Employee Net Promoter Score (eNPS): The Complete Guide
08th June 2021

Customer experience is always on companies' radars. But for Companies like Apple, Google, Costco, and USAA, employee experience is crucial too.

What they know is to sell a product, and they do that by first making a high-quality one. For that, they require productive employees, who are loyal, committed, and engaged at the same time.

And to build a good employee experience, working on your Employee Net Promoter Score (eNPS) is the first step. It is a refined version of the traditional Net Promoter Score method, which organizations mostly use to gauge customer satisfaction and experience with their products & services. Usually, in NPS, companies ask their customers —

How likely will you recommend our products or services to a family or friends?
But, in ePNS, companies ask their employees —
How likely will you recommend your organization as a place to work?
A simple question, which is to be answered on a scale of 1 to 10 — can tell companies how many of their employees are fully engaged?

As Gallup states that only 15% of employees are engaged in the workplace. So, knowing how much your employees are satisfied and invested with your company culture is vital for your business growth.

In this post, we will understand eNPS, its benefits, how to use it to plan your game better, improve your team's engagement levels, and so much more. Let's dig in….

What is Employee Net Promoter Score (eNPS)?

Employee Net Promoter Score, aka, eNPS is a scoring system developed to assist employers in measuring employees' satisfaction and layout within the workplace. It is focused on employees' willingness to recommend their workplace to their family or friends.

eNPS system is popular due to its compact, easy to use and implement mechanism. Importantly, eNPS attributes can be combined with other HR metrics to better understand employees' performance standards. It will help to uncover reasons behind employees' performance and ways to improve it.

The History behind the Employee Net Promoter Score (eNPS)

The eNPS story started two decades ago, when Fred Reichheld, Bain & Company's researcher, researched to find the most efficient way to measure customer satisfaction.

He wrote an article in Harvard Business Review that just one simple question can predict companies' growth. He firmly advocated that traditional customer surveys took too long to create and analyze results. So, he discovered a new and compact survey solution — NPS.

Over time, many companies started using NPS and improved their customers' loyalty. Almost two-thirds of Fortune 1000 Companies started using NPS in one or another way in their organization.

Later in 2007, Apple started using this method to find great employees in their retail stores. They started asking their employees how likely they would recommend an Apple retail store as a place to work.
And boom! NPS became eNPS to measure employee satisfaction and loyalty for various global leaders.

Employee Net Promoter Score (eNPS) - The Formula

In an eNPS survey, the questions are asked on the number scale or definite 'yes' or 'no' style. Usually, the scale varies depending on the survey, such as 0-10.
Each survey respondent is classified into three groups based on their answers —

• Promoters: Employees who scored your company culture the best, likely to say 9 or 10. These are your highly engaged employees who are willing to go above and beyond for your company.
• Passives: This group is the most important one with a moderate score, like 7 or 8. These employees aren't disengaged, but they have few ongoing issues with their jobs. So, you have a chance to turn them into promoters by addressing their issues.
• Detractors: These employees mostly respond with 0-6 scores. This group is highly disengaged with significant concerns regarding the organization.

To calculate eNPS, you have to follow this simple formula —
Employee Net Promoter Score = {(Number of Promoters - Number of Detractors)/Total Number of Survey Respondents} X 100
The formula might seem that passives don't have much weightage, but they matter the most when you aim to increase your firm eNPS.
Let's Take an Example

Suppose your company has 20 employees. 5 of them are promoters, 10 passive, and 5 detractors. So, your eNPS score will be —
5-5/20 X 100 = 0
Now, let's say you interact with your passives and turn 5 of them into a promoter group, making a total of 10. Which made your eNPS—

10-5/20 X 100 = 25%

In a way, passives are real game-changers here. And by interacting with them and addressing their issues, you can quickly improve your low eNPS. Passive employees are the ones sitting on the fence and you need to work towards tilting them to the engaged category.

Employee Net Promoter Score (eNPS) Benefits — Why Invest in eNPS?

Simplicity

NPS is coined to cut survey complexities. An eNPS calculation formula is a prime example of simplicity. You just ask your employees one question, and you can check their pulse. If you don’t have the time to spend on running a comprehensive employee engagement survey, eNPS is the way to go.

Swiftness

According to a New York Times report, people hate to participate in surveys. Simply because they are lengthy and time-consuming. Thanks to an eNPS's single-question survey it hardly takes a minute for someone to participate.

Result-driven

The eNPS outcome is simple and actionable. Whenever you find deflection in your employees' progress, you can ask them a question and instantly get results. For instance, you can monitor your employees' morale during the pandemic and know whether they are adjusting to the new normal or not.

