Stay up-to-date with every new feature in Qualtrics XM

Learn more

Ready to try Qualtrics?

Get started

Engagement Headlines Widget

Suite

Employee Experience

Product

Qualtrics

What's on this page

About Engagement Headlines Widgets

The engagement headlines widget helps you to present key metrics to managers in a simple and engaging way that drives managers to focus on taking action based on insights.

To present insights to managers, Qualtrics performs an analysis on your data and presents 3 areas of celebration and 3 areas for opportunity. This analysis takes a holistic approach that considers favorability scores, comparison scores, impact on key metrics, and actionability. After identifying the areas for action, managers can create action plans and idea boards from within the widget itself to drive effective change.

Qtip: Unsure which Employee Experience projects have this widget? See our Widget Types and Project Compatibility table. In addition to the projects listed on the linked table, this widget is also available for dashboards in the EX25 XM Solution.

Widget Customization

Attention: We recommend only adding 1 engagement headline widget on a dashboard page.

Qtip: After adding this widget to your dashboard, make sure to resize it so that the whole widget is visible.

For basic widget instructions and customization, visit the Widgets Overview support page. Continue reading for widget-specific customization.

Key Metrics

You can choose up to 5 key metrics to display in your widget. You can select any of your dashboard categories as a key metric.

In the Key metrics section, click Add.

clicking add in the key metrics section of widget settings

Use the Select key metric dropdown menu to choose a category to display.

choosing a metric, adding a description, and adding additional metrics

In the Describe key metric field, enter a short description (up to 150 characters) that explains why this metric is important. This description will appear for any dashboard viewers when they click to learn more about the key metric.

You can add additional key metrics by clicking Add. You can add up to 5 key metrics to your widget.

Qtip: The order you add metrics to your widget determines the order they appear in your dashboard.

If you want to remove a key metric from your widget, click Remove.

Driver Questions

You can choose up to 100 driver questions to display in your widget. These questions will be analyzed to determine strengths and opportunities.

Qtip: NPS questions are not supported for engagement headlines widgets.

Comparisons

You can add up to 3 comparisons or benchmarks to display in your widget, which allows you to compare your team’s performance against other business units and benchmark goals.

After adding comparisons, you can rearrange the order they appear in your widget by dragging and dropping the icon to the left of the comparison name.

Qtip: Dynamic comparison benchmarks are not supported for this widget and will not appear in this list.

Filters

By default, this widget includes all data mapped to your dashboard. You can filter the widget to limit the data that appears in it (for example, to display data from only 1 data source, or to filter the widget to show data for a certain subset of employees).

To add a widget filter, click Add in the Filters section and then build your filter. See Adding Widget-Level Filters for step-by-step instructions.

clicking the add button in the filters section of the widget editing panel

Trend Lines

If you have multiple data sources connected to your dashboard, then you can view the change in your company’s performance for over time. Follow the steps below to add trend analysis to your engagement headlines widget:

Use the Trend line data sources dropdown menu to choose the data sources you want to include in the trend line.

Use the Trend line X-axis menu to select what field is used as the x-axis for your line chart. This can be “data set source," do that each mapped Engagement project has its own data point, or this can be response date.

Key Metric Score Ranges

You can adjust the color scale and labels for each key metrics in the Display tab.

For each metric, there are 3 different value ranges for you to configure, corresponding to different response thresholds. These ranges are based on the metric’s favorability score in relation to the thresholds you set.

You can give each range a description (up to 110 characters) by typing in the associated box. You can adjust the color for a given range by using the Select color dropdown to choose a new color.

Strengths and Opportunities

By default, this widget displays 3 strengths and 3 opportunities. You can increase this up to 5 each.

To change the number of strengths and opportunities, go to the Display tab and then adjust the numbers in the Strength and Opportunities section.

changing the number of opportunities and strengths displayed in the widget

Using an Engagement Headlines Widget

This section outlines how to use the engagement headlines widget as a manager.

The first visualization gives you a quick overview of how your different key metrics are performing. You will see a favorability score showing whether your score is considered “high, moderate, or low” based on your Key Metric Score Ranges. To view more information about a specific metric, click the View link below the metric.

the first visualization in an engagement headlines widget

Example: In the above example, both metrics are in the “moderate” threshold.

When drilling into a key metric, you’ll see the different questions that make up that key metric. Additionally, you’ll see how your current scores compare against the comparisons or benchmarks you’ve added to your widget.
If the widget builder added a trend line, then you can also see your company’s performance for this outcome metric over time.

The next visualization covers your team’s strengths. You can click the How we identify strengths link to pull up a window with more information about how strengths are calculated.

the second visualization in an engagement headlines widget

If you click the View scores for strengths link, you can drill down into the specifics of your team’s strengths. This will open a visualization that shows you the specific score for each strength, which key metrics this strength impacts, and how this strength compares to the first comparison you have configured.

The next visualization covers your team’s areas of opportunity. Click Improve next to a specific opportunity to begin taking action in this area.

the third visualization in an engagement headlines widget

When taking action on an opportunity, you can choose to create either an action plan, or add the opportunity to your idea board.

Qtip: If your dashboard does not have action planning or idea boards enabled, then you will not see these options in your widget.

How Strengths and Opportunities Are Identified

In order to identify performance gaps, the Engagement Headlines widget takes a few different elements into account for each driver:

Score: The average (mean) response to a driver on the original answer scale. Percent favorable is used to break ties and to decide whether a driver can be a strength or an opportunity.
Comparisons: The difference between your team's mean score and the mean score of each selected comparison or benchmark. For example, your comparison may be against the whole organization, the parent unit, or the previous survey.
Importance: How strongly a driver correlates with each key metric selected in the widget.
Actionability: The ease with which managers can take action on a driver, measured by whether there are a high proportion of neutral responses. Actionability is only used to identify opportunities.

There is only one score and one actionability calculation. However, there can be multiple comparisons and multiple importance calculations.

Strengths are identified by taking the score, comparisons, and importance into account.

Opportunities for improvement are identified by taking all 4 into account – score, comparisons, importance, and actionability.

Each eligible driver is ranked on score, comparisons, and importance. Actionability is not ranked; it adjusts the final opportunity ranking.

Once rankings are complete, the algorithm calculates the strength and opportunity of each driver. This determines which drivers appear as strengths and opportunities (3 of each by default; you can show up to 5).

Migrating Engagement Headlines Widgets

On October 21, 2026, the Engagement Headlines widget was updated with a new algorithm that identifies strengths and opportunities more reliably, especially for smaller teams.

Existing widgets were not affected by this update. Instead, you have the option to decide whether to replace older widgets with new ones using the improved algorithm.

Engagement headlines widget with a blue banner at the top explaining that it uses the old algorithm

If your widget is still using the old algorithm to process data, a banner will appear at the top of it. You can create a new Engagement Headlines widget to try the new algorithm.

We recommend keeping your old widget while you set up the new one, so you can compare the results. Once deleted, a widget cannot be retrieved.

Qtip: You cannot create new widgets using the old algorithm.

There are currently no plans to delete or automatically migrate existing widgets on the old algorithm.