2026 Integral Index
The 2026 Integral Index includes an economic model that estimates the downside costs and upside value of employee experience. Add your headcount, choose your industry (for its own average employee turnover rate) and find out how much money is at stake.
The downside is the cost you would recover by lifting your struggling employees to a neutral baseline. The upside is the value you would gain by moving them on to engaged, committed and supportive. They run on different mechanisms, so the total at stake is the two combined.
The Integral Index is an annual study of full-time U.S. workers conducted by Integral with The Harris Poll. The companion economic model converts measured workplace conditions into annual dollars per 100 employees, then scales to your headcount. Every input traces to a public source.
| Condition | Share | What it measures |
|---|---|---|
| Engaged | 76% | Composite of 4 items, average at or above 3.41 on a 5-point scale |
| Not engaged | 24% | Inverse of engaged |
| Committed | 56% | Would stay even at equal pay elsewhere |
| Job Lock | 47% | Would consider leaving but stay for fear of losing benefits |
| Supportive Environment | 64% | Predict colleagues will exhibit positive behaviors |
| Negative external advocate | 28% | Would warn off candidates or post negative reviews |
| Corrosive Environment within Job Lock | 32% | Predicted damaging behavior among the job-locked, versus 6.9% elsewhere. This differential drives the Job Lock mechanism. |
| Input | Value | Source |
|---|---|---|
| U.S. median annual wage | $64,220 | BLS CPS, Q1 2026 |
| Employer cost multiplier | 1.42× | BLS ECEC, Sep 2025 |
| Fully-loaded annual cost per employee | $91,360 | Derived ($64,220 × 1.42) |
| Replacement cost per departure | $32,110 | 50% of salary, Allen 2008 / SHRM |
| Baseline annual quit rate | 25.2% | BLS JOLTS 2024 annual |
| Annual hires per 100 employees | 36 | BLS JOLTS 2024 annual |
| Average cost per hire | $5,475 | SHRM 2025 Benchmarking |
| Salary premium for poor reputation | 10% | HBR / ICM 2016 |
| Productivity differential (engagement) | 17% | Gallup Q12 Meta-Analysis, 11th Ed. |
Every mechanism rests on a third-party research finding that comes as a range, not a single number. The published Index uses the most conservative end of each range. The presets move within those same published ranges and never past them.
Conservative reproduces the figures in the 2026 report and uses the documented low end of each sensitivity grid. Aggressive uses the documented high end of each grid (turnover 2×, the full 17% productivity deficit, 43% commitment quit-reduction, 50% recruiting savings). Moderate is the interpolated midpoint between them. Nothing here invents a number. It only chooses where in the evidence to stand. The Job Lock drag rate is deliberately held at 10% across all three presets, the way the memo holds it, so it never double-counts the productivity deficit.
The downside is computed on the struggling cohort (the not-engaged, the job-locked, the negative advocates) and measures money currently being lost that you could recover. The upside is computed on the thriving cohort (the engaged, committed and supportive) and measures value tied to activation. The two run on different people and different mechanisms, so adding them does not double-count any dollar. Together they express the full economic value of employee experience in your workforce: what you would save by fixing the bottom, plus what you protect and grow at the top.
Choosing an industry swaps the baseline quit rate using BLS JOLTS Table 22 (2024 annual average, monthly rate × 12), the same annualization the national figure uses. Hiring rates and all engagement and climate conditions are held at the national average in this version.