The World's Only Organizational Democracy Benchmark IS YOUR CULTURE HELPING
YOUR COMPANY GROW —
OR QUIETLY HOLDING IT BACK?
The Freedom at Work® Scorecard gives you one independent employee benchmark based on the 10 Principles of Organizational Democracy™ across the individual, leadership, and systems & processes dimensions— so you can see whether the way your organization works is helping people perform and your company grow, or quietly holding both back.
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See whether the way your people are led and the systems they work inside are supporting performance — or quietly getting in the way
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See whether employees validate the culture leadership believes it has built
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Get independent, verifiable employee data about how your organization works that you can bring to your leadership team, board, and investors
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Establish a clear benchmark before you invest in another culture, leadership, or organizational-change initiative
BONUS: Score 3.5 or higher and automatically earn the WorldBlu Certified Freedom-Centered Organization™ designation — a $20,000 value — included at no additional fee.
Used since 2007 by leaders and organizations in 100+ countries. Available in 14+ languages. Completely anonymous. Built on nearly 30 years of WorldBlu research and application.
THE WORLD’S ONLY ORGANIZATIONAL DEMOCRACY BENCHMARK
FIND OUT WHAT MAY BE HELPING OR HOLDING BACK PERFORMANCE & GROWTH
Trusted by
YOU'VE INVESTED IN YOUR PEOPLE AND CULTURE.
BUT WHAT'S ACTUALLY HELPING —
OR HURTING — PERFORMANCE?
You care about your people. You've invested in culture, leadership,
and engagement. You want a company where people communicate,
take ownership, stay accountable, and perform at their best.
But if those things aren't happening consistently,
how do you know what's actually getting in the way?
Communication isn't as open or effective as it should be — and important information gets stuck
You run engagement surveys, but they tell you how people feel, not why or what to change
You've invested in leadership and culture initiatives, but some of the same problems keep resurfacing
People aren't as engaged as you need them to be — or taking as much ownership as you need them to.
Managers lead very differently, so culture and performance depend too much on who someone works for
Growth is creating more complexity, slower decisions, and inconsistent ways of working
People are told to take ownership, but they still need permission to act — and accountability and authority don't always line up
AI and constant change are creating new fear and uncertainty — and you need your culture to become more adaptive, not more controlling
If even two of these feel true, you may not have a people problem.
You may have a leadership and organizational design problem.
The deeper question is whether the way people are being led —
and the systems they're working inside — are helping them communicate,
take ownership, stay accountable, and perform at their best,
or quietly holding them back.
You can't intelligently improve what you can't clearly see.
The Freedom at Work® Scorecard gives you an independent benchmark
so you can stop guessing about what's holding performance back
and make smarter decisions about what comes next.
Imagine this.
YOU WALK INTO YOUR NEXT EXECUTIVE MEETING WITH AN INDEPENDENT BENCHMARK OF WHERE YOUR ORGANIZATION STANDS.
Not a hunch. Not a generic engagement score. Not a gut feeling.
You have one independent overall benchmark based on employee responses to the 10 Principles of Organizational Democracy™ across the individual, leadership, and systems & processes dimensions.
You can compare leadership's assumptions with employee experience, establish a baseline, and decide what deserves deeper investigation next. If you want the detailed why, you can upgrade to the Full Freedom at Work® Scorecard Report.
That is what the Freedom at Work® Scorecard gives you.
Look closer.
THE REAL QUESTION ISN'T WHETHER YOUR CULTURE SEEMS GOOD. IT'S WHETHER IT HELPS PEOPLE PERFORM AND THE COMPANY GROW.
You can have smart people, strong values, and committed leaders — and still struggle with poor communication, inconsistent accountability, slow decisions, low engagement, or fear.
Why? Because culture is created at three levels: what individuals experience, how leaders lead, and how systems & processes shape everyday behavior.
A few exceptional leaders can compensate for weak systems for a while. But as the company grows, leadership changes, or complexity increases, those gaps get harder to hide.
A culture that lives in personalities can walk out the door.
Performance that depends on a few heroic leaders does not scale.
That's why Freedom at Work looks at the whole picture — not just how employees feel, but the individual, leadership, and systems & processes dimensions that together shape culture and performance.
The gap most culture tools never measure.
WHY OTHER CULTURE ASSESSMENTS MAY
SHOW YOU THE SYMPTOMS — NOT THE CAUSE
You've probably used other tools. Many of them are valuable. But they often tell you what people are experiencing without showing which leadership or organizational patterns may be creating the result.
Engagement surveys can tell you engagement is down — not necessarily whether the cause is poor communication, weak accountability, micromanagement, low trust, unclear purpose, or broken decision-making.
Psychological safety assessments tell you whether people feel safe speaking up — not whether your systems are designed to hear them when they do.
Culture awards recognize outcomes — not the leadership architecture that produces them. So when leadership changes or the company scales, you don't know if what you've built will hold.
