New EEI Database Ranks 129 Companies Across 43 Industries, Creating a Free Scorecard for Enterprise Value Analysis

The expanding Enterprise Engagement Index database gives organizations a practical way to objectively benchmark how effectively they convert people, customers, and growth into measurable financial performance.

How the EEI Works
What the Benchmark Reveals
The Implications
Industries Ranked by Average EEI Score
Major Sector Benchmarks
Overall Benchmarks
Industries With the Greatest Internal Performance Gaps

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For decades, investors, executives, HR leaders, and management consultants have searched for better ways to understand why some organizations consistently outperform others. Traditional financial metrics explain what happened. Employee and customer surveys explain how stakeholders feel. The Enterprise Engagement Index™ (EEI) seeks to bridge those worlds by providing a transparent benchmark of how effectively organizations convert stakeholder engagement into measurable business results.

Based on analysis of 129 publicly traded companies across 43 industries and eight major sectors, the EEI provides one of the first publicly available benchmarking systems designed to compare organizational effectiveness across industries using a common methodology. By calculating their own EEI scores, companies can compare them with the average scores within their industry or sector.

How the EEI Works

The EEI evaluates five publicly measurable indicators that collectively reflect an organization's ability to create value through people and customers:

Revenue per employee (20%)
Profit per employee (30%)
Human Capital Return on Investment (HCROI) (10%)
Revenue efficiency, measured by net income margin (10%)
Three-year revenue growth (30%)

Unlike many financial rankings, stock market performance, employee or customer satisfaction sureys are tracked when possible but not included in the score. This enables comparison between organizational effectiveness and shareholder returns without creating a circular measurement system. Click here for complete details on how the EEI was created and the findings to date, along with the formula and AI query any business-minded person can use to quickly score publicly held or any organization that can provide the basic required information.

The benchmark currently spans industries ranging from biotechnology, software, and payments to manufacturing, transportation, healthcare, media, and professional services, totaling 43 industries and eight major economic sectors.

What the Benchmark Reveals

An analysis of the first 129 companies reveals:

Industry matters, but not as much as management. The strongest-performing industries are dominated by organizations that combine scalability, intellectual property, recurring revenue, and strong stakeholder alignment. The highest-ranked industries currently include:

1. Credit Card Payments (94.8)
2. Chip Lithography (92.8)
3. Biotechnology (89.7)
4. Property & Casualty Insurance (87.0)
5. High Tech (84.6)
6. Travel Services & Booking Platforms (84.0)

At the opposite end are labor-intensive industries facing significant pricing pressure, regulatory constraints, or operational complexity, including air freight, blood testing laboratories, advertising agencies, hospitals, and IT services. Yet one of the most important findings is that industry explains only part of performance. Several industries exhibit enormous performance gaps among competitors. Streaming and Entertainment Media shows a 70-point spread between companies. Toiletries and Cosmetics shows a 66.8-point spread. Networking Infrastructure shows a 44-point spread. Travel Booking Platforms show a 42-point spread. These differences suggest that leadership, culture, customer strategy, innovation, and stakeholder management often matter as much as industry economics and innovation.

The people-performance connection. The benchmark continues to reveal a meaningful relationship between employee engagement and financial performance. Many of the highest-scoring companies also maintain strong Glassdoor ratings, including Netflix, Airbnb, Arista Networks, Boston Scientific, Stryker, Home Depot, Chubb, Visa, and Mastercard.

The relationship is not perfect. Some industries generate strong financial performance despite weaker employee ratings. Railroads provide perhaps the most interesting example. Companies such as CSX and Union Pacific produce exceptional productivity and profitability despite employee ratings that trail most other industries.

Nevertheless, across the broader database, organizations with stronger employee ratings generally achieve higher EEI scores than organizations with weaker employee ratings. The evidence increasingly suggests that employee engagement may be more predictive of long-term organizational effectiveness than customer satisfaction alone.

Customer satisfaction matters, but not always in the way expected. Many of the highest-performing companies also maintain strong customer ratings. However, customer satisfaction by itself does not guarantee superior financial outcomes. Several industries maintain respectable customer ratings while producing below-average EEI scores. Hospitals, blood testing laboratories, airlines, and eyewear retailers illustrate this pattern. The emerging lesson is that customer satisfaction appears most powerful when paired with employee engagement, operational efficiency, and scalable business models.

