What Is Employee NPS and How To Use It to Your Advantage

Gone are the days where employees stayed with one company for life. 

Nowadays, with an abundance of attractive employment options, people jump around a lot more. In turn, employers have to work harder than ever to engage and retain their employees. 

If you have great employees that you want to hold on to, you have to keep on top of satisfaction. This is not just important for retention, it also correlates closely to organizational success.

It goes without saying, then, that you need to be listening to your employees when they give you their thoughts. By acting on this feedback, you are more likely to keep them satisfied, reduce turnover and improve your profits.  

Employee NPS is a simple but effective metric that helps you track your employees’ satisfaction over time, allowing you to spot any trends or problem areas. 

Let’s get into exactly what eNPS is, how you can measure it, and how you can get the most out of your data. 

1. What is Employee NPS (eNPS)?
2. How to Measure eNPS
3. The Benefits of eNPS
4. Increase Employee Engagement With NPS
5. The Wrap Up

What Is Employee NPS (eNPS)?

The Employee Net Promoter Score (eNPS) is a survey metric that shows you how satisfied your employees are at work. 

It is measured via a simple survey that includes a closed-ended question. This question is along the lines of:  

“How likely would you be to recommend this company as a place to work to a friend or acquaintance.”

Employees then answer on a scale of 0-10, 0 being not likely and 10 being extremely likely. Your eNPS is then calculated based on these responses, (more on that later). 

By tracking NPS you can better put in place measures to increase employee satisfaction. This correlates closely to your employees retention, so eNPS can be a good predictor of whether your employees will stay or go. 

The eNPS is a special type of Net Promoter Score (NPS), a metric created by Bain & Co. employees in the 90s to measure customer loyalty. 

eNPS vs NPS 

Both the eNPS and NPS use a similar survey question to garner results. The differentiating factor between them is target audience. 

In contrast to NPS, eNPS must be distributed anonymously so that employees feel comfortable answering honestly. If your employees do not feel their anonymity is being protected, you may receive misleading feedback. 

eNPS scores are often lower than regular NPS scores. This is because employees tend to be much harsher with their employer than they would with a company they are doing business with. 

However, it’s worth noting that the NPS and eNPS results are often closely linked. Engaged employees tend to work more effectively on their tasks and work hard to meet customers' needs. This in turn can lead to more satisfied customers who are more likely to give the company a higher score. In this way the two metrics complement each other well. 

How to Measure eNPS

Once your employees have answered the NPS survey we mentioned above and chosen a number from 0-10, they are sorted into one of the following categories:   

• 0-6 Detractors: These are actively dissatisfied employees and represent your highest turnover risk. They are likely to talk badly about you to their friends and acquaintances. 
• 7-8 Passives: This group of employees are neither satisfied nor dissatisfied. They may not say negative things about the company to friends and acquaintances, but they’re not likely to recommend the company either. 
• 8-10 Promoters: are your most satisfied employees and will say positive things about your company and recommend it as a place to work. 

Having sorted your responses accordingly, to calculate your eNPS score, you simply subtract your percentage of detractors from the percentage of promoters as shown here: 

For example, if you received 110 responses to your survey with 60 promoters, 40 passives, and 10 detractors, your score would be 46. Here’s the calculation: 

55 - 9 = 46 (your eNPS score)

You’ll notice that passives make up 36% (40) of the responses, yet aren't included in the equation. This doesn’t mean you can ignore them. Passives can be converted to either promoters or detractors depending on how a company responds to their feedback. So it’s important to dig carefully into any feedback they give you. 

This eNPS question should be followed up with an open-ended question so your employees can share their thoughts. We’ll go through that in depth later on. 

What Are the Benefits of eNPS?

There are pros when it comes to using eNPS. Let’s take a look at how these can work in your favor.  

1. Helps To Improve Retention and Business Performance 

The eNPS lets you drill down into particular areas of your business and correct any pain points in your employee experience that could be impacting engagement. Why does this matter to your bottom line? 

Well, according to Gallup research, highly engaged business units realize a 41% reduction in absenteeism and a 17% increase in productivity. The same research shows they are also more likely to have lower turnover. 