Leadership development builds individual skills. But skills built on top of a hierarchical operating system still produce hierarchical results. If the systems underneath the culture keep producing the same bottlenecks, behaviors, and decision patterns, training alone won't change the operating system.
None of these were wrong choices. They just weren't measuring the right layer.
The Freedom at Work® Scorecard measures the layer underneath all of them: the structural architecture that determines whether your culture is sustainable and scalable — or personality-dependent and fragile.
No other organizational culture assessment is built on the 10 Principles of Organizational Democracy™.
Here's the Difference Between
Guessing and Knowing
Without the Freedom
at Work Scorecard
- ➜ Culture decisions are made on instinct
- ➜ Culture may be personality-dependent
- ➜ Engagement surveys tell you how people feel — not why and what to change structurally
- ➜ You suspect your culture is strong — but can't prove it to your board or investors
- ➜ You don't know which of the 10 Principles your organization is weakest on
With the Freedom
at Work Scorecard
- ➜ Culture decisions are backed by independent data
- ➜ Freedom is baked into your processes, not personalities
- ➜ You have a clear benchmark and strategy call to determine what deserves deeper investigation next
- ➜ You know exactly which areas need work — at which level — and in what order
- ➜ You know whether your culture is actually embedded deeply enough to survive growth, leadership changes, & scaling
Here's how it works.
Organizational Democracy: The Operating System
the World's Best Teams Are Built On
You've heard of democracy as a political system. Organizational democracy is something entirely different — a leadership and organizational design system for helping people contribute their best while accountability stays strong.
It's a leadership and organizational design system that distributes appropriate decision-making authority, strengthens accountability, and gives people meaningful voice at every level.
It's not about voting on every decision. It's about creating the conditions for people to communicate, take ownership, use judgment, and make appropriate decisions without unnecessary permission.
Since 2007, the Freedom at Work® Scorecard has helped organizations measure how deeply the 10 Principles of Organizational Democracy™ are embedded across individuals, leadership, and systems & processes.
First, it evaluates your organization against the 10 Principles of Organizational Democracy — the building blocks of every Freedom-Centered Organization:
Purpose + Vision · Integrity · Dialogue + Listening · Transparency · Accountability · Decentralization · Individual + Collective · Choice · Fairness + Dignity · Reflection + Evaluation
Second, it measures the 10 Principles of Organizational Democracy across three distinct dimensions:
1. Individual: How employees experience voice, autonomy, accountability, and freedom in their daily work.
2. Leadership: How leaders build trust, share authority, and practice Freedom-Centered Leadership.
3. Systems & Processes: How organizational structures and decision-making systems either actively enable or quietly suppress human performance.
When freedom and accountability are built into how people lead and work, communication improves, ownership grows, decisions move faster, and culture becomes a driver of growth.
FEAR ISN'T JUST AN EMOTION. IT CHANGES PERFORMANCE.
Fear makes people stay quiet, wait for permission, protect themselves, and disengage. AI-driven uncertainty can intensify that fear—especially when leaders respond with more control.
Freedom at Work replaces unnecessary fear and control with freedom + accountability: clear purpose, strong guardrails, meaningful voice, appropriate authority, and responsibility.
AI IS ACCELERATING THE WORK. YOUR ORGANIZATION HAS TO KEEP UP.
AI can make people faster. But if decisions bottleneck, information is trapped, or people lack authority to act, the organization stays slow.
That’s why organizational democracy is so relevant in the AI age.
And freedom and performance are not opposites: WorldBlu Certified Freedom-Centered Organizations achieved nearly 7× the three-year cumulative revenue growth than the S&P 500 in WorldBlu’s historical analysis.
Because lasting performance doesn’t come from talented people alone. It comes from building freedom into your operating system.
Here's What's Included with the
Freedom at Work Scorecard
YOUR FREEDOM AT WORK® Scorecard BENCHMARK SCORE
Receive one overall benchmark score out of 5.0, based on employee responses to the 10 Principles of Organizational Democracy™ across the individual, leadership, and systems & processes dimensions.
You'll have an independent overall benchmark of how deeply organizational democracy is embedded in the way your organization works. Completely anonymous. Available in 14 languages. 10 minutes per employee. Minimum 5 employees.
And your benchmark is only the starting point. After you receive your overall Scorecard results, you can choose to upgrade to the Full Freedom at Work® Scorecard Report for an extremely detailed analysis of all 10 Principles across all three dimensions — individual, leadership, and systems & processes — along with deeper organizational insights that show you what is driving your score.
The Scorecard tells you where you stand. The Full Report shows you why.
Strategy CALL to Discuss Results + Customized Next Steps
A 30-minute dedicated call with a WorldBlu master coach to walk through your overall benchmark score, what it means in the context of your organization, and the highest-leverage next steps to consider.
If you want detailed Principle-level, dimensional, departmental, and employee-comment analysis, we'll also discuss whether the Full Report is the right next step.
