Employee Net Promoter Score: A Brief Guide

The act of measuring employee engagement is not simple. Because the concept itself is so abstract, we need to go beyond numbers and quantifiers. This is precisely where the use of employee net promoter score comes in.

Employee net promoter score (eNPS) is a way of measuring if employees feel happy, satisfied, and loyal towards their place of work through a survey.

An employee is the foundation of any business. Determining employee loyalty is a vital indicator of whether your organization would flourish in the future.

eNPS is one of the most powerful metrics to provide you with a glimpse of your employees' feelings and opinions. It allows you to determine your current business practices' impact on your employees' satisfaction and engagement levels.

The ease of use, effectiveness, and efficiency of eNPS based surveys has made it one of the most successful ways for organizations to measure their engagement levels.

NPS v/s eNPS- Are They The Same?

Well, not quite.

Back in the day, Net Promoter Score or NPS was used in market research to measure the customer experience that an organization could provide.

The term was first coined in 2003 by Fred Reichheld of Bain & Company. It soon became an important criterion to estimate how likely customers would recommend a company’s services to a friend or colleague.

As the years advanced and companies recognized the importance of engaged employees to business success, the humble NPS was modified to the now-famous employee NPS (eNPS).

To put it clearly, NPS acts to measure customer satisfaction levels. At the same time, the eNPS survey was designed to gauge the employee experience.

What Are eNPS-Based Surveys?

Organizations of today mainly use four types of employee surveys, namely:

• Employee Engagement Survey
• Employee Satisfaction Survey
• Exit Employee Survey
• Employee Onboarding Survey

eNPS is not a form of survey. Instead, it can be considered as a measurement method.

Traditionally, employee surveys, such as the four above, measure through "yes" or "no" ratings or through a comment section. That presented a very white and black view of the organizational issues. Thus, it invariably paints a false picture by giving a wrong set of data.

But an eNPS based survey ensures that an organization can capture accurate employee opinions. For example, let us consider the same question asked in a traditional and eNPS based method:

Traditional Survey

eNPS Survey

Employee Net Promoter Score Calculation

In an eNPS based survey, the questions are numbered on a scale instead of a definitive “yes” or “no.” The scale usually ranges from either 0-10 or 0-5, depending on the survey.

Each survey respondent is then classified into either of these three categories:

Promoters

These employees mostly respond with 9-10 scores. This category of people can be considered highly engaged employees who will go above and beyond for the company.

Passives

These employees mostly respond with 7-8 scores. While not disengaged, these employees have some ongoing concerns or issues with their jobs.

Detractors

These employees mostly respond with 0-6 scores. Such employees can be considered as actively disengaged with significant reservations with the organization.

The calculation of eNPS is quite simple.

Employee Net Promoter Score = {(Number of Promoters - Number of Detractors)/Total Number of Survey Respondents} X 100

While it might seem that the passives don’t have much weightage, these scores do matter while determining the number of survey respondents.

What Is A Good Net Promoter Score (eNPS)?

The purpose of an eNPS is to highlight the strengths and weaknesses of your organization.

Many companies opt to calculate the average out of several eNPS questions. In contrast, others estimate the individual eNPS score of each survey question.

Here is what can be considered as a good employee net promoter score:

• An employee NPS can be a range anywhere from -100 to 100.
• A score above 0 is considered to be good or acceptable by leading organizations.
• A score above 50 is considered to be excellent.
• Finally, a score of over 70 is deemed to be groundbreaking.

If the gathered eNPS is not up to your standards or relatively poor, it indicates a low engagement level. It is the right time for you to form necessary action plans to remedy your weak areas affecting the company’s performance. Even if your eNPS is good, it doesn’t signify that you get complacent and stop trying to raise it even further.

Recommended Article: A Brief Guide On Employee Pulse Surveys

5 Best Practices To Increase The Employee Net Promoter Score

Now that we have discovered the advantage of measuring engagement through eNPS, let's look at some helpful tips that'll help you boost your overall eNPS score:

1. Communicate With Detractors

Survey tools, such as Vantage Pulse, allow you to anonymously connect with the detractors over their given scores.

That allows you to address their concerns directly and also enables you to get some constructive feedback. It will give you a clearer picture of your organization's shortcomings and even collect viewpoints on remedying them.

2. Continuously Track Your Score

The main problem with traditional surveys is that they are conducted once a year and rarely analyzed accurately.

With much quicker and faster surveys in the market, such as Pulse surveys, you get the option of setting a particular time period, after which the survey will be repeated.

A frequent and timely survey option gives you a better chance of examining the company’s engagement trends and eNPS over time. It will help you decide whether your action plans are producing any results or not.

3. Improve Your Employee Engagement Strategies

As a poor eNPS indicates low engagement levels, it denotes that your engagement strategies need some work. Thus, you must form a definitive plan to boost your organization’s employee satisfaction levels.

Research what has worked for other companies. Take the help of your HR managers and senior executives. Or you can even directly ask employees what changes they would like to see in the organization.

Recommended Article: The Ultimate Guide To Employee Rewards And Recognition

4. Openly Address Everyone’s Feedback

Once you get your eNPS score, it’s necessary to address everyone’s feedback and highlight what you plan to do next.

For the negative feedback, be transparent and forthcoming about the plans you have to solve. Additionally, inform how much time the implementation would require.

For the positive feedback, thank people for taking the time to take the survey. Additionally, assure them that you will gradually build upon these strengths to enhance the employee experience.

5. Review Your Online Branding

Today's employees are very vocal about their opinions. If not inside their organization, then certainly outside of it.

Sometimes, the most effective way to know how to improve your company's shortcomings is to go online and check what others are talking about you.

Online review sites like Glassdoor and even LinkedIn may prove to be a goldmine in gathering information about why your engagement levels are dipping despite you taking strong efforts to increase it.

Similarly, compare what your competitors are doing right. It will help you fill in the gaps and make the relevant changes that employees actually want to see.

Recommended Article: Employer Branding- What, How and Everything in Between

Finally

Do you think that the employee net promoter score is a significantly better way to measure engagement levels? Do let us know your opinions in the comments section below.

This article is written by Barasha Medhi who is a part of the marketing team at Vantage Circle. Barasha can be found either searching for interesting HR, company culture, and corporate buzzwords to write about or looking at pictures of cozy Bel Air mansions. For any related queries, contact editor@vantagecircle.com.