The Relationship Between

Strengths-Based Employee
Development and
Organizational Outcomes
2015 Strengths Meta-Analysis

JULY 2016
JIM ASPLUND, M.A., GALLUP
JAMES K. HARTER, PH.D., GALLUP
SANGEETA AGRAWAL, M.S., GALLUP
STEPHANIE K. PLOWMAN, M.A., GALLUP

Acknowledgements
The authors thank John Fleming, Ben Wigert, Kirti Kanitkar and John Reimnitz for contributing important
research studies, client data and database information.

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The Relationship Between Strengths-Based Employee Development and Organizational Outcomes

Executive Summary

Objectives
To date, the evidence from numerous organizational studies suggests that strengths-based
employee development leads to more engaging and productive workplaces. The purpose of
this study was to apply meta-analysis to a collection of research studies on strengths-based
development and examine evidence of generalizability.
Specifically, this study will examine the:
1. true relationship between strengths-based employee development and performance in 22
organizations
2. consistency or generalizability of the relationship between strengths-based employee
development and performance across organizations
3. practical meaning of the findings for executives and managers
Methods
This is the first meta-analysis Gallup has conducted to study the relationship between
strengths-based development and business performance outcomes. We accumulated 43
research studies across 22 organizations in seven industries and 45 countries. Within
each study, we statistically calculated the business/work unit level relationship between
strengths-based interventions and performance outcomes that the organizations supplied.
In total, we studied 1.2 million individuals and 49,495 business/work units. We studied six
outcomes: sales, profit, customer engagement, turnover, employee engagement and safety.
Meta-analysis is a statistical technique that is useful in combining results of studies with
seemingly disparate findings, correcting for sampling, measurement error and other study
artifacts to understand the true relationship with greater precision. We applied Hunter-Schmidt
meta-analysis methods to 43 research studies to estimate the true relationship between
strengths-based interventions and each performance measure and to test for generalizability.
After conducting the meta-analysis, we examined the practical meaning of the relationships by
conducting utility analysis.
1

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The Relationship Between Strengths-Based Employee Development and Organizational Outcomes

Results
Strengths-based development is related to each of the six performance outcomes studied.
Results indicate high generalizability, which means the interventions were associated
with consistently positive outcomes for work units/business units. The effect sizes of
strengths-based interventions are represented as d values (differences between treatment and
control groups in standard deviation units for outcomes studied). These are then translated
into differences in practical utility (the percent difference in outcomes between treatment and
control groups). The following are the range of estimated practical effects based on the 10th
percentile and mean observed effects:
Customer Engagement: 3.46.9% increase
Employee Engagement: 9.015.0% increase
Profit: 14.429.4% increase
Safety Incidents: 22.059.0% decrease
Sales: 10.319.3% increase
Low Turnover Orgs: 5.816.1 pts decrease in turnover
High Turnover Orgs: 26.071.8 pts decrease in turnover
Conclusion
The relationship between strengths-based employee development and performance at the
business/work unit level is substantial and generalizable across organizations. Strengthsbased development is related to each of six different performance outcomes. This means that
practitioners can apply strengths-based employee development in a variety of situations with
confidence that strengths-interventions capture important performance-related information.

Copyright 2016 Gallup, Inc. All rights reserved.

The Relationship Between Strengths-Based Employee Development and Organizational Outcomes

