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Employee net promoter score (eNPS) measures how likely your workers are to recommend your company to others as a place to work. It can serve as a quick snapshot of overall employee sentiment.
ENPS is the internal version of the original, go-to metric for measuring customer experience — net promoter score. The Bain & Company consultant who introduced NPS to the business world in 2003 called it “the one number you need to grow” since the score reflects whether customers would recommend your brand to others — and thereby broaden your customer base.
ENPS follows the same premise: happy employees are more engaged and more likely to stay long-term and recommend your workplace to others. A high eNPS may indicate that your workers generally feel supported, are satisfied with compensation and benefits, comfortable with or inspired by the company culture, and have confidence in management. A low score may indicate staff discontent with some or all of these elements.
But getting the most out of the eNPS isn’t as straightforward as it seems. Here are some best practices to consider.
How eNPS Works
In the case of both NPS and eNPS, respondents rank a company between 0 and 10, with 0 meaning they are very unlikely to recommend the company, and 10 meaning they’d be extremely likely to do so. The number they provide puts them into one of three categories: promoters (rating of 9-10), passives (7-8) and detractors (0-6).
The NPS or eNPS is a number between -100 and 100 that is calculated by subtracting the percentage of detractors in your sample from the percentage of promoters. For example, if 60% of the sample are promoters and 15% detractors, the NPS score is 45.
The calculation ignores the passives — those who give a rating of 7 or 8 — so you could score a 0 not only if half your workers are promoters and half detractors but also if all of them are passive.
Related Article: Measuring the Employee Experience: A Three-Tiered Model
4 eNPS Best Practices
There are a number of factors to consider when interpreting and drawing upon the eNPS. Here are four best practices for using this simple, but powerful metric.
1. Focus on change over time
ENPS is such a brief assessment — one question — that it can be revisited frequently and thus provide a useful understanding of how employee sentiment is changing over time. Using it in this longitudinal manner is helpful because of how rapidly or suddenly employee feelings can shift.
“It is a particular moment in time,” said Gianna Driver, chief human resources officer at cybersecurity company Exabeam. “As soon as the survey is completed, it starts to become outdated.”
Colby Nesbitt, head of people analytics at Lattice, a maker of people management software, said the trend is more important than the value itself because changes in the score can help you identify problems quickly.
“The best use for eNPS is going to be as an internal benchmark of the company’s own trend over time,” she said. “If you’re seeing a precipitous drop, that may be more concerning than having a stable but slightly lower score.”
2. Dig deeper for a better understanding
Nesbitt emphasized that eNPS is a good tool for getting a cursory view of your employees’ satisfaction, but that’s all. For a more nuanced view, she recommended organizations find other ways to assess the details of workers’ feelings.
“It’s best at conveying the temperature in the room,” she said. “It’s the thermometer. But it’s not the thermostat that tells you what to do about it. That’s why it’s important to ask other questions about their experiences to get a deeper understanding of what’s going on.”
Related Article: Employee Experience Surveys: Dos and Don’ts
3. Boost participation
Your company’s eNPS is only helpful if it incorporates the attitudes of most of your workers. Nesbitt called 70% “a critical mass,” saying that interpretations based on lower participation are “dubious,” and that 50% or less participation is not worth interpreting at all.
“Getting that participation rate up is the first step to getting your scores up,” she said, noting that more-engaged employees tend to be the ones who respond to surveys.
The open communication needed to boost participation — in this case, “sharing the ‘why’ behind the engagement survey,” said Nesbitt — is the same type of management approach that is likely to improve your scores over time.
4. Assess frequently
To see trends in your employee satisfaction, administer the eNPS often — but not too often.
“Once a year is not enough,” said Nesbitt.
On the other hand, “surveying people monthly could result in survey fatigue, which is not something you want,” said Driver.
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Quarterly engagement surveys can be a good middle ground. You can embed the question in other short surveys of five to seven questions that you administer regularly, as well as in the onboarding and exit processes.
Related Article: Why Voice of the Employee Needs a Little More Trust
Context Is Everything
While the question from which you derive the eNPS score couldn’t be simpler, the way to interpret the result is far from it. That’s because the score is designed to raise more questions than it answers, begging an inquiry into which elements of employees’ experience in particular are pushing the score in a given direction.
“eNPS is useful information, and I encourage leaders of organizations to look at it in the context of other pieces of information,” said Driver. “[But] eNPS is not the be-all-end-all. It tends to be myopic. So, context is everything.”
