Satisfaction and Climate
The two indices a study produces, what each one measures, and why the product will not let you put them on the same chart.
A finished study produces two indices, not one. They are computed over the same responses and they answer different questions.
What each one measures
Satisfaction measures how content people are with the various aspects of their work. Its categories, and the way they combine, are defined by the theoretical model you chose. See Theoretical models.
Climate measures how the working environment is perceived as a whole. It has its own model and its own categories, independent of Satisfaction's.
They are two different questions about the same people. An organization can come out well on one and badly on the other, and that is not a contradiction: it is information.
Why they never share a chart
Both indices come out on the same numeric scale, and that coincidence is a trap: they are built with different methods, so the difference between them means nothing.
«Climate is six points below Satisfaction» produces a number, and the number describes nothing about the organization — it describes the distance between two ways of calculating.
That is why the product separates them in charts: two lines on a shared axis are, visually, a claim that the distance between them can be read. The chart shows one index at a time.
They do coexist in tables, and that is not a contradiction. A table with both columns does not propose a common axis: each column is read on its own, against its own history. What is forbidden is the shared axis, not the adjacency.
So how do you read them
Each index against its own series. The question that has an answer is «did the Northern Region's Climate go up or down compared to last year?», and the one that does not is «is Climate better than Satisfaction?».
The same rule holds across nodes: comparing the Climate of two branches is legitimate — same method, same scale, same instrument. What you never cross is the two indices against each other.
Each has its own model
Because they are parallel indices, choosing the theory behind one says nothing about the other: each questionnaire points at two models, one per index. It also means a historical series break is evaluated separately for each — changing the Satisfaction model does not touch Climate's history.