This article covers how to understand and navigate your Performance Culture Diagnostic (PCD) survey results across seven steps:

Want a guided walkthrough of your results? Check out the Performance Culture Quadrant guide for managers on Culture Amp Training.

AI Coach in Surveys is available in your report at any point as you work through your results. It is trained specifically on the Performance Culture Diagnostic and draws on your actual survey data to respond, so its guidance is tailored to your team's results and culture state.

You can ask AI Coach questions in plain language - to understand what your results mean, explore patterns across your team, draft communications, or build action plans. Think of AI Coach as your thinking partner, helping you move to or sustain a culture of Peak Performance.

Participation is your starting point. It tells you how representative your team's results are. If we use the analogy of voting, participation let’s you know how many people within your team took the time to cast their vote. We start off here because this gives us some context with which to view the rest of the results.

Check your team's overall participation rate first. If your team is large enough to be broken down by sub-groups (e.g. by role, location, or tenure), note whether response rates vary across those groups. Also consider whether participation is higher or lower than in previous surveys.

As a guide, our people scientists advise that 70% is generally considered representative participation. A rate of 65-85% is typical and healthy, and above 80% is strong. If your team's participation falls below 65%, keep this in mind as you review results – and consider acknowledging it openly when you share findings with your team.

Where participation is strong, treat results as a reliable read on your team's experience. Where it is lower, treat patterns as signals to explore rather than firm conclusions.

Low participation in already-pressured teams can be meaningful in itself: people may not have had the time or energy to respond, even if they care deeply about the work.

The Performance Culture Quadrant (PCQ) is where your data starts to tell a real story. It brings your two outcomes together: Workplace Engagement (how energized and connected your people feel to their work and the organization) and Performance Confidence (how strongly people believe the organization can actually deliver and succeed). Together, they show you, clearly and visually, which culture state your team is in right now. Scores of 65% or above on each outcome are considered high.

Your team's dot on the quadrant will sit in one of four states:

It’s important to bear in mind that these are culture states, not judgements. They describe where your team is right now and are a starting point for a conversation about where to focus.

Expert advice: Not starting at Peak isn't a problem. Culture Amp's research shows that in just one year, organizations have proven they can reach Peak Performance from any starting state.

Learn more about the culture states in The Science Behind Culture Amp’s Performance Culture Diagnostic™ (PCD) and Performance Culture Quadrant™ (PCQ)

If you oversee a larger employee population, you may be able to break down the PCQ by subgroups such as role, location, or tenure using the Demographic selector. Each group appears as its own dot.

Take note of which groups are in a different culture state and which look most at risk. To do this, look at how tightly or loosely clustered the demographic group dots are around that point. Note any groups sitting in a noticeably different quadrant from the rest of the team. You may also consider where your most strategic or at-risk groups sit, such as key functions or roles.

Your two outcome scores tell different stories and point to different levers.

Review them side by side before building your narrative.

Workplace Engagement measures how invested your people are in both the work they do and in being part of the team and organization. When reviewing it, look at the overall score and how your team sits compared to the company overall. If a benchmark has been added, note how your team compares. Then look at the pattern across the individual questions: recommendation, intent to stay, enjoyment, work immersion, and belonging.

Performance Confidence measures whether your people believe the organization is set up to succeed, can reliably hit high goals, and stacks up well against competitors. When reviewing it, look at the overall score and how it compares to the rest of the company. Then review the pattern across the three individual questions: future success, meeting high goals, and competitiveness.

Your EVOLVE factor scores show you what is driving your team's culture state and can help you identify where your strengths lie.

The Performance Culture Diagnostic measures six dimensions of the practices and behaviors most likely to enable sustainable high performance:

If you are using the full Performance Culture Diagnostic (not the Pulse), your report will also include Team and Manager factors. These assess the EVOLVE dimensions at the levels where change actually happens: within your team and through managers. If they score higher than the organization overall, these become strengths you can leverage. If lower, they help identify where to focus your attention as a manager.

Look at your top 2-3 highest-scoring EVOLVE dimensions. For each one, think about what it looks like in practice in your team - the behaviors your people would recognize.

With the Performance Culture Diagnostic, strengths may explain:

Your focus areas are where the data points you toward the highest-leverage action. Rather than acting on everything at once, this step is about identifying the 1-2 areas most likely to move your desired outcome.

We recommend doing this in 3 stages:

Based on your quadrant position, choose which outcome to focus on first. As a general rule, prioritize the lower-scoring outcome. As a guide:

If you are in Engaged Skepticism, start with Performance Confidence. If you are in Strained, start with Workplace Engagement. If you are in Peak Performance or Disconnected, focus on the outcome that matters most strategically. If you're unsure which outcome to prioritise, AI Coach can help you interpret your results and identify where to focus first.

These are powered by the Focus Agent, which takes into account room for improvement, relevant comparisons, and impact to surface the highest-leverage areas first. A low score is not always the most important thing to act on.

You can also navigate to the Questions page to go deeper into individual questions and use the impact column and focus recommendations to find the questions most strongly driving your organization’s focused outcome.

Be targeted and strategic about what you can realistically improve in the next 6 months.

Once you have a clear picture of your overall culture state and focus areas, you may have the ability to compare the experience of different subgroups.

Your report may include additional demographic filters such as role, location, or tenure. Depending on your report access, you may view these on the Performance Culture Quadrant, or with the Heatmap.

We’ve covered a few tips earlier in this article on interpreting your subgroups’ current culture states.

Some reports may include the Heatmap, which gives you a visual spread of scores across demographic groups.

In the Heatmap, look at your subgroups and note:

For each subgroup that stands out, pull your observations into a short statement. For example: "People in [role/location] are sitting in Strained while the team overall is in Peak Performance. Their Energy and Ownership scores are around 10 points lower, which suggests they may be carrying more pressure or have less clarity about how to get things done." Then consider what that group has been through recently and how that context helps explain what you are seeing.

Looking for some guidance on having a results conversation with your team? Refer to our Manager's Guide to Taking Action on Engagement Survey Results - Step 2.

Discuss the results with your team.

Once you’ve identified your top 1-2 focus areas and explored additional context, it’s time to narrow into action.

AI Coach is specifically trained on the Performance Culture Diagnostic and draws on your actual survey data and Culture Amp's People Science evidence base to help you understand your results and plan your next steps. Rather than working from a pre-defined list, Coach generates recommendations based on your team's results, your quadrant position, and your role context.

Coach is available in Standard and Advanced report types. It is not available in the Summary report type.

Ask Coach to suggest actions for your chosen focus theme, including both short-term and longer-term options. Review the suggestions and adapt them to fit your team's context. You can also ask Coach to help you draft a communication to share results and next steps with your team.

Performance Confidence is a new outcome measure, and external benchmarks require sufficient data from many organisations using the same questions over time. Because the Performance Culture Diagnostic is still being adopted, there isn't yet enough data to generate a reliable external benchmark for this factor. As more organisations run the PCD, this will grow.

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