The Employee Net Promoter Score (eNPS) has become an important metric for one simple reason: it is more difficult than ever for companies to attract and retain talent. eNPS is a metric used to measure and track employee loyalty and is therefore of great importance to the success of organisations.

In this article, we’ll tell you everything you need to know about the eNPS. We’ll take a look at how to define the eNPS question and how to calculate your score. Plus, we’ll share some of the most effective ways you can use your eNPS so you can start improving the employee experience at your company.



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What is the eNPS?

eNPS is an employee experience metric that allows you to measure how loyal and engaged your employees are. It’s based on the Net Promoter Score (NPS), which is one of the most popular metrics used to measure customer loyalty.

What is the eNPS question?

Just like the NPS, the core of the eNPS comes down to one simple question:

On a scale of 1-10, how likely are you to recommend our company to friends and family?

Your respondents (employees) are then sorted into three categories, depending on the score they give:

  • 9-10: These employees are your Promoters
  • 7-8: These employees are your Passives
  • 0-6: These employees are your Detractors

Promoters are the employees who are most loyal to you as an employer. They are likely to be highly engaged at work and satisfied in their role. This is great for them as individuals and can lead to higher profitability for your business. They are likely to promote the business through positive word of mouth.

Detractors are your unhappy employees. Unlike your promoters, they are more likely to be unsatisfied with you or their role. They will not positively promote the business, and may be at risk of spreading negative word of mouth.

Passives are your neutral employees. They may generally be happy enough with their role and you as an employer, but they’re more likely to be receptive to offers from other companies.


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What are the key benefits of using the eNPS?

It’s easy to use: The eNPS question is easy to distribute, answer, and report on. You’re able to get an overview of employee loyalty and engagement at your company quickly.

You can monitor how your employees feel over time: Because of its simplicity, the eNPS is the perfect metric to measure and compare the employee experience and mood over varying periods of time.

It’s good for benchmarking: The quantitative nature of the eNPS lends itself well to being a benchmark for you to measure your own performance against.

It can help reduce employee turnover: To begin improving the employee experience, you need to understand how they feel about it. The eNPS is the first step towards getting the insights you need to make sure staff are happy and engaged.

How to calculate your eNPS

Your eNPS score is very easy to calculate. You simply minus the percentage of Promoters from Detractors. Passive employees (who scored 7 or 8) are not counted in the calculation (but they definitely count. More on this later).

Example:

Company A receives all of the eNPS surveys back from their employees. Of 100 employees:

55 (55%) score between 9 and 10. They are promoters.
27 (27%) score between 7 and 8. They are passives.
18 (18%) score between 0-6. They are detractors.

eNPS = 55% – 18% = 37

Company A has an eNPS score of 37.


Reading recommendation: Measuring employee engagement efficiently and continuously.


What is a good eNPS score?

eNPS scores can range from -100 through to 100. Technically, anything above 0 is considered an acceptable score. This would mean a completely even split of Promoters and Detractors at your company. It makes sense, therefore, that you should start feeling slightly uncomfortable when the balance at your business starts to tip in favour of Detractors.

Unlike the customer equivalent—the NPS—industry doesn’t seem to be as big of a deciding factor on what scores to expect or aim for. Country and culture might, however, with European companies reporting more neutral eNPS figures as a result of people being generally more reserved in their scoring.

So what eNPS score should you be aiming for? When it comes to the eNPS, the best benchmark is your own company. As we’ve said, you should be using your employee Net Promoter Score to measure and improve your own progress over time. You certainly don’t want to fall into the negative numbers, and the sky (or a score of 100) is the limit!

How to improve your eNPS

Use the metric as part of a more comprehensive employee feedback program

eNPS should be used as a springboard for further investigation and discussion. You can include the question as part of a larger employee engagement or satisfaction survey, for example. This gives you the opportunity to include additional questions and open-text response areas. This extra detail and feedback will help you to consider your eNPS in a wider context, and understand where improvements can be made.

When using the eNPS method you should keep in mind that the values on how likely the employees are to recommend the company do not give you insight into other variables that make employees thrive. Relying solely on the eNPS without asking follow-up questions makes it difficult to find out why some want to recommend their workplace and others don’t.

Find out what makes your Promoters, Detractors and Passives tick

Whatever you do, don’t become complacent. This applies to all three categories. With Detractors, you need to find out what is making them unhappy and fix it. In terms of Promoters, your job is to find out why they’re so satisfied and keep it that way. And don’t forget about your Passive voters, who are always one eNPS survey away from become Detractors if you don’t work to understand them.


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Track your score and analyse it in the context of your business

The eNPS is the perfect metric for setting benchmarks, targets, and tracking your performance over time. Posing the question regularly helps you to keep up with how your employees are feeling. You will also be able to get a sense of how various factors are impacting your score throughout the year. For example, you may notice peaks or dips in your score that coincide with various business initiatives and events. This kind of contextual analysis will give you a better idea of what is impacting your score and where you need to focus your improvement efforts.

Be transparent and follow up

As with any kind of employee feedback, it’s essential to let your staff know that you’re actively listening to them. This will involve openly discussing your eNPS—no matter what number it is—and your plans for working with it. Providing you also have other qualitative feedback alongside your score, let your employees know the actions you plan to take and then check in again once you’ve followed through. People value transparency, and if your staff see that you’re actively invested in understanding and bettering their experience, this in itself can lead to an improved score.

Focus on improving employee engagement across your organisation

Employee engagement is a significant deciding factor in employees becoming promoters. The link is obvious: if your staff are having positive experiences at work they’re much more likely to be advocates of the company. Improving engagement involves many different aspects of the employee experience, from development opportunities to positive reinforcement and shared values. But don’t just guess which of these aspects are more important to your employees — ask them.

eNPS limitations and how to overcome them

The simplicity of the eNPS can sometimes be seen as a limitation. Although the metric is good for getting an overview and following your progress, it does not give you a deeper insight into the result. This means that you get an overview of how the employees feel, but not why they feel the way they do.

For this reason, just as we explained earlier, it is important to integrate your eNPS software into a more comprehensive feedback strategy. This way, you get an overview, but you can also ask additional questions to understand the results in context so you receive feedback you can act on.

Quick Analysis, one of Netigate’s functions, maps, among other things, the questions that received the highest value and those that received the lowest value. This gives you additional context to understand respondent feedback and gives you actionable insights in no time.

Quick Analysis helps you with:

  • Identifying the highest and lowest value questions
  • Improving your visualisation of eNPS and benchmarks
  • Segment analysis
  • Analysis over time
  • Instant series rankings and comparisons
  • Action plans and segments for follow-up

Feedback from Educations Media Group

Among other things, Educations Media Group has used Netigate to send out surveys to customers, suppliers and employees, which provided them with important insights when it comes to product development, customer satisfaction, and employee engagement.

The surveys have boosted the managers’ engagement. We talk a lot about motivation, eNPS, and the importance that every middle manager and manager actually has when it comes to representing the company and increasing the motivation and engagement of their team.

Liza Andersin, HR manager.

Ready to get started with eNPS?

Netigate’s eNPS software lets you measure your staff’s engagement quickly and easily. Similarly, our NPS software will help you measure your customers’ loyalty. We offer a 30-day free trial, so you can get started right away or book a demo here!