BONUS: AUTOMATIC WORLDBLU CERTIFICATION IF YOU SCORE 3.5 OR HIGHER
If your organization earns 3.5/5.0 or higher, the WorldBlu Certified Freedom-Centered Organization™ designation activates automatically — included at no additional fee.
Want to go deeper?
WANT THE COMPLETE DIAGNOSTIC?
GO BEYOND THE BENCHMARK.
The $1,997 Freedom at Work® Scorecard gives you the benchmark you need to see where your organization stands and a strategy call to interpret what it means.
For organizations ready to go deeper, the Full Freedom at Work® Scorecard Report unlocks the detailed diagnostic behind the score — including principle-by-principle analysis, departmental patterns, qualitative comments, and a comprehensive transformation roadmap.
The Full Report includes:
- Complete score breakdown across all 10 Principles — at the individual, leadership, and systems & processes — so you know exactly where in the architecture the gaps are.
- Full departmental analysis — see exactly where organizational democracy is thriving and where it's breaking down, by team, department, role, and tenure.
- All qualitative employee comments — the verbatim responses that explain the numbers and reveal what your people are actually experiencing in the systems around them.
- A comprehensive 20-30-page strategic PDF — ready to present to your leadership team, your board, or your investors.
- A two-hour strategic debrief call with a WorldBlu master coach — translating your data into a clear transformation roadmap for building organizational democracy into your systems permanently.
On your strategy call, we'll walk through your score together and discuss whether the full report is the right next step for your organization and the investment required.
Most organizations that complete the Freedom at Work Scorecard choose to go deeper with their complete results.
Simple process. Powerful results.
HOW IT WORKS: A 4-STEP PROCESS
STEP 1 — Purchase the Scorecard
Purchase online and you'll be taken directly to a short onboarding form. No sales call required.
STEP 2 — Complete your 5-7 minute onboarding form
Share your organization details, employee count, department structure, preferred language, and survey timing. Nothing has to be perfect — our team will help finalize setup.
STEP 3 — Your employees complete the 10-minute Scorecard
We provide a confidential survey link for a representative, statistically valid group of employees. Responses are anonymous; we do not collect names or email addresses. Available in 14 languages.
STEP 4 — Get your benchmark + strategy call
Receive your benchmark score and meet with WorldBlu for a 30-minute strategy call to interpret the results and identify next steps. If your organization scores 3.5 or higher, WorldBlu Certification activates automatically.
And if you score 3.5 or higher, there's more.
YOU’VE BUILT SOMETHING EXCEPTIONAL.
NOW MAKE IT VISIBLE.
Your Freedom at Work® Scorecard doesn't just show you where your organization stands.
If your organization earns a score of 3.5/5.0 or higher, you automatically receive the WorldBlu Certified Freedom-Centered Organization™ designation — included at no additional fee.
WorldBlu Certification is valued at $20,000 and is included automatically if your organization qualifies.
Since 2007, WorldBlu has recognized organizations that have done the deeper structural work of building freedom, accountability, and employee voice into the way they actually operate — and who have the independent data to prove it.
If you qualify, your certification benefits activate immediately:
- WorldBlu Certified Freedom-Centered Organization™ Award — formal global recognition for what you've built
- Certified logo for use on your website, recruiting materials, and client presentations
- Dedicated profile page on WorldBlu's global website — a permanent public credential
- Global media recognition and visibility opportunities
- Recognition on the annual WorldBlu List of Freedom-Centered Organizations
- Monthly executive peer advisory mastermind calls with fellow certified CEOs
- Quarterly deep-dive case studies from certified organizations sharing what's working
- Speaking and visibility opportunities within the WorldBlu global community
- Invitation to the annual Lead with Freedom Summit
- A powerful external signal to employees, candidates, clients, and stakeholders that your culture has been independently measured against the 10 Principles of Organizational Democracy™
The goal of the Scorecard is clarity.
Certification is what happens when the data shows you've built something truly exceptional.
FREEDOM AT WORK ISN'T THEORY.
HERE'S WHAT LEADERS HAVE BUILT WITH IT.
Thanks to Freedom at Work, our sales have quadrupled and our market cap has increased from $250 million to over $2 billion.
Garry Ridge
CEO Emeritus | The WD-40 Company
Freedom at Work has helped us grow on average 23% each year over the past 10 years.
Matthew Gonnering
CEO | Widen, an Acquia Company
WorldBlu’s Freedom at Work strategy ultimately helped us grow and took our new spin-off from $0 to a $175 million sale in just two years.
Dallas Kashuba
CEO | DREAMHOST
As a result of Freedom at Work, we've grown 63% in one year.
Nathan Donaldson
CEO | Boost
With Freedom at Work, we've grown more than 12x. Our growth and success is a direct result of Freedom at Work.
Matt Perez
COO | Nearsoft Encora
Let's Find Out.
Is the Freedom at Work® Scorecard
Right for Your Organization?
This is for you if:
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You lead an organization with 5+ employees and want independent, verifiable data about whether leadership and systems are helping people perform — or quietly getting in the way.