The relationship with stock performance. One of the most important questions is whether EEI predicts shareholder returns. The answer appears to be yes—but only partially. Many of the highest EEI performers have also generated outstanding stock returns. Examples include Netflix, Arista Networks, Airbnb, Chubb, Progressive, Boston Scientific, Vertex Pharmaceuticals, Mastercard, and Visa.

Preliminary EEI analysis suggests that companies with high EEI scores and above-average employee and customer ratings are approximately 70% more likely to outperform the S&P 500 over a three-year period than companies lacking that combination. The relationship is directional rather than predictive, meaning that these characteristics are associated with a higher probability of outperformance but do not reliably forecast future stock returns for any specific company. Investor sentiment, economic or geo-political factors, disruptive innovation and other factors affect stock market performance as well.

However, exceptions remain. Some organizations achieve strong stock performance despite average EEI scores, while others generate strong EEI scores without corresponding market returns. The market often rewards disruptive innovators with outsize valuations. This suggests that the EEI may function less as a stock-picking tool and more as an indicator of organizational capability and long-term value creation potential. In other words, EEI appears to measure the quality of the engine rather than as a dependable predictor of future stock market performance.

The Implications

The EEI is ultimately a benchmarking tool to determine how well an organization creates value in its industry through employees and customers.

For management teams, it provides an objective way to compare performance against competitors and industry leaders and to identify areas requiring improvement in it’s business.
For investors and valuation experts, it offers an additional lens for evaluating organizational quality.
For HR, marketing, sales, customer experience, and engagement professionals, it provides a practical framework for demonstrating how stakeholder engagement contributes to measurable business outcomes.
Most importantly, it shifts the conversation from engagement as an activity to engagement as a measurable driver of value creation.

As the benchmark continues to expand, the emerging evidence is increasingly clear: organizations that consistently create value for employees and customers tend to create value for shareholders as well. The relationship is not perfect, but it is strong enough that leaders can no longer afford to view stakeholder engagement as separate from financial performance.

The most compelling conclusion emerging from the EEI analysis: industry matters, but the large performance gaps within industries suggest that management quality, stakeholder alignment, and business model design are often more important than the industry itself. That may ultimately become the most significant finding of the EEI research.

Industries Ranked by Average EEI Score

Rank	Industry	Companies studied	Avg EEI	High	Low	Range
1	Credit Card / Payments	3	94.8	98.1	90.3	7.8
2	Chip Lithography	2	92.8	100.0	85.5	14.5
3	Biotechnology	3	89.7	100.0	73.0	27.0
4	Property and Casualty Insurance	3	87.0	90.0	84.0	6.0
5	High Tech	3	84.6	95.6	64.5	31.1
6	Travel Services / Booking Platforms	3	84.0	100.0	58.0	42.0
7	Oil and Gas	3	81.4	86.7	71.1	15.6
8	Pharmaceuticals	3	77.1	95.3	58.6	36.7
9	Auto Insurance	3	76.7	80.0	74.0	6.0
10	Dating Apps	3	76.3	98.0	49.0	49.0
11	Railroads	3	76.3	86.0	64.0	22.0
12	Homebuilders	3	75.3	83.8	69.2	14.6
13	Networking Infrastructure	3	74.7	100.0	56.0	44.0
14	Fast Food	3	71.5	79.0	60.5	18.5
15	Enterprise Cloud Software	3	71.3	75.0	66.0	9.0
16	Public Safety Technologies	3	71.0	83.0	63.0	20.0
17	Home Improvement Retail	3	67.0	72.0	62.0	10.0
18	Payments and Business Services	3	66.9	89.9	38.5	51.4
19	Healthcare / Managed Care	3	66.2	70.4	59.1	11.3
20	Automotive	4	64.8	71.0	57.0	14.0
21	Toiletries and Cosmetics	3	64.3	91.5	24.7	66.8
22	Big Box Retailers	3	63.5	75.5	52.5	23.0
23	Banking	3	63.1	71.9	56.6	15.3
24	Medical Devices	3	62.0	73.0	49.0	24.0
25	Content Management Platforms	2	59.7	74.2	45.1	29.1
26	Small Home Appliances	3	59.0	89.0	34.0	55.0
27	Streaming and Entertainment Media	3	57.7	100.0	30.0	70.0
28	Airlines	3	55.8	64.2	42.2	22.0
29	International Hotels	3	55.3	70.0	47.0	23.0
30	Cruise Industry	3	54.7	63.7	49.3	14.4
31	Aerospace and Defense	4	54.5	63.0	46.0	17.0
32	Construction Equipment	3	52.7	60.0	48.0	12.0
33	Steel	3	52.5	59.4	41.1	18.3
34	Consumer Packaged Goods	3	51.0	57.0	44.0	13.0
35	Industrial Automation	3	47.9	50.0	45.7	4.3
36	Chemicals	3	42.7	44.0	41.0	3.0
37	Consumer Eyeglasses	3	42.3	45.0	38.0	7.0
38	Trucking	3	39.5	46.5	32.4	14.1
39	IT Services / Consulting	3	38.7	44.0	35.0	9.0
40	Hospital Operators	3	35.8	43.8	27.3	16.5
41	Advertising Agencies	3	33.7	40.0	25.0	15.0
42	Blood Testing Labs	3	32.8	48.2	24.4	23.8
43	Air Freight and Logistics	3	31.8	45.9	23.8	22.1

