Creating Custom Benchmarks (EX)

About Creating Custom Benchmarks (EX)

You can add personalized company benchmarks in your dashboard. Match each goal to the corresponding data, then easily reuse your benchmarks across your dashboard widgets.

Types of Dashboards Supported

The custom benchmarks described on this page are available in a few different types of dashboard. This includes:

• Employee Engagement
• Lifecycle
• Pulse
• Ad Hoc Employee Research

This support page only covers the dashboards listed above. It does not covered similarly named features that might exist in other dashboard types.

EX Benchmark Types

When creating benchmarks, you upload benchmark data for each of your survey fields. You may use different benchmark types depending on how you want to compare data.

There are 3 different types of benchmarks you can import:

• Dynamic Comparison: These benchmarks display the most relevant benchmark cut based on org hierarchy data. With this benchmark type, you must associate benchmark cuts with your org hierarchy units. Dynamic comparison benchmarks are most commonly used when the metric you are comparing against changes depending on the org hierarchy unit you are viewing. They enable comparisons that change context depending on the employee viewing them.
   

Attention: Dynamic comparison benchmarks are not available in Line & Bar Chart and Table widgets.

Qtip: Dynamic comparison benchmarks may only be the Top Box / Bottom Box metric type. The metric type determines which widgets the benchmark can be displayed in. See widget compatibility for more information.

• Percentile: These benchmarks are used to bucket values into different percentiles. They contain a set of 100 values (or buckets) for a particular field. A value for a field, such as an average, is calculated from the response data and then the value is looked up in the percentile list to see what percentile bucket (one of the 100 in the list) it falls in, and then the bucket number (1-100) is displayed. For example, the 75th percentile reflects the survey score at which 75% of survey scores fall at or below.

Qtip: More data is required to calculate percentile benchmarks. Some survey questions may have an average benchmark score, but not a percentile benchmark score.

• Comparison: These benchmarks contain one number per survey field and are usually compared directly with some value calculated from an actual field, using the same metric type (e.g. Top/Bottom Box). Comparison benchmarks are the most common benchmark types, and are most useful when you are comparing everyone against the same metric.

Adding a Benchmark Manually

If you have benchmarks from another source, follow these steps to add them to your dashboard manually.

Navigate to your dashboard and go to the Settings tab.

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Select Benchmark editor.

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Click the downward arrow next to Add a Qualtrics benchmark.

Select Add a benchmark manually.

Enter a name for your benchmark.

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Attention: If you change the name of an existing benchmark it will change the name for all fields under the benchmark.

Select the question field(s) from your dashboard that you want to add benchmarks for.

Qtip: Click Select all to select all benchmark fields.

Select the metric type for your benchmark.

Click Next.

Enter the values for your benchmarks within the score column.

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Click Add to benchmarks.

Creating and Updating Benchmarks in Bulk

If you need to upload benchmarks to your dashboard in bulk, you can upload them from a file. These steps will take you through how to get a template, prepare your file, and upload your benchmarks.

You can use this method to upload new benchmarks or update existing benchmarks.

Click the settings gear.

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Select Benchmark editor.

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Select Add a benchmark.

Select Import your own benchmarks.

Select a benchmark import type. You can choose to upload a new benchmark or update an existing one.

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Qtip: If you are updating an existing benchmark, select the benchmark you want to update.

If you’e in an EX dashboard, select the benchmark type.

Qtip: If you choose Dynamic Comparison as the benchmark type, follow the instructions at the end of this section to associate benchmark cuts with hierarchy units.

Select a format for your template file. The available file formats are CSV or TSV.

Select Download template.

This file will contain all the numeric and number set fields mapped to your dashboard.

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Qtip: This file doesn’t contain your existing benchmarks – only your numeric and number set fields. If you are updating benchmarks, you will have to reenter all values in your file.

Qtip: Check out your Dashboard Data page if there are fields that need their names or field types changed, or if you need to add a new field.

In the header, add the names of the benchmarks you want to upload. Each column represents one set of benchmarks.

Add the corresponding benchmarks for each dashboard field.

Attention: All fields that are included when exporting the template need to be included in the import file, even if they don’t have a benchmark value. Do not include any blank rows in your import file. Otherwise, you will see the error: “This file is missing field IDs or has invalid field IDs”.

Qtip: When adding percentile benchmarks to an EX dashboard, if you do not want to include a question, feel free to leave that column blank. However, you cannot have empty rows for a question; if adding a benchmark, you must include all 100 percentiles.

Qtip: When adding comparison benchmarks to an EX dashboard, the expected format for a comparison benchmark is 0.XX. The widget will interpret this as a percentage. For example, 0.3456 will be shown as 34.56% and 0.02 will be shown as 2%. 1.0 will be shown as 100%.

Save your file in one of the following formats:

• CSV UTF-8 Encoded
• TSV

Qtip: TSV is recommended if your field names contain characters not used in the English alphabet. See TSV / CSV Upload Issues for troubleshooting help.

Back in the benchmark editor, click Choose file to upload the file you created.

Qtip: If your file is too large you will be unable to upload it into the benchmark editor. You should upload smaller, separate files if needed.

Click Next.

Select a metric type for your benchmark values.

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Click Next.

Review your fields to confirm the data is mapped correctly.

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Qtip: If you need to edit a benchmark, click the 3 horizontal dots next to each row and select Edit benchmark field row.

Qtip: Click Back in the bottom-left to go back and adjust settings or upload a new file.

Select Upload benchmarks.

Dynamic Comparison Benchmarks

If you selected Dynamic Comparison as the benchmark type within an EX dashboard, follow these steps after setting up your benchmark to associate benchmark cuts with hierarchy units.

Navigate to the Participants tab.

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Go to Org Hierarchies.

Click Hierarchy Tools.

Select Export Units.

Once your file is finished downloading, open it on a spreadsheet editor on your computer.

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Add a new column. The column header should match your newly created benchmark name exactly.

Each row in your spreadsheet is a unit. For each unit, enter the benchmark cut name that corresponds to it.

When finished, save your file as a CSV file.

In Qualtrics, click Hierarchy Tools.

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Select Import Units.

Click Choose File and select the unit file on your computer.

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Click Update.

After your benchmark has been added, you can click View score next to any question field to see the benchmark cuts for that field.

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Widget Compatibility

Qtip: See Displaying Benchmarks in Widgets for instructions on adding benchmarks to widgets.

Compatibility for EX Dashboards

The type of benchmark you can use varies by widget. The metric selected when you set up your benchmark also varies in compatibility. The following tables will display what combinations you can use.

Dynamic Comparison Benchmarks

Comparison Benchmarks

Percentile Benchmarks

Troubleshooting Benchmark Uploads

You’ll receive an error message if your uploaded file failed to update participants. 

These are the same messages you get in CX dashboard custom benchmark uploads. For a list of errors and possible solutions, see Troubleshooting Benchmark Uploads.