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You want a baseline you can use to measure culture improvement over time.
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You’re dealing with communication, accountability, engagement, ownership, or retention issues and need a clearer starting point.
- You’re investing in culture, leadership, or organizational growth and want a clear starting point for what to strengthen.
- You believe your culture is strong and want to see whether the data confirms it.
- You need credible culture data you can bring to your leadership team, board, or investors.
- Your organization is growing, changing, or adopting AI and you want your culture to become more adaptive and resilient.
- You’re ready to stop relying on instinct and start making culture decisions with data.
This is not for you if:
- You’re simply looking for another employee happiness or engagement survey.
- You only want validation and aren’t open to discovering where the structural gaps may be.
- You have fewer than 5 employees or your organization has been operating for less than one year.
- You’re not prepared to act on what the results reveal.
Meet Traci Fenton
Developed by the World's Most Recognized
Expert in Organizational Democracy
Traci Fenton is the Founder and CEO of WorldBlu® and the creator of the Freedom at Work® methodology, a leadership and organizational design system built on nearly 30 years of work in organizational democracy.
WorldBlu has worked with leaders and organizations in 100+ countries, including WD-40, DaVita, Zappos, Mindvalley, New Belgium Brewing, Menlo Innovations, DreamHost, and others. WorldBlu's work has been featured in Fortune, Forbes, Fast Company, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, NPR, and the BBC.
Traci has spoken at organizations worldwide, including Harvard, Yale, the CIA, the U.S. Naval Academy, TEDx, and South by Southwest. She is a Thinkers50 Radar Awardee, an Inc. Top 50 Leadership Thinker, a Marshall Goldsmith 100 Coach, and the author of Freedom at Work.
The Freedom at Work® Scorecard is the diagnostic WorldBlu uses to show leaders whether freedom, accountability, and employee voice are truly built into the way their organization works.
Our awards and global recognition
The Book Behind the Method:
Freedom at Work by Traci Fenton
Freedom at Work: The Leadership Strategy for Transforming Your Life, Your Organization, and Our World distills nearly three decades of WorldBlu research, experience, and real-world examples into a proven approach for replacing fear-based leadership with freedom, accountability, transparency, and trust.
The book shows leaders how to build organizations where people can do their best work — and where culture is designed to last.
"Ideals like freedom, self-determination, and democracy are too
often shelved when we show up to work. Traci Fenton lays out how
we can actually bring the ideals of democracy to our workplaces —
and why everyone from CEOs to workers to communities stand to benefit."
— Daniel H. Pink, #1 New York Times bestselling author
of Drive and To Sell Is Human
Stop guessing.
Make People & Performance Decisions With a Clear Benchmark.
Think about the decisions you'll make in the next 90 days about your people, leadership, hiring, retention, communication, accountability, AI, culture, structure, performance, and growth. Where to invest. What to change. Who to promote. What's working and what isn't.
Now ask yourself: are you making those decisions with independent employee evidence — or with your best guess? And do you know whether your leadership and systems are helping people perform — or quietly getting in the way?
Does this sound like you?
- You're investing in culture without an independent benchmark of where your organization stands.
- You have no independent baseline for culture ROI, leadership decisions, or board reporting.
- You don't know whether leadership behaviors are reinforcing the culture — or quietly undermining it.
- Hidden design gaps are quietly compounding in cost and impact.
You may be making culture and leadership decisions without a clear baseline. The Freedom at Work® Scorecard gives you the benchmark to stop guessing, establish where your organization stands, and decide what deserves deeper investigation next.
Everything You Get with the
Freedom at Work Scorecard
Purchase online, complete a short 5–7 minute onboarding form,
and we’ll set up your Scorecard.
Once your results are in, we’ll schedule your 30-minute strategy call to
review your benchmark score and recommended next steps.
One click. One clear benchmark. One powerful starting point.
Your investment is protected by our 14-day guarantee. If you submit your onboarding form
and decide within 14 days — before we launch your employee survey — that this isn't the right time,
contact us and we'll refund your investment in full. Once your survey launches,
the guarantee no longer applies and we're committed to delivering your Freedom at Work® Scorecard results.
Meet WorldBlu
We're changing the future of leadership
WorldBlu is a global leadership company with a vision to empower one billion people to live, lead, and work in freedom rather than fear.
For nearly 30 years, we've helped leaders in 100+ countries build Freedom-Centered Organizations using our proven Freedom at Work® methodology.
Transforming the World One Leader at a Time
700%
Greater revenue growth for certified Freedom-Centered Organizations™ compared to the S&P 500
100
Number of countries we’ve trained leaders in
9.9/10
Average rating of our programs
1,052,000+
Number of employees benefited by Freedom at Work
29
Years teaching the Freedom at Work® Leadership Strategy
FAQ
Have a question about the Freedom at Work Scorecard? We have answers!
How many employees do I need to take the Freedom at Work Scorecard?
