Is your team engagement above or below your industry average?

What is employee engagement rate

Engagement rate is the percentage of invited members who actively listen to your internal podcast. If you have 100 members and 65 have listened to at least one episode, your engagement rate is 65 percent.

It is one of the most useful signals in internal communication. Unlike email open rates, which measure passive exposure, podcast engagement rate reflects genuine time and attention from your team.

High engagement means your content is relevant, your team trusts the channel, and people are building a listening habit. Low engagement usually points to a content, distribution or relevance problem — not a format problem.

Why engagement varies by industry

Not all sectors have the same baseline. Teams in media, healthcare and technology tend to have different engagement patterns than teams in retail, manufacturing or real estate. The differences come from how distributed teams are, how much downtime employees have for listening, and how well-established async communication habits are.

A 50 percent engagement rate might be excellent in one sector and below average in another. Without a sector-specific benchmark, you are comparing your results against a generic number that does not reflect your reality.

Brandscast tracks benchmarks across 15 industries. When you set your sector, your dashboard shows your number alongside the average for teams like yours.

How Brandscast shows your benchmark

Set your company sector in your Brandscast settings and your sector benchmark appears directly in your analytics dashboard — no setup required. You see your engagement rate and your industry average side by side, updated in real time as members listen.

You can also download a full analytics report in PDF to share with leadership or stakeholders, with your engagement rate and sector context included.

• Live benchmark — updates automatically as members listen.
• Per-podcast breakdown — see which channels are above or below average.
• Downloadable reports — share your engagement data with context.

What drives engagement above benchmark

Teams that consistently outperform their sector benchmark share a few habits. The content is short and focused — usually under ten minutes, covering one topic per episode. Publishing is consistent, at least twice a month, so employees build a listening habit. And the channel has a clear audience rather than trying to speak to everyone at once.

Leadership voices also help. When employees recognise and trust the person speaking, they are more likely to listen and come back. The best-performing internal podcasts feel like a direct line from someone worth hearing, not a broadcast from the company.