Evidence Base
Research & Sources
The data behind our methodology. Every claim on our site is grounded in peer-reviewed research, longitudinal studies, and industry benchmarks. Here's the evidence.
Hiring Intelligence
of new hires fail within 18 months
Leadership IQ — Why New Hires Fail (2016 Study) ↗
Murphy, M. (2016). Leadership IQ.
A landmark study of 20,000+ new hires found that 46% failed within 18 months. Of those, 89% failed for attitudinal and behavioral reasons — not technical skill gaps. The study identified coachability, emotional intelligence, motivation, and temperament as the primary failure drivers.
Harvard Business Review — The Costs of a Bad Hire
Harvard Business Review, various authors.
Research consistently shows that mis-hires cost organizations between 50–200% of the employee's annual salary when factoring in recruitment costs, onboarding, lost productivity, and team disruption.
SHRM — The Real Costs of Recruitment
SHRM Human Capital Benchmarking Report.
The Society for Human Resource Management estimates the average cost-per-hire at $4,700, with senior roles costing significantly more. When a hire fails, these costs multiply across the replacement cycle.
How Tensity Group applies this
Our Behavioral Hiring Intelligence module directly addresses this gap. Rather than assessing skills alone, we model how candidates behave under the specific operational pressure of the role they're entering — catching the behavioral load-bearing failures that traditional hiring processes miss.
Team Dynamics & Pressure Mapping
of team friction is invisible to leadership
Gallup — State of the Global Workplace (2023) ↗
Gallup (2023). State of the Global Workplace Report.
Gallup's research consistently finds that only 23% of employees globally are engaged at work. The majority of disengagement, interpersonal friction, and communication breakdown occurs below the surface — invisible to leadership until it manifests as attrition, burnout, or missed targets.
CPP Inc. — Workplace Conflict and How Businesses Can Harness It
CPP Inc. (2008). Workplace Conflict Study.
A study of 5,000 employees found that U.S. workers spend approximately 2.8 hours per week dealing with conflict — equivalent to $359 billion in paid hours annually. Most of this conflict is never escalated or made visible to leadership.
MIT Sloan Management Review — The Hidden Costs of Team Dysfunction
Pentland, A. (2012). The New Science of Building Great Teams. MIT Sloan.
Research from MIT demonstrates that team communication patterns are the strongest predictor of team performance — more predictive than individual talent, experience, or intelligence combined. Yet most organizations have zero visibility into these patterns.
How Tensity Group applies this
Our Team Dynamics & Pressure Mapping module makes the invisible visible. We capture stress-response patterns, communication strain, and execution bottlenecks that standard engagement surveys and 1:1s miss — then model the friction concentration so leadership can act on evidence, not assumptions.
Organizational Diagnostics
cheaper to diagnose than to replace
Center for American Progress — The Cost of Employee Turnover ↗
Boushey, H. & Glynn, S.J. (2012). Center for American Progress.
Research shows that replacing a mid-level employee costs approximately 20% of their annual salary, while replacing senior executives can cost up to 213% of annual salary. For a $150K executive, that's $320K+ in replacement costs.
Deloitte — The Cost of Poor Leadership
Deloitte Human Capital Trends Report.
Deloitte's research estimates that poor leadership costs organizations up to 7% of total annual sales. Proactive diagnostic intervention — identifying leadership pressure patterns before they cause attrition or execution failure — costs a fraction of the downstream damage.
Work Institute — Retention Report
Work Institute (2023). Retention Report.
The Work Institute's annual retention research consistently finds that 75% of turnover is preventable. The primary preventable causes — career development, work-life balance, manager behavior, and job stress — are all behavioral signals that can be identified through structured diagnostic assessment.
How Tensity Group applies this
Every Tensity Group engagement is designed to surface the behavioral risk before it becomes a financial loss. One diagnostic deployment — typically a fraction of a single replacement cost — gives you the intelligence to prevent multiple downstream failures.
A note on our methodology
Tensity Group's approach is grounded in established behavioral science, organizational psychology, and stress-response research. We combine peer-reviewed evidence with proprietary modeling frameworks developed through real-world consulting deployments.
The statistics cited on our website represent widely-referenced industry benchmarks. Individual organizational outcomes vary based on context, team composition, and engagement scope. We are transparent about the evidence base because we believe credibility is earned, not claimed.
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