You need a minimum of 5 employees. Your organization must have been in operation for at least one full year. There is no maximum — organizations of any size can take the Scorecard.
How long does it take?
The Scorecard itself takes about 10 minutes per employee to complete — so it's a light lift for your team. From the moment you purchase, most organizations have their full results in hand within 2-4 weeks. You're looking at 30 days or less from first click to strategy call.
What's a good score?
The Scorecard is measured on a scale of 1.0 to 5.0. Any score of 3.5 or higher is considered strong — and here's the exciting part: a score of 3.5 or above automatically qualifies your organization for the WorldBlu Certified Freedom-Centered Organization™ designation, which is included at no additional cost. Many organizations earn certification on their first attempt.
If you score below 3.5, that's genuinely valuable too. You'll receive your full benchmark score across all three dimensions — individual, leadership, and systems & processes — along with your 30-minute strategy call where we walk through exactly what to focus on and in what order. Think of it not as a verdict, but as the most honest starting point you've ever had.
What happens after I buy the Scorecard?
Right after purchase you'll be immediately redirected to a short onboarding form — it takes about 5-7 minutes to complete.
Once we receive it, our team will have your Scorecard set up and ready within 3-5 business days — often sooner.
We'll reach out to you directly and send you your unique Scorecard link, which you then send out to your employees.
From there we'll keep you posted on how responses are coming in and help you make sure you hit the numbers needed for your results to be statistically valid.
What do I send my employees?
We'll send you a unique link for your organization's Scorecard. You simply forward that link to your employees — that's it. We don't need your employees' email addresses and we never contact them directly. The link goes from you to your team, and they complete it confidentially on their own. Simple and private.
How do we administer the Scorecard?
Once you have your unique link, send it out to your employees and give them about two weeks to complete it. We'll be tracking response rates on our end and keeping you posted on how things are progressing. If you need to send a reminder to get a few more participants across the finish line, we'll let you know.
Here's what you need to know about response rates:
If your organization has fewer than 150 employees, we encourage everyone to participate — you'll need 70% of your employees to complete the Scorecard for your results to be statistically valid.
If your organization has more than 150 employees, our system will automatically calculate a statistically valid random sample size for you. You'll need 100% of that sample to complete it. To make sure we hit that number, we typically recommend sending the link to double the sample size needed — so if we need 50 responses, we'd send to 100 people. That way you have plenty of buffer and we're confident your results will hold up.
What's the difference between the benchmark score and the Full Report?
Your $1,997 Scorecard gives you your overall benchmark score out of 5.0 across the 10 Principles — measured at the individual, leadership, and systems & processes level — plus your 30-minute strategy call. That's a genuinely powerful starting point.
The Full Report goes all the way. It's a comprehensive 20-30 page strategic PDF that breaks down your score by principle, dimension, and department, surfaces every qualitative employee comment, and comes with a dedicated 1-2 hour strategic debrief with a WorldBlu master coach. If you want to see everything — every gap, every strength, every insight your data contains — that's what the Full Report delivers.
On your onboarding form you'll have the opportunity to indicate whether you're interested in the Full Report. We'll reach out to discuss it and the investment with you directly.
Is it anonymous?
Completely. We don't collect employee names. We don't collect email addresses. Every response is fully confidential — and that's exactly why response rates tend to be so high. When your people know there's no way to trace their answers back to them, they tell you the truth. And the truth is what makes this data so valuable.
What languages is the Scorecard available in?
The Scorecard is available in 14 languages: English, Spanish, Hungarian, Turkish, Romanian, French, German, Italian, Czech, Japanese, Danish, Chinese, Haitian Creole, and Brazilian Portuguese. If you have team members who work in a language that isn't on this list, reach out and let us know — we can add it!
What do we get if we earn certification?
Certification activates automatically when your organization scores 3.5 or higher — and what you receive is valued at $10,000, included in full as part of your $1,997 Scorecard investment. Here's everything that unlocks:
- WorldBlu Certified Freedom-Centered Organization™ Award — formal global recognition for what you've built
- Official certified logo for unlimited use on your website, recruiting materials, and client presentations
- Dedicated profile page on WorldBlu's global website — a permanent, public credential
- Global media recognition — featured to media outlets around the world
- Talent magnet status — high performers seeking freedom-centered workplaces can now find and choose you
- Culture-wide morale lift — your people see they're recognized as part of something exceptional
- Monthly executive peer advisory mastermind calls with fellow certified CEOs
- Private Slack network — direct access to certified organization CEOs around the world
- Quarterly deep-dive case studies from certified organizations sharing what's working
- Speaking and visibility opportunities within the WorldBlu global community
- Invitation to the Lead with Freedom Summit — our annual gathering at historic global sites of freedom and democracy, where certified leaders connect, learn, and inspire one another in person. Select certified leaders may also be invited to take the stage and share their journey.
- Movement contribution and recognition
All of this activates automatically when you hit the 3.5 threshold. You don't need to apply separately, pay anything additional, or jump through any extra hoops. You've already done the work — certification is your reward for it.