And, as we’ve seen, there is a correlation between the performance of a company and the engagement of its people. In fact, studies have even shown that employee NPS and customer advocacy scores are directly linked. 

This shows us that now only is it important to track employee engagement for retention, it’s good for business as well. 

2. Easy To Implement and Complete

eNPS is both straightforward and cost-effective to implement and distribute to your workforce. It’s familiar too, most people have completed a satisfaction survey at one point in time and so they know what to do. It doesn’t require much effort on behalf of the employee to complete, so you’re likely to get more responses. 

3. Can Be Tracked Over Time

Whether you’re sending your eNPS survey out annually, biannually or quarterly, you can compare the data from previous surveys. This allows you to see if your employee satisfaction is improving, and if the measures you have put in place to counteract any issues are proving effective. Your previous scores provide a good benchmark to figure out whether your score is good or not.  

A Side Note on eNPS’s Limitations 

The downside to eNPS is that it measures satisfaction rather than engagement. While linked, the two are not the same. A satisfied employee can be disengaged. Satisfied employees feel content at work while engaged employees feel happy at work and committed to the company.

Another aspect of eNPS that can garner criticism is exactly what makes it great: its simplicity. One question alone doesn’t give sufficient insights into the employee's experience. 

Both of these limitations can be overcome. Using the eNPS survey in conjunction with other surveys like an Employee Satisfaction Survey can help. An even simpler, yet highly effective, solution is to, as in NPS, add an  open-ended question or a comments box following your eNPS question. We’ll go further into that now.

How To Increase Employee Engagement With eNPS

eNPS is a powerful tool that can help you address any engagement issues before they lead to high turnover, so it’s important to know what constitutes a good score.

What is considered good will vary from industry to industry. But, on average, a good eNPS score is considered to be around 10-30, with anything over 50 considered excellent. 

However, the best way to judge your score, and your progress, is to compare it with your scores from your previous eNPS surveys. This will help you see if the corrective measures you put in place are working.  

Now you have an idea of what you’re aiming for, let’s go through how you can improve your score. 

1. Collect Qualitative Feedback 

To really understand the reason behind your eNPS score, it’s essential to follow your closed-ended question with an open-ended question.

This question is usually along the lines of "Please give us the reason why you gave us this score". Here, your employees can elaborate on why they gave the score they did.

Without this extra question their score lacks context and your results will lack actionable insights. You may also get back responses to your open-ended questions that surprise you and mean you have to alter your employee experience in unexpected ways. This is not possible if you do not  give your employees the space to explain their score.  

2. Analyze Your Data Effectively 

Manually analyzing a large amount of qualitative data however is a laborious task. It’s slow, inefficient and leaves you vulnerable to human error and subjectivity. AI tools like MonkeyLearn on the other hand are efficient, accurate and can help you save both time and money.  

Our no-code automated survey analysis tools use the power of AI to organize your data and give you actionable insights. Text analysis tools extract and classify data from your survey results, automatically and around the clock. Then with the MonkeyLearn Studio dashboard, you can sum up all of your results in an easy-to-view way. 

3. Take Action 

Once you have your insights, it is crucial that you use them in a constructive way. Your employees will tell you important things via the survey. Plus, Studies have shown that employees who feel their voice is heard are 4.6 times more likely to feel empowered to perform their best work. In order for them to do their best, you need to listen and take action. 

4. Transparency and Communication 

Letting your employees know what your company’s eNPS score is and what you are doing to fix any issues found can be beneficial. This helps bridge the gap between what employees want from you and what you are actually giving them. When you commit to improving your employees' workplace, it builds both confidence and optimism and can inspire people to stick around.

The Wrap Up

eNPS is a useful metric and can be an accurate predictor of whether your employees will stay or go. Knowing this can help you improve engagement, retain employees and, ultimately, increase your profits. 

However, in order to get the full picture of your employees' engagement levels, you need to be gathering accurate qualitative insights from your responses. 

Analyzing said data is just as important a process as gathering it. MonkeyLearn’s array of AI and machine learning tools can help you organize and process your data in an easy way. 

Schedule your free demo today to see how you can unlock actionable insights from your eNPS.