Major Sector Benchmarks

Rank	Sector	Industries	Companies	Avg EEI	High	Low	Range
1	Financial Services	5	15	77.7	98.1	38.5	59.6
2	Technology and Digital Platforms	8	22	73.5	100.0	30.0	70.0
3	Consumer Products & Retail	9	28	62.1	91.5	24.7	66.8
4	Healthcare and Life Sciences	6	18	60.6	100.0	24.4	75.6
5	Energy and Materials	3	9	58.9	86.7	41.0	45.7
6	Transportation and Travel	7	21	56.8	100.0	23.8	76.2
7	Industrial and Manufacturing	3	10	51.7	63.0	45.7	17.3
8	Professional Services	2	6	36.2	44.0	25.0	19.0

Overall Benchmarks

Benchmark	EEI
Average EEI for all companies	62.5
Average of industry averages	62.8
Highest industry average	94.8
Lowest industry average	31.8
Total Companies	129
Total Industries	43
Total Sectors	8

Industries With the Greatest Internal Performance Gaps

Rank	Industry	Range
1	Streaming and Entertainment Media	70.0
2	Toiletries & Cosmetics	66.8
3	Small Home Appliances	55.0
4	Payments & Business Services	51.4
5	Dating Apps	49.0
6	Networking Infrastructure	44.0
7	Travel Services / Booking Platforms	42.0
8	Pharmaceuticals	36.7
9	High Tech	31.1
10	Content Management Platforms	29.1
11	Biotechnology	27.0
12	Medical Devices	24.0
13	Blood Testing Labs	23.8
14	International Hotels	23.0
15	Big Box Retailers	23.0
16	Air Freight and Logistics	22.1
17	Airlines	22.0
18	Railroads	22.0
19	Public Safety Technologies	20.0
20	Fast Food	18.5
21	Steel	18.3
22	Aerospace & Defense	17.0
23	Hospital Operators	16.5
24	Oil and Gas	15.6
25	Banking	15.3
26	Advertising Agencies	15.0
27	Homebuilders	14.6
28	Chip Lithography	14.5
29	Cruise Industry	14.4
30	Trucking	14.1
31	Automotive	14.0
32	Consumer Packaged Goods	13.0
33	Construction Equipment	12.0
34	Healthcare / Managed Care	11.3
35	Home Improvement Retail	10.0
36	Enterprise Cloud Software	9.0
37	IT Services / Consulting	9.0
38	Credit Card / Payments	7.8
39	Consumer Eyeglasses	7.0
40	Auto Insurance	6.0
41	Property and Casualty Insurance	6.0
42	Industrial Automation	4.3
43	Chemicals	3.0

Enterprise Engagement Alliance Services

Celebrating our 17^th year, the Enterprise Engagement Alliance helps organizations enhance performance through:

1. Information and marketing opportunities on stakeholder management and total rewards:

ESM Weekly on stakeholder management since 2009. Click here to subscribe; click here for media kit.
RRN Weekly on total rewards since 1996. Click here to subscribe; click here for media kit.
EEA YouTube channel on enterprise engagement, human capital, and total rewards since 2020

2. Learning: Purpose Leadership and Stakeholder

Management Academy to enhance future equity value for your organization.

3. Books on implementation: Enterprise Engagement for CEOs and Enterprise Engagement: The Roadmap.

4. Advisory services and research: Strategic guidance, learning and certification on stakeholder management, measurement, metrics, and corporate sustainability reporting.

5. Permission-based targeted business development to identify and build relationships with the people most likely to buy.

Contact: Bruce Bolger at TheICEE.org; 914-591-7600, ext. 230.