When is the certification deadline?
If you're hoping to be considered for the annual WorldBlu List of Freedom-Centered Organizations, the deadline to complete your Scorecard process is September 25, 2026. The list is publicly announced on October 29, 2026 — one of the most celebrated moments in the organizational democracy world.
Take the Scorecard now and complete the process within 30 days and you'll be well on track.
How often should we take the Freedom at Work Scorecard?
You're welcome to take it any time — there's no waiting period.
That said, we strongly encourage annual benchmarking.
Taking the Scorecard year over year gives you something incredibly powerful: before-and-after data that shows exactly how your culture is evolving, where you're making real progress, and where you still have work to do.
It's the kind of data that tells a compelling story to your board, your investors, and your team — and keeps you honest about whether organizational democracy is truly embedding itself into your systems over time.
Each additional Scorecard is $1,997.
Should I count independent contractors or gig workers in my employee count?
If your independent contractors or gig workers are integral to your daily operations — working alongside your team, participating in your culture, and contributing to how your organization actually functions — yes, count them.
The Freedom at Work® Scorecard measures the operating system of your organization as it actually works in practice, not just your official headcount on paper. If these people experience your culture every day, their perspective is valuable data.
If your contractors are project-based, occasional, or largely disconnected from your day-to-day culture and operations, you don't need to include them.
When in doubt, include them. The more complete your picture, the more useful your data.
Is this the same Freedom at Work Scorecard used for WorldBlu Certification?
Yes — it's exactly the same tool. The Freedom at Work® Scorecard is the assessment at the heart of the WorldBlu Certified Freedom-Centered Organization™ certification process.
Taking the Scorecard is the first step. Score 3.5 or higher and certification activates automatically — no additional purchase, no extra steps. You've already done the work.
How is this different from Culture Amp, Gallup Q12, Great Place to Work, or B Corp?
These are all respected programs — and they're measuring something genuinely different from the Freedom at Work® Scorecard. Here's how to think about each one:
Culture Amp and Gallup Q12 measure employee engagement and sentiment — how your people feel about working at your organization. That's valuable data. But it tells you the outcome, not what's creating it. The Freedom at Work® Scorecard measures the operating system underneath those feelings — the structural architecture that either makes a great culture sustainable or keeps it dependent on whoever happens to be leading that day.
Great Place to Work measures the employee experience — trust, pride, camaraderie. Again, a meaningful signal. But it doesn't tell you whether that experience is built into your systems or built around your current leadership. A company can score exceptionally well on Great Place to Work while still running on a top-down hierarchy internally. The Freedom at Work® Scorecard measures whether freedom is structurally designed in — not just culturally felt.
B Corp measures your organization's impact on the world outside — environmental practices, community contributions, supply chain, governance accountability to society. It asks: is this company doing good in the world? WorldBlu asks a different question: is this company designed on the inside to operate with freedom at the center? A company can be an excellent B Corp and still run a hierarchical, top-down culture internally. B Corp doesn't measure that. WorldBlu does.
The Freedom at Work® Scorecard is the only organizational culture assessment tool in the world that measures the operating system underneath your culture — organizational democracy across three dimensions: individual experience, leadership behavior, and systems and processes. No other tool in the world measures this layer.
We like to say it this way: the other tools tell you the weather. The Freedom at Work® Scorecard tells you why the climate is the way it is — and whether it's built to last.
What do I need to have ready to complete the onboarding form after payment?
Right after purchase you'll be redirected to a short onboarding form — it takes about 5-10 minutes. Most CEOs complete it themselves or hand it off to their CHRO, Chief of Staff, or EA. Either way, don't stress about having everything perfect — you can update any of the details after submission.
Here's what you'll need:
Standard organizational information:
- Organization name, address, and website
- Primary and secondary contact details
A few items specific to the Scorecard setup:
- Exact number of employees
- Annual revenue (USD)
- Business sector classification
- Confirmation from your top executive that they support the process
- Your survey setup preference:
- Option 1: All employees — 70% response rate required. Best for organizations under 150 employees.
- Option 2: Random sample group — 100% response rate required. Best for organizations over 150 employees.
- Internal segmentation groups (departments, divisions, or teams you'd like broken out in reporting)
- Primary language preference for the survey
- Whether your organization is part of a larger parent company
- Your preferred survey start date
Nothing has to be perfect at submission. We're here to help you through every step.
What happens on the 30-minute strategy call?
This is one of our favorite parts of the whole process. Once your results are in, you'll sit down with our team and we'll walk through your benchmark score together — what each dimension means for your specific organization, where you're genuinely strong, where the structural gaps are, and what the highest-leverage things to work on first look like.
We'll also talk through whether the Full Scorecard Report makes sense for your organization and what that next step would look like.
What this call is not: a sales pitch. What it is: a real conversation between real people about what your data is telling you and what it means for the future of your organization. Most leaders leave it with more clarity than they've had in years.