Meta-Analysis, Hypothesis, Methods and Results

Meta-Analysis
A meta-analysis is a statistical integration of data accumulated across many different studies.
Meta-analysis has the potential to provide uniquely powerful information because it accounts
for measurement and sampling errors and other idiosyncrasies that distort the results of
individual studies. A meta-analysis eliminates biases and provides an estimate of true validity
or true relationship between two or more variables. Statistics typically calculated during
meta-analyses also allow the researcher to explore the presence, or lack, of moderators of
relationships. It provides a method by which researchers can determine whether validities and
relationships generalize across various situations (e.g., across firms or geographical locations).
For the present analysis, we used the Hunter-Schmidt methods random effects model metaanalysis methods (Schmidt & Hunter, 2014).
Meta-analyses can be conducted on cumulative studies of the relationships between two or
more variables of interest or the impact of two-group experimental interventions. The former
are meta-analyses of r values whereas the latter are meta-analyses of d values (the difference
between treatment and control groups divided by the pooled standard deviation). Meta-analytic
mathematics, which uses advanced statistical methods such as reliability and range restriction
distributions, are much more amenable to use of r values than d values. Since d values can be
directly transformed into point-biserial r values, and vice versa, it is easiest to convert d values
into r values, conduct the meta-analysis, and then convert the true score r values back into d
values for interpretative purposes. That process was used for this study.
For this meta-analysis, we corrected for artifactual sources of variation such as sampling error,
measurement error and range restriction, where possible. Measurement error was corrected
in most dependent variables based on artifact distributions obtained for previous Gallup
meta-analyses. Test-retest reliability estimates were used based on Scenario 23 in Schmidt
and Hunter (1996). Scenario 23 takes into account that some change in dependent variables
(stability) is a function of real change.
Strengths-Based Interventions
The most general definition of a Gallup strengths-based intervention is one where a respondent
completes the StrengthsFinder assessment and is made aware of his or her top natural
talents. In practice, strengths-based interventions vary in the objective, type and magnitude. In
some cases, respondents are given more advanced coaching and training and in other cases,
they are given more basic information such as a book or website description and tutorial. In
some organizations, the interventions were designed for managers of teams, while in other
organizations, individual contributors were given interventions.
Gallup researchers accumulated research studies comparing the intensity of strengths-based
development interventions by business/work unit. In some studies, business units that had
been given a strengths-based intervention were compared to those that had not. In other
studies, business units with a low (but non-zero) percentage of employees receiving a strengths
intervention were compared to business units where a higher percentage of employees learned

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The Relationship Between Strengths-Based Employee Development and Organizational Outcomes

to develop their strengths. These studies included randomized experimental designs, but the
large majority were quasi-experimental, utilizing wait list control groups rather than randomized
treatment and control groups. Where possible, variables that were hypothesized to explain
possible differences between non-randomized treatment and control groups were utilized as
statistical controls in analyses (i.e., baseline engagement, geography, business/work unit age,
trade area market statistics, product type).
Strengths-Based Intervention Types
Researchers categorized the strengths-based interventions into four general types.
1. Business/work units included at least one person who completed the Clifton
StrengthsFinder. Dependent variables were compared to business/work units where no
one completed Clifton StrengthsFinder.
2. The percentage of individuals who completed the Clifton StrengthsFinder within a
business/work unit was recorded. In this case, the treatment group independent variable
could range from 1-100 percent.
3. An individual manager completed the Clifton StrengthsFinder along with a manager
developmental course. Business/work unit dependent variables were compared to those of
managers who had not completed the course.
4. An individual manager completed the Clifton StrengthsFinder. Business/work unit
dependent variables were compared to those of managers who did not complete the
Clifton StrengthsFinder.
Dependent Variables
Six general dependent variables were identified across studies: sales, profit, customer
engagement, turnover, employee engagement and safety (accidents). The following is a
description of each of the six dependent variable outcomes included in the studies.
Sales: Sales, close rates, units per transaction, revenue growth, revenue per labor hours,
sales in comparison to budget or goal, comparable sales growth and productive utilization
Profit: Overall percent profit of revenue, profit increase, gross profit growth, margin erosion
(reverse scored), margin versus target or goal, profit of existing customers, EBIT
Employee Engagement: Business-unit-level average scores on engagement surveys
Customer Engagement: Customer perceptions of quality
Turnover: Annualized business/work unit turnover rate, first 90-day turnover rate
Safety: Worker comp costs, workers comp incidents, patient falls, accident frequency,
accident severity
Across studies, there was substantial variation in the proportion of the overall sample in
organizations that were administered a strengths intervention. These values ranged from
less than 1% to 99% (proportions of less than .01 to .99). With any proportion, the variance
is maximized at .50. As such, departure from .50 reduces the possible effect size. Range
restriction corrections were made based on an artifact distribution of independent variable
estimates of U (sd/SD) across studies. Different artifact distributions were created for
outcome-intervention combinations. In this case, correction for range restriction makes the size
4

