What is the Love of Workplace Index (LOWI)?

    The Love of Workplace Index™ (LOWI) is a validated psychometric instrument developed by Best Practice Institute (BPI) and Louis Carter to measure emotional connectedness between employees and their organization — the structural conditions that predict retention and performance.

    Unlike engagement or satisfaction surveys, which measure how employees feel at a moment in time, LOWI measures whether the conditions for sustained love of work exist inside the organization. It rests on five dimensions — the SPARK framework — Systemic Collaboration, Positive Vision for the Future, Alignment of Values, Respect, and Killer Achievement.

    LOWI has been validated across more than 2.8 million employees at 1,800+ organizations spanning six continents, with a coefficient alpha reliability score of .95. The instrument is the scientific foundation of the Most Loved Workplace® certification: companies that meet the LOWI threshold earn certification, and the highest-scoring certified companies are recognized on BPI's annual Top 100 Most Loved Workplaces® lists.

    LOWI is administered to employees as a structured survey and analyzed using machine-learning-powered sentiment models that benchmark each organization against the validation pool of 10,000+ companies BPI has studied over 25 years. The output is not a single score but a diagnostic — a SPARK profile that shows where the organization is structurally strong and where it must intervene to retain its people.

    Research from certified companies shows that 92% of applicants cite the certification as a reason for joining and that certified companies see meaningfully higher retention. Those outcomes are not artifacts of marketing — they are the downstream signal that the conditions LOWI measures are real, repeatable, and improvable.

    Read the full methodology

    BPI Methodology — SPARK Model & LOWI Validation

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    Best Practice Institute

    Best Practice Institute is the research organization behind Most Loved Workplace® certification, the SPARK Model, the Love of Workplace Index™ (LOWI™), and The Workplace Report.

    The Workplace Report

    The Workplace Report is BPI's original workplace culture research and editorial briefing series for CEOs, CHROs, people leaders, talent leaders, and employer-brand teams. It turns BPI's 25 years of research, Most Loved Workplace® certification data, SPARK findings, and current workforce signals into practical analysis leaders can use.

    The report format includes executive summaries, research-backed articles, company examples, methodology notes, and practical implications for retention, hiring, culture, leadership, and employee experience. New research and analysis is published on an ongoing editorial cadence at /workplace-report.