not be included in the KDA. We also recommend that you send the survey to a group of at least 30 users.

1. You can either schedule a KDA-supported survey from the Content Library or after clicking on the Create Survey button on the Manage Surveys page in the Engage section of the Surveys tab.

Please note, our KDA is currently only available for Limeade Listening-created surveys. However, feel free to reach out to your Customer Success contact or our Support team if you would like to have us analyze a survey that your organization has created.

2. Create your survey following our flexible survey instructions found here.

3. Once you have sent out your survey, you will need to wait until the survey has closed for our KDA to run. Trust us, it is worth the wait!

4. After your survey has closed, review your survey by going to the Responses page in the Engage section of the Surveys, scrolling down until you see the engagement KDA section, and clicking on the View Analysis Details button.


To learn more about our KDA, why you should use it, and how it will better improve your organization, keep reading!

How to interpret our Key Driver Analysis

When you use a KDA-supported flexible survey template and qualify for all the conditions to have the KDA, your analysis will include an Outcome Score, the Improvement Areas for Outcome, the driver Scores, the driver Impacts, and the Recommendations.

Outcome Score is computed using the average of the outcome questions. If the survey has only one outcome question, the Outcome Score is the score of that one outcome question

Improvement Areas for Outcome has from one to three driver questions that our KDA determined to have the most potential impact on your organization and that we recommend you focus on.

Driver Score is the average score of the question that makes up a driver.

Driver Impact tells you the predictive impact that a driver has on the Outcome Score - if you improve the Driver’s Score, it could potentially improve the Outcome Score. The driver’s Impact has a scale of Extremely HighVery HighHighMediumLowVery Low, and Non-Significant.

  • Extremely High, Very High, High Impact - if you work on this driver, your Outcome Score will likely improve
  • Medium Impact - if you work on this driver, your Outcome Score could potentially improve
  • Low, Very Low Impact  - if you work on this driver, there is a small chance that your Outcome Score will improve
  • Non-Significant - there is too much random data to determine a meaningful pattern or trend for this Driver’s Impact (this usually happens when the survey audience size is small)
  • Interested in learning more about the math behind how the Driver Impact is calculated? Read more here!

Recommendation is the action we recommend for each Driver by combining Driver’s two dimensions - Score and Impact. 

  • Prioritize: These drivers have low scores but high impact. You are not doing well in these crucial areas and will want to focus on these items so that you can have the highest return on investment (ROI) for your initiatives. 
  • Celebrate: These drivers have high scores and high impact. You are doing very well in these important areas and should commend your efforts to produce these strengths. 
  • Maintain: These drivers have high scores but low impact. You are doing well in these essential areas and should continue to sustain them even though they are not as impactful in comparison to other drivers. 
  • Review: These drivers have low scores and low impact. You are not doing well in these areas, but since they have less effect on your organization, you should look into making small improvements on these and divert most of your resources to more impactful items.

For a better understanding of how the Driver Impact and Driver Score interact, you can toggle between the Key Driver Quadrant view and the Key Driver Details view of your KDA by clicking on the three dots or the lines in the top-right corner of the All Key Drivers section of the analysis.

How to take impactful actions from your Key Driver Analysis

After reviewing the top priorities the KDA has evaluated for you, there are a few next steps for you to take when looking at your survey’s data.

  1. Combine the KDA findings with the Heatmap data to pinpoint to groups that need attention for the top priority drivers.
  2. Go through responses to the top priority drivers and follow up with private messages to better understand what employees are thinking or suggesting.
  3. Notify your fellow admins to go through the results and @mention them in Notes
    • Group admins and viewers of custom groups with 30 or more responses can also see a "mini-KDA" for just their group.
  4. Once you have researched KDA’s findings and have decided what initiatives to address the top priorities, you can create a progress plan to monitor the progress.

Combine Key Driver Analysis with Heatmap 

Once you have pinpointed the top priorities to analyze further, go to your Heatmap. Here, you can find the low-score and high-score employee groups of these top priority drivers. 

Want to delve into what is causing differences in scores between groups? We recommend having focus-group discussions with the low-score and high-score groups. This will help you find out what is working so well for the high-score groups, which you may then be able to apply to the low-score groups to improve their scores.

Go through text responses and Interact in Private Messages

While averages and graphs can give you a great overall view of your users’ thoughts on a question, individual responses shed a lot more light on why employees feel a certain way about the topic. 

If you are planning on investing in your organization to help boost your Driver Scores and your overall Outcome Score, it is important to figure out exactly what change your users are wanting so that you can best increase your scores. By private messaging your users, you can directly engage with your users, reminding them that their organization is listening to and reading their feedback, and, in turn, they can help tailor your improvements.

Have conversations with your teams and managers

Our KDA is the start of a conversation, not an end to one. The most successful organizations are the ones that actively have conversations about impactful topics. With our KDA, you can start your data-driven conversations about the topics that matter to your employees. 

At a higher level, your organization’s leadership team can have brainstorming sessions about the problems and the potential solutions to roll out for the organization.

Once your managers know what items are the most important to your organization (or to their custom group(s) if their custom group(s) have 30 or more responses), they can have 1-on-1s or team discussions to gain more insights about how to improve your top priority drivers. 


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