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The Relationship Between Strengths-Based Employee Development and Organizational Outcomes

of true effect estimates more similar in magnitude to what one would expect in equally sized
treatment and control group designs.
In an exhaustive review of Gallups inferential databases, organizations with both
StrengthsFinder data and performance data were accumulated. Researchers limited their
scrutiny to organizations with a minimum of 30 complete StrengthsFinder responses, and a few
studies had to be removed due to lack of identifiable contrast groups. In the end, a total of 43
studies were conducted in 22 organizations and included 1.2 million individuals.
Study organizations came from a wide range of industries, including heavy equipment and
vehicle manufacturing; retail and commercial banking; mass and specialty retail; electric utilities;
finance and insurance; health care; aerospace; food and other agriculture products; building
materials; investment services; education; and pharmaceuticals.
The total study population was geographically diverse as well, with business/work units from 45
countries. The number of countries per study ranged from one to 36.
The following steps were followed in conducting this meta-analysis:
1. Studies were categorized by type of outcome, type of strengths intervention, and whether
the study utilized control variables or not.
2. d values from experimental and quasi-experimental studies were converted to rs or pointbiserial rs, depending on the nature of the treatment effect variable (in one intervention
type, the treatment variable was continuouspercentage of people within a business/work
unit who were administered the Clifton StrengthsFinder).
3. Meta-analyses using artifact distributions were conducted, reporting observed and true
score effect sizes, standard deviations and generalizability statistics.
4. r values were converted back to d value effect sizes.
5. Utility analysis was conducted to estimate the practical value of the effect size estimates of
the various intervention-outcome combinations.

Copyright 2016 Gallup, Inc. All rights reserved.

The Relationship Between Strengths-Based Employee Development and Organizational Outcomes

Results
This study focuses on the relationships between learning or developing strengths and measures
of organizational performance. Meta-analytic and validity generalization statistics for these
relationships are shown in Table 1.
Table 1 Meta-Analysis of Relationship Between Outcomes and StrengthsFinder
Intervention
Business Unit Level
Customer

Profit

Safety

Sales

Engagement

Turnover

1,345

7,188

423

9,438

29,620

1,581

10

15

Mean Observed r

0.053

0.129

-0.119

0.082

0.086

-0.214

Observed SDr

0.013

0.063

0.101

0.052

0.063

0.03

0.11

0.26

-0.24

0.17

0.17

-0.45

True Validity r1

0.107

0.251

-0.209

0.150

0.215

-0.478

True Validity SD1

0.000

0.078

0.060

0.054

0.095

0.22

0.54

-0.44

0.31

0.45

-1.24

% variance Acct'd for-Sampling Error

1311.2

30.5

68.6

37.9

12.7

194.3

% variance Acc'd for1

1566.2

55.7

87.9

66.7

60.0

541.6

90% CVr

0.107

0.151

-0.286

0.081

0.093

-0.478

90%CVd

0.22

0.31

-0.62

0.16

0.19

-1.24

Number of Business Units

Number of r's

Mean Observed d

True Validity d1

SD = Standard Deviation
Includes correction for direct range variation within organizations and dependent-varible
measurement error
1

Mean observed correlations and standard deviations are shown, followed by estimated true
validities, after correcting for dependent variable measurement error and within-organization
range restriction. This range-restriction correction places all organizations on the same basis
regarding variability in the independent variable. These results can be viewed as estimating the
relationships across business/work units within the average organization.
The findings show generalizability across organizations, as indicated by the 90% credibility
values, all of which match the direction of the hypothesized relationships (Schmidt & Hunter,
1977). That is, Clifton StrengthsFinder completion effectively predicts these outcomes
in the expected direction across organizations, including those in different industries and
different countries.
For some of the measures, study artifacts explain most of the variance in correlations. For
safety and sales, at least two-thirds of the variance in correlations is attributable to sampling
error, range variation or measurement error. The results for profit measures were similar,

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The Relationship Between Strengths-Based Employee Development and Organizational Outcomes

but to a lesser degree; over half of the variability in these correlations is attributable to
measurement artifacts.
In the case of customer and turnover measures, the sample of studies has much less variance
between the effect sizes than would be expected by sampling error. This often happens
with small numbers of studies per table entry, as was the case here. As a consequence, the
estimated variance attributable to artifacts exceeded the total observed variability.
Control Variables
As noted earlier, variables that were hypothesized to explain possible differences between nonrandomized treatment and control groups were utilized as statistical controls in analyses. As
with the dependent variables themselves, the availability and quality of these control variables
differed markedly both within and across organizations.
Safety: All studies included control variables, including employee engagement, geographic
identifiers, and employee and market demographic variables.
Customer: Two of the three studies included control variables, including employee
engagement, job and product types, and other employee demographic variables.
Turnover: All three studies employed control variables, including employee engagement,
geographic identifiers, manager tenure, employee tenure, number and type of competitors,
and employee and market demographic characteristics.
Engagement: All studies were controlled for engagement survey administration cohort
(baseline engagement before intervention).
Profit: Six of the nine studies used control variables, including employee and customer
engagement, geographic identifiers, employee tenure, product type, employee and market
demographic characteristics, business/work unit characteristics, and number and type
of competitors.
Sales: Seven of the 10 studies used control variables, including employee and customer
engagement, geographic identifiers, employee tenure, product type, employee and market
demographic characteristics, business/work unit characteristics, and number and type
of competitors.
In total, 85% of studies in this meta-analysis utilized control variables of some type.

