Table of contents
  1. Why Is eNPS Useful?
  2. Use an eNPS Score With Caution
  3. eNPS Questions
  4. How To Calculate Your eNPS 
  5. Conclusion

An employee Net Promoter Score (eNPS) measures employee satisfaction and loyalty. An eNPS allows you to track employee engagement and address any underlying issues that may contribute to employees deciding to leave your organization. 

Developed by Bain & Company, Satmetrix, and Fred Reichheld in the 1990s, the eNPS is an extension of the Net Promoter Score system. While an eNPS measures employee satisfaction, an NPS measures customer satisfaction.

Measuring your eNPS is a good starting point for understanding employee satisfaction levels. However, you should use an eNPS with other key employee engagement metrics rather than as a standalone measurement. 

Why Is eNPS Useful?

An eNPS is a useful metric for your organization:

  • It helps you identify and address any underlying issues causing employee dissatisfaction. Increasing employee satisfaction positively impacts a range of key business outcomes. For example, there is a direct correlation between employee satisfaction and productivity, profit, employee retention, customer satisfaction, and employee safety. 
  • It is useful for increasing engagement. Satisfaction is a step towards employee engagement—a dissatisfied employee is unlikely to be engaged. Measuring your organization’s eNPS can improve employee engagement by giving you a better understanding of employee satisfaction and showing you value your employees’ opinions. 
  • It also indicates customer loyalty. Its creators designed the eNPS based on the NPS—a metric of customer satisfaction and loyalty—after identifying the close links between the two. For example, according to the service-profit chain, satisfied, loyal, and productive employees create external service value for customers. External service value leads to customer satisfaction and, in turn, loyalty. 
  • It is quick and easy to use. Rather than overwhelming employees with lengthy satisfaction surveys, an eNPS survey asks your employees one or two simple questions. Thi s ease of use increases your employee response rate.

Use an eNPS Score With Caution

While an eNPS is a straightforward metric to gauge employee satisfaction, it only provides one insight into a complex issue.

To fully understand your employees’ experience, you should use an eNPS alongside other key indicators such as your employee satisfaction index, turnover and absenteeism rates, and internal promotion rate. 

eNPS Questions

An eNPS survey always asks employees one specific question:

On a scale of 1 to 10, how likely are you to recommend the organization as a place to work to your family and friends?

An employee’s response to this question puts them in one of three categories:

  1. Promotor (9-10 on the scale). Promotors are highly satisfied and likely to recommend your organization as a place to work. A response of 9-10 typically indicates high levels of engagement and motivation. 
  2. Passive (7-8 on the scale). Passives take a neutral position towards your organization. They are moderately satisfied but not highly engaged. While they won’t recommend the organization, they also won’t say anything negative about it.  Importantly, passives may be open to offers from other employers. 
  3. Detractor (1-6 on the scale). Detractors are dissatisfied and unlikely to recommend the organization as a place to work. Detractors have high levels of disengagement and are at risk of leaving your organization. 

You can follow up this first question with a second open-ended question, such as:

  • Why did you choose this rating?
  • On a scale of 1 to 10, how likely are you to recommend the organization’s products or services to your friends and family?
  • What can we do better as an organization?
  • Please state your level of agreement with the statement, “My job inspires me.”

This further question offer insights into why your employees feel the way they do. This information is crucial to developing strategies to convert your passives and detractors to promoters while maintaining promoters’ satisfaction and commitment. 

For example, asking your promoters’ reasoning for their score allows you to identify what features make employees likely to recommend your organization. At the same time, understanding detractors’ negative feelings towards the organization helps identify ongoing issues. 

While passives aren’t taken into account when calculating your eNPS, it’s essential to take note of their responses to this second question. Doing so can help you understand how to motivate your passives and convert them into promoters. 

For example, if several passive employees attribute their response to being prevented from applying for internal promotions because they feel inexperienced or underqualified, you might consider increasing your training and development opportunities. 

Employee responses to an eNPS survey are typically anonymous to encourage open and honest feedback. 

How To Calculate Your eNPS 

eNPS = Number of promoters – number of of detractors / total number of respondents x 100

For example, if your organization surveys 256 employees, collecting responses from 120 promoters, 67 passives, and 69 detractors:

eNPS = (120 – 69) / 256 x 100 = 19.9

In theory, your organization’s eNPS can range from +100 (all promoters) to -100 (all detractors), although the likelihood of achieving either of these outer limits is low. 

The normal range for an eNPS is typically between -10 to +20. 

An eNPS score lower than -10 indicates there are critical problems with employee satisfaction within your organization that you need to address immediately. An eNPS score above +40 indicates excellent levels of employee satisfaction. 

Conclusion

Your organization’s eNPS indicates how satisfied your employees are, as well as how loyal they are to your organization. It collects employees’ responses to a single question—on a scale of 1 to 10, how likely are you to recommend the organization as a place to work to your family and friends?—and identifies employees as promoters, passives, or detractors. 

When used along with other employee metrics, an eNPS can give you key insights into your employees’ experience. It helps you to identify what is—and isn’t—working for your employees’ satisfaction, loyalty, and engagement.