Is this political? Does "organizational democracy" have anything to do with politics?
Not at all — and this is one of the most common questions we get, so we're glad you asked.
Organizational democracy has nothing to do with political parties, governments, or political ideologies of any kind. The word "democracy" here refers to how your organization is designed and led — specifically, replacing top-down hierarchy and control with structures where people have a real voice, genuine autonomy, and meaningful participation in the decisions that affect their work.
Organizations of every kind — from family-owned businesses to global enterprises, across every industry and every country — have earned WorldBlu certification. What they share isn't a political belief. It's a commitment to building cultures where people are trusted, respected, and empowered to do their best work.
At its core, organizational democracy is about one thing: building organizations where freedom drives performance rather than fear. That's not a political position. It's a leadership strategy.
Who actually takes the Scorecard — just leadership, or the whole organization?
The Scorecard is designed to capture the full picture of how your organization actually operates — which means it's not just for leadership. Depending on your organization's size, either all employees or a statistically valid random sample will be invited to participate.
This is intentional. Leadership often experiences the organization differently than the people doing the day-to-day work. The Freedom at Work® Scorecard is designed to surface both perspectives — and the gaps between them — because that's where the most valuable data lives.
If your organization has fewer than 150 employees, we encourage everyone to participate and require a 70% response rate for your results to be statistically valid.
If your organization has more than 150 employees, our system automatically calculates a statistically valid random sample size. We'll need 100% of that sample to complete the Scorecard — and we recommend sending the link to double the sample size needed to give yourself plenty of buffer.
In short: this is a whole-organization diagnostic, not a leadership survey. And that's exactly what makes it so revealing.
How long does the survey stay open — and what if response rates are low?
We recommend giving your employees about two weeks to complete the Scorecard from the day you send out the link. That window gives people enough time to fit it into their schedule without letting it fall off their radar.
The survey doesn't have a hard system-generated deadline — but we do need to hit the required response rate thresholds for your results to be statistically valid. We'll be tracking response rates on our end the entire time and keeping you posted on how things are progressing. If you're getting close to the deadline and response rates need a nudge, we'll let you know so you can send a reminder to your team.
If after two weeks you still need more responses, it's completely fine to extend the window and send another reminder. We'll work with you to make sure you get across the finish line. Our goal is to get you the most complete and accurate picture of your organization possible — and we're with you every step of the way to make that happen.
What if we have multiple locations or a global team?
The Freedom at Work® Scorecard is built for exactly this kind of organization. With 14 languages supported and no geographic restrictions, your global team can participate regardless of where they're located or what language they work in.
During your onboarding form setup, you'll indicate your internal segmentation groups — departments, divisions, locations, or teams you'd like broken out in your results. This means if you have offices in New York, London, and Singapore, you can see how organizational democracy is being experienced differently across each location, not just as one blended organizational average.
If your organization has employees working in multiple languages, simply indicate your language preferences during setup and we'll make sure the right version of the Scorecard reaches the right people.
If you have a more complex structure — for example, a holding company with multiple distinct business units — see the question below about certifying multiple organizations.
Can we certify multiple organizations or subsidiaries?
Each legal entity requires its own Scorecard and its own certification — at $1,997 per organization. This is because each entity has its own culture, its own employees, and its own operating system. A holding company that earns certification for one subsidiary hasn't certified the others — and each one deserves to be assessed on its own merits.
If you're looking to certify multiple entities, reach out to us at hello@worldblu.com before purchasing so we can clarify what will be the right pathway for you. We're happy to discuss the process, help you think through the right sequencing, and explore whether there are options that make sense for your specific organizational structure.
Some organizations start with one business unit as a pilot and expand from there — which is a perfectly valid approach and often produces the most useful internal comparison data.
Can we see how our score compares to other organizations?
The Freedom at Work® Scorecard benchmarks your organization against the 10 Principles of Organizational Democracy — the global standard — rather than against the scores of other specific organizations. Your score reflects where you stand against that standard, not a competitive ranking against other companies.
What this means in practice is that your benchmark is both more meaningful and more actionable than a peer comparison. Knowing you scored higher than a competitor doesn't tell you what to fix. Knowing you scored 3.2 on Decentralized Power and 4.1 on Transparency tells you exactly where to focus and in what order.
That said, if you become a part of the WorldBlu certified community, you'll have access to ongoing organizational impact insights and case studies from certified organizations — giving you a rich, qualitative picture of how the highest-performing freedom-centered organizations are operating.
Over time, that community intelligence becomes one of the most valuable things about being part of WorldBlu.
Who sees the results — and how is our data protected?
Your benchmark score and all associated data belong to your organization. WorldBlu uses your results to set up your strategy call and, if applicable, to prepare your Full Report — but your data is never shared with other organizations, never sold, and never used for any purpose outside of serving you.
On the employee side, responses are completely anonymous and confidential. No names, no email addresses, no way to trace any individual response back to any individual person. Your employees' responses are aggregated into your organizational score — that's all WorldBlu sees on the employee side.