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The Relationship Between Strengths-Based Employee Development and Organizational Outcomes

Design Effects
As noted earlier, the studies included in the meta-analysis used four different research designs.
One limitation of the meta-analysis is that the number of studies per design was not large. Table
2 shows the range of different study designs used for the analyses.
Table 2
Estimated True Validity
Businessunit-level
meta-analysis

Dependent
variable

Study
Type

Control
variables
included?

Number of
correlations

Mean

Lower
10%

Upper
10%

Range

Customer

mixed

0.11

0.11

0.11

0.00

Profit

mixed

mixed

0.25

0.15

0.35

0.20

Profit

mixed

yes

0.29

0.29

0.29

0.00

Profit

mixed

no

0.14

0.14

0.14

0.00

Profit

1, 3

mixed

0.25

0.14

0.37

0.22

Profit

1, 3

yes

0.29

0.25

0.32

0.07

Profit

2, 4

mixed

0.25

0.25

0.25

0.00

Safety

yes

-0.21

-0.29

-0.13

0.15

Sales

mixed

mixed

10

0.15

0.08

0.22

0.14

10

Sales

mixed

yes

0.14

0.05

0.23

0.18

11

Sales

mixed

no

0.26

0.26

0.26

0.00

12

Sales

1, 3

mixed

0.14

0.06

0.23

0.18

13

Sales

1, 3

yes

0.14

0.04

0.24

0.20

14

Sales

2, 4

mixed

0.20

0.20

0.20

0.00

15

Turnover

1, 3

yes

-0.48

-0.48

-0.48

0.00

16

Employee
Engagement

1,2

yes

15

.22

.09

.34

.25

For most outcome measures, there was significant heterogeneity in study design. Given the
small number of studies per design type, it is difficult to draw many inferences regarding the
influence of different types of strengths intervention, for example.

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The Relationship Between Strengths-Based Employee Development and Organizational Outcomes

Utility Analysis: Practicality of the Effects

Utility Analysis
Effect sizes of the magnitude reported here are often difficult to interpret. Conventions
regarding small or large effect sizes (Cohen, 1988) may not be informative since the practical
significance of those effect sizes depends on the costs of improvement on the independent
variable and the benefits of changes in the dependent variable. Rosenthal, et al. (2000) provide
a classic example of a numerically small effect with large practical benefits: A study reporting
the use of a beta blocker to increase heart attack survival (p. 27). The effect size of this study
was 0.04, but this represented a 4% decrease in future heart attacks a gain of some practical
significance. The research literature includes a great many other examples of large practical
benefits shown in studies with numerically moderate effect sizes (Abelson, 1985; Carver, 1975;
Lipsey, 1990; Sechrest & Yeaton, 1982).
One can express the practical implications of the effects from this study by employing utility
analysis methods (Schmidt & Rauschenberger, 1986). Formulas have been derived for
estimating the dollar value increases in output as a result of improved employee selection.
These formulas use the size of the effect, the variability in the outcome being studied, and the
difference in the independent variable to estimate the differences in performance outcomes.
The utility estimates for all outcomes are included in Table 3 and represent differences with
considerable practical significance. Given that effect sizes varied, depending somewhat
on whether or not control variables were used, we were conservative in our estimations of
practical utility. We produced a range of likely utility estimates based on the 10th percentile
(90% credibility value) of true score effects, and the mean observed effect size. Variability of
outcomes was estimated based on both literature and Gallup database values.
Table 3
Business Unit Level
Customer
Range
Based
on 90%
CV and
observed

3.4-6.9%

Profit

14.4-29.4%

Safety

Sales

Engagement

LowTurnover
Org's

HighTurnover
Org's

22.9-59.0%

10.319.3%

9-15%
Engaged
employees

5.8-16.1 pts

26.071.8 pts

Discussion
The present study is the first meta-analysis of the practical benefits of learning ones strengths
using the Clifton StrengthsFinder. These findings are important because they imply that
interventions can be developed and used across different organizations with a high level of
confidence. The data from the present study provide evidence that investing in employee
development can provide material and psychological benefits to the organization, its customers
and its owners.

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