Easy to Implement

Since NPS is an employee version of the three-decade-old NPS approach, people are already familiar with it. Your employees will have an idea about what eNPS is and how it works. So, it cuts off the chase of explaining a new concept to your team and then showing how it works.

Pocket-friendly

You don't need any fancy tool or system to conduct eNPS. Just shoot an email to your employees asking them the eNPS question, and your work is done.

Reputation Builder

When you mention your firm's eNPS is 90%, it will establish your authority on your website or newsletter. Your employees and potential employees will know that you care about employee experience

Things to Keep in Mind While Calculating Employee Net Promoter Score (eNPS)

Starting Point

Your firm's eNPS score is 25%, but what's next? That's something eNPS won't tell you. It shows the number of engaged and disengaged employees. But what to do with the metrics, you have to figure out on your own. eNPS won't guide you on how to make your employees more engaged. For that, you have to pair your eNPS score with other HR metrics.

Leave Cliffhangers

With eNPS, many questions remain answered: how employees feel immersed in their role, how committed they are to your organization, etc. It needs to be paired with a comprehensive employee engagement survey to retrieve the full information.

Further Work Required

If you are wondering that you can sit back and relax once your eNPS is higher than your competitors, you are mistaken. It is a simple positive and negative review that you have to explore to further improve the employee experience.

Factors that Contribute to an Employee Net Promoter Score

The eNPS is interlinked to human behavior, so it's hard to pinpoint certain eNPS influential factors. However, based on the key engagement drivers, the following factors contribute to an eNPS the most:

Communication

RingCentral states that 89% of employees' morale and productivity is tanked due to disjointed digital communication. When communication between employees and management isn't clear, it impacts employees' performance. Therefore, companies should prioritize communication and continually work to improve it. For instance, you should include employees in the communication process to not feel lost or confused.

Rewards and Recognition

While 50% of employees admitted that salary is the main reason behind their loyalty and performance, rewards and recognition also play a vital role. When you give a bonus to an employee for scoring a big client or throw a party for increasing the company's revenue, it will help to build employee engagement.

Learning Culture

Cultivating a learning culture and encouraging your employees to acquire new skills can highly impact your eNPS. Businesses that harness learning culture have 30-50% higher employee engagement and retention rates. This practice will also help your organization in the long run as you won't have to look for skilled employees outside your organization.

Autonomy

No one appreciates micromanagement. When supervisors don't allow employees to make their own decisions, this contributes negatively to employee engagement.

Diverse Company Culture

Companies that hire employees from different backgrounds, religions, and cultural beliefs can have more productive employees. According to a survey done by Glassdoor, “a diverse workplace is one of the main factors potential employees take into account when considering a job.” With diverse recruitments, the company and its employees can gain a new perspective to deal with different customers.

Employee Net Promoter Score (eNPS) Structure — How to Create Result-driven eNPS Cycles

Schedule

Your employee's response can vary with every passing second. Thus, you should schedule a periodic eNPS survey to monitor divergence in your employees' responses. Ideally, conducting an eNPS assessment quarterly is the best way to detect changes in satisfaction.

Anonymity

For an unbiased eNPS score, you should allow your employees to participate in the survey without disclosing their identity. Mostly, fear of being identified stops employees from answering honestly, which puts the credibility of the eNPS score in danger. Plus, anonymous surveys have a 90% response rate (Best Companies Group). So, don't only make anonymous eNPS surveys but also reassure employees that their identity won't be disclosed in any case.

Truthfulness

This point is quite related to anonymity. For a credible eNPS score, you should encourage your employees to share their honest opinions. And ensure employees that their low ratings won't put them on the bad side of the management.

Send Reminders

The survey response rate is mostly 5-30% (CustomerThermometer), which is lower to calculate an accurate eNPS score. Now, your employees are busy people, and they might forget to answer your survey questions in between handling various clients. So, there's no harm in shooting a reminder email or message to your employees to participate in the survey. That's because the more people participate in your eNPS survey, the better results you can generate.

How to Draft an eNPS-based Survey Questionnaire

Primarily, organizations conduct four employee feedback surveys — Employee Engagement Survey, Employee Satisfaction Survey, Exit Employee Survey, and Employee Onboarding Survey. eNPS can be a part of such surveys, one way or the other. However, it isn't a survey but a measurement metric. Therefore, eNPS based survey questionnaires are drafted a bit differently. The eNPS questions must be —

• Brief and shouldn't have more than one follow-up action.
• Your first eNPS question should be based on a specific number, and the second should be open-ended to let employees explain their opinion in more detail.