As for who within your organization sees the results — that's entirely your decision. Your primary contact receives the score and the strategy call. How you choose to share the results internally, and with whom, is completely up to you. Many organizations share their scores with their full leadership team. Some share them company-wide. There's no requirement either way.
If you have specific data privacy or security requirements — for example, if you operate in a regulated industry or jurisdiction with specific data handling requirements — reach out to us at hello@worldblu.com before purchasing and we'll make sure we can accommodate your needs.
What’s the guarantee?
We want you to feel completely confident moving forward. Here's how our guarantee works:
Your investment is protected by our 14-day guarantee. If you submit your onboarding form and decide within 14 days (before we launch your employee survey) that this isn't the right time, contact us and we'll refund your investment in full. Once your survey launches, the guarantee no longer applies and we're committed to delivering your complete results.
In other words — once your employees start taking the Scorecard, we're all in on delivering everything we've promised. And so far, we've never had anyone ask for a refund once they saw what came back.
What is WorldBlu?
WorldBlu was founded in 1997 and is an award-winning global leadership and culture training company, committed to teaching Freedom at Work to clients worldwide, representing over $30 billion in annual revenue in 100+ countries.
Traci Fenton, Founder and CEO of WorldBlu and her team have helped hundreds of top companies and leaders around the world shift from hierarchical leadership and organizational structures to lead with more freedom-centered, democratic leadership and organizational design at well-respected brands such as WD-40, DaVita, HCL Technologies, Mindvalley, Pandora, Hulu, Zappos, GE Aviation, Grupo Elektra, and more in over 100 countries worldwide. WorldBlu has a vision of seeing one billion people working in freedom-centered organizations worldwide.
Research shows that WorldBlu’s Freedom at Work® leadership strategy is proven to deliver on average 700% greater revenue growth compared to S&P 500 companies over three years.
WorldBlu's founder, Traci Fenton has been recognized as a “Thinkers50 Radar” award winner, the “Oscars” of management, where she was called “a game changer in transforming the culture of organizations.” She was also named a “World-Changing Woman in Conscious Business” by SOCAP and recognized in Inc. magazine as one of the “Top 50 Leadership Innovators,” along with other world-class leaders such as Dan Pink, Brene Brown, and Marshall Goldsmith. She is also recognized as a Marshall Goldsmith “Top 100 Coach” and received the Game-Changer award for “Outstanding Results in Shaping the World.”
Traci has addressed audiences around the world, sharing her message of leading with freedom over fear with individuals from over 100 countries at wide-ranging organizations such as Yahoo!, Fox Interactive Media, the CIA, South by Southwest, Harvard University, Yale University, TEDx, the US Naval Academy as well as appearing at hundreds of other venues and on podcasts, TV, and radio shows.
WorldBlu has been featured in Fortune, Forbes, Fast Company, the Wall Street Journal, The Christian Science Monitor, The New York Times, Inc. Magazine, BusinessWeek, Real Clear Markets, Leader to Leader, Inc. Magazine, BusinessWeek, US News & World Report, NPR, the BBC, and dozens of other media outlets around the world as well as in over three dozen books.
I'd like to connect with someone about the program, how do I do that?
Great, we'd love to connect with you as well!
Please reach out to us at hello@worldblu.com.
We'd love to answer any of your questions!
A message from Traci Fenton,
Founder + CEO of WorldBlu
Why We Built the Freedom at Work® Scorecard
"We built the Freedom at Work® Scorecard because we kept seeing great leaders pour enormous energy into people and culture without knowing why communication, accountability, engagement, ownership, or performance still weren't where they wanted them to be.
The problem wasn't always the people. Often, leadership practices and organizational systems were shaping behavior in ways leaders couldn't clearly see.
Most culture tools measure outcomes. Freedom at Work looks across the individual, leadership, and systems & processes dimensions that create those outcomes — using the 10 Principles of Organizational Democracy™.
The Scorecard gives you an independent overall benchmark of where your organization stands. If you want the detailed why, the Full Report lets you go deeper into all 10 Principles and all three dimensions."
Stop guessing about what's holding
performance back.
Establish the benchmark. Then decide what to strengthen.
One click. $1,997. The world's only organizational democracy benchmark.
Join the Movement of
WorldBlu Certified Companies
Leading with Freedom
Encora Nearsoft
Hermosillo, Mexico
The WD-40 Company
San Diego, CA
Widen
Madison, Wisconsin
DaVita
Denver, Colorado
Grupo Elektra
Mexico City, Mexico
Boost
Wellington, New Zealand
Bruno Schillig
Buenos Aires, Argentina
Mindvalley
Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
15Five
San Francisco, CA
Achievers
Toronto, Canada
ADEC
Port-Au-Prince, Haiti
Rev Asia
Kuala Lumpar, Malaysia
AIESEC International
Montreal, Canada
New Belgium Brewing
Fort Collins, CO
Latro
Istanbul, Turkey
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