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Cracking the Code on Workforce Sentiment for Competitive Edge

Understanding employees' "feelings" isn’t just an internal HR function—it’s a strategic lever for outpacing competitors. 

In fact, measuring employee sentiment can boost productivity by 18% and lower turnover by 40%. Those are just a few advantages of employee sentiment analysis.

The often-cited, though misattributed, quote "What gets measured gets managed" is frequently credited to Peter Drucker. While he may never have actually said it, the "sentiment" holds true—especially for employee sentiment. By measuring it effectively, businesses can make strategic decisions that drive performance and growth.

With workforce sentiment directly impacting performance, project agility, and retention, businesses need tools that offer real-time insights without requiring invasive access to internal HR data or employee sentiment surveys.

That’s where Aura comes in. It uses its unique, outside-in approach to provide detailed workforce sentiment analysis across industries and over time.

employeed connected around a project

The Power of External Employee Sentiment Analysis

When people ask what employee sentiment is and why it matters, the answer is evolving. Employee sentiment isn’t just about using traditional internal employee surveys or one-time assessments—it’s about measuring employee sentiment in real-time to capture how employees feel about the leadership, company values, compensation, and workplace culture.

With Aura, you don’t need access to internal HR systems or traditional employee sentiment surveys to get these insights. Aura delivers a comprehensive employee sentiment analysis dataset without touching sensitive internal data by analyzing public data like online reviews from the employees themselves.

Aura taps into a wide array of public sources to give businesses a clearer understanding of employee feedback, job satisfaction, and overall employee sentiment. This powerful analysis provides actionable insights and allows businesses to gauge employee sentiment in real time while also looking at historical sentiment trends to uncover how sentiment has shifted over time.

This allows businesses to identify long-term cultural strengths and potential areas of concern, even if those issues have emerged only recently.

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Measuring Workforce Sentiment Over Time with Aura Workforce Analytics

Benchmarking and Measuring Employee Sentiment Data Against Competitors

The real magic of Aura’s employee sentiment analysis tools lies in benchmarking. Knowing how your workforce feels is insufficient—you need to know how that compares to the competition or industry comps. Aura’s platform enables companies to track sentiment trends over time and across industries, creating competitive sentiment dashboards that reveal which companies excel at employee engagement and where vulnerabilities exist.

For example, you might discover that a competitor’s company culture fosters positive employee sentiment in areas like innovation or leadership, giving them an advantage in retaining engaged employees. On the other hand, Aura could reveal a competitor facing a sharp negative sentiment shift during leadership transitions, signaling employee concerns about poor management practices. Aura’s ability to provide historical sentiment data gives you an advantage by showing whether such dips are temporary or part of a longer-term trend​.

Combine the sentiment data with overlays of skill or performance benchmark comparisons, and you have powerful organizational insights without internal data, which is a boon particularly for external consultants.

Aura excels at analyzing employee sentiment from platforms like Glassdoor and other public employee feedback channels. This makes it easy to pinpoint issues like employee stress, work-life balance, or dissatisfaction with management practices. Aura also tracks how these issues evolve, helping businesses see if employee morale has improved or worsened.

Whether focusing on high employee sentiment or negative sentiment, Aura provides a full view of sentiment scores across the industry, helping businesses understand their position in relation to their competitors.

Driving Strategic Workforce Decisions with Employee Feedback Insights

Using Aura’s sentiment analysis software, companies can extract meaningful insights that guide decision-making in real time. Aura delivers a comprehensive view of employee satisfaction, employee loyalty, and potential risks by tracking overall employee sentiment and viewing historical sentiment trends across millions of employees. This insight is particularly valuable when paired with quantitative and qualitative data from employee comments on public forums.

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Sentiment Metrics Graph using Aura Workforce Analytics

For instance, understanding the historical sentiment data of the target company’s workforce during an acquisition or merger can provide critical intelligence. Positive sentiment over time may signal smoother integration and higher employee engagement, while negative sentiment that has persisted may indicate deep-seated cultural or operational challenges. Analyzing employee feedback helps businesses make informed decisions, reducing risk and maximizing value​​.

This approach to analyzing employee sentiment through external sentiment analysis data enables businesses to track current and previous employees' feelings about company culture, leadership, and management practices over time without relying on internal data. Aura empowers businesses to adjust strategies based on overall sentiment and historical sentiment data, helping to improve employee engagement and benchmarking performance against competitors.

Gaining a Competitive Edge Through Sentiment Analysis

Aura’s unique outside-in approach to workforce sentiment analysis gives businesses a tangible advantage. By analyzing external sentiment sources, Aura allows companies to measure employee sentiment in real time while showing how sentiment trends have evolved. This means quicker, more strategic adjustments that improve employee satisfaction, morale, and engagement.

By continuously measuring employee sentiment and benchmarking against competitors, companies can track drastic employee sentiment changes and understand how employee response shifts influence business outcomes. Whether identifying employee involvement or employee well-being issues, Aura’s sentiment analysis tools help businesses stay agile and proactive.

Aura also allows companies to boost their employer brand by identifying key factors that drive positive sentiment and addressing those that lead to negative sentiment. As business and HR managers look for ways to improve employee satisfaction and enhance the employee experience, Aura provides the critical insights they need to stay ahead.

With Aura, you don’t need internal HR data to gain deep insights into employee feedback or the company’s culture. You'll have the data out of the box—backed by historical sentiment trends that show how a company’s workforce has evolved. Learn more with a platform demonstration!

Ready to unlock the power of workforce data?