Employee Involvement
How well do you engage your team in meaningful work, share the right information, and involve them in finding solutions? This assessment gives leaders concrete feedback on their participative leadership practices—as a self-assessment or with multi-rater input from up to 5 observers.
What It Measures
Employee Involvement measures three areas that research shows drive engagement and performance when leaders get them right:
Access to Meaningful Work
Are you giving people problems worth solving?
- Meaningful Problems
Access to Information & Resources
Do people have what they need to contribute?
- Right People
- Information & Resources
Access to Solutions
Can your team act on their ideas?
- Leadership Support
- Implement Solutions
How It Works
Employee Involvement can be used as a self-assessment or as a multi-rater assessment. In self-assessment mode, the leader reflects on their own participative practices. In multi-rater mode, the leader also invites up to 5 observers (direct reports, peers, or managers) to provide their perspective. Each respondent completes 25 paired-comparison items, indicating which of two leadership behaviors better describes the leader and how strongly.
Reports compare self-perception against observer ratings, revealing blind spots and hidden strengths in participative leadership. The gap analysis shows where leaders see themselves differently than their team does—the most powerful catalyst for development.
Who Uses This
- Coaches: Build involvement skills in leaders who struggle to engage their teams
- Workshop facilitators: Run a focused 2-4 hour session on participative leadership
- Leadership programs: Combine with other Achieving Leader assessments for a complete development journey
- Manager development: Help new managers learn to involve rather than direct
The Science
- Based on the Access Management model of participative leadership
- Normative data from 4,680 working adults in management roles
- Thurstonian IRT scoring with percentile reporting
- Bilingual English/Spanish
Common Questions
How is Employee Involvement different from general engagement surveys?
Employee Involvement is a targeted leadership assessment that measures how well a leader creates the conditions for engagement — meaningful work opportunities, information access, and involvement in solutions. Unlike climate surveys that measure overall engagement, this assessment focuses on specific leadership practices that drive it.
What is the gap analysis and why does it matter?
The gap analysis compares how a leader rates their own participative practices against what their team observes. This self-vs-observer gap is one of the most powerful catalysts for development — it reveals blind spots where leaders think they're involving their team more than employees actually experience.
Can I use this as a self-assessment only?
Yes. Employee Involvement works as a standalone self-assessment or with up to 5 observers for multi-rater feedback. Many organizations use the self-assessment in classrooms and workshops where observer feedback is impractical.
Who should use this assessment?
Any leader or manager who wants to understand how well they engage their team. It is especially valuable for managers who want to increase participation, coaches working on delegation and involvement practices, and leadership development programs.
Ready to Get Started?
Add Employee Involvement to your coaching and workshop toolkit.
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