Examples
Main Question: On a scale from 0-10, how likely are you to recommend your organization to your friends or family?
And based on their responses you can have a Follow-up Question:
Why would you (not) recommend us?
OR
Main Question: Considering your by far experience in the company, how likely are you to recommend us to a friend or colleague?
Follow-up Question: What did we (not) do well?

What is a Good eNPS Score & Its Benchmarks?

Basically, a good eNPS score depends upon the way you are asking questions. For instance, some companies opt to calculate the average eNPS of several questions. In contrast, many calculate eNPS scores for a single question.

Depending upon your range of the score that can be anywhere between -100 or 100, any score above zero is acceptable. ENPS benchmarks are different for different organizations, but a score between 10-30 is considered good, and near 50 is excellent.

Talking about eNPS benchmarks, compare your eNPS with only your previous eNPS. Benchmarking against other companies isn't vigilant as you don't know how they are calculating their eNPS. Here are some average eNPS benchmarks (Perceptyx) based on different industries—

Telecommunications: 27
Manufacturing: 13
Information technology: 26
Healthcare: -6.5

Remember, some IT companies can have 26 eNPS and some 62 or higher. Like NPS, the eNPS range varies spontaneously depending upon employee engagement and satisfaction factors.

Effective Tips to Improve your Employee Net Promoter Score (eNPS)

Interact with Detractors

While Passives are an important group, so are detractors. Many companies totally ignore detractors. You shouldn't make that mistake and give a fair trial to understand the detractors' concerns too. You never know when you collect their viewpoints and explain your thoughts to them; your detractors might become your promoters.

Regular eNPS Surveys

As already mentioned, set a schedule to conduct your eNPS surveys. This practice can help you in better benchmarking and analyzing changes in the scores.

Follow-up Surveys or Questions

To know the reasons behind your eNPS, you have to give a follow-up question or run a survey for your employees. This way, you can understand why your eNPS is higher or lower.

Work on Improving Employee Engagement

A low eNPS means a low employee engagement level. You should focus on improving your employee engagement level. For this, team up with your HR and managerial staff to retouch your employee engagement strategies.

Keep Tabs on Your Digital Reputation

You should go on employer review sites like Indeed, Glassdoor, or Careerbliss to know what your employees are talking about you. It is a great way to know why your ex-employees aren't working with you any longer.

Celebrate Your Employees

If your employees have gone above and beyond for your organization, they deserve a little appreciation from you. This way, you can show employees how much they contribute to making a difference as 44% of employees don't understand their impact on business goals (Cerdian).

Address Employee Feedback

Once you get an eNPS score, it is vital to work on the given feedback. If your employees don't find you making any efforts to improve eNPS, they won't zealously participate in the process. Plus, take equal time to analyze positive and negative feedback to understand what is right and wrong you are doing.

Talk to your Promoters

Apart from thanking promoters for their feedback, you should ask them why they like your organizations. They can also better tell what's missing in your organization since they care about your brand so much.

Why Conduct Engagement Surveys after eNPS

To complete the employee engagement process, you can't end with eNPS. We have already explained that eNPS is only a measurement metric. It can tell your employees' satisfaction level but can't show the reason behind it. Therefore, to complete the cycle, you have to use engagement surveys after eNPS.

Let's say your sales department has more detractors; you can send them a survey asking what they feel is missing. On the contrary, your marketing team has more promoters; ask them in surveys what they particularly liked about the company. Then, using both survey results, you can know areas where you need to work upon and areas on which you are already excelling.

The Relationship Between NPS and eNPS

The relationship between NPS and eNPS often confuses people, and some even consider both the terms the same due to the intention behind them. NPS focuses on using metrics frequently for quickly analyzing changes in customer preferences. On the same line, eNPS is a flexible and frequent system with a few questions to analyze employees’ behavior changes. Apart from this, there's nothing common between NPS and eNPS. NPS feedback is associated with customers. On the contrary, eNPS is related to employee satisfaction and work environment.

Additionally, NPS is a more popular and implemented method, while eNPS utilization is still low. Plus, NPS is a complete solution, and eNPS is a metric, which needs assistance from any other HR calculation to provide actionable results. Despite having basic similarities, both NPS and eNPS aren't the same!

Closing Remarks

And that's it! You have learned everything about eNPS that you ever required to improve your employee engagement. Overall, eNPS is a great way to build an army of loyal and satisfied employees who are ready to go the extra mile for your organization.

With an engagement survey, you can further empower your eNPS results and build a strong culture. We hope this blog has motivated you to improve your eNPS and focus more on your employee experience.

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