How to Measure Employee Satisfaction with eNPS

A couple big pieces of our mission at Wisetail are putting people first and embracing and driving change. Essential to that is making sure employees are happy with the state of their workplace. With the help of our friends at Officevibe, we have the tools to know exactly how our team really feels and receive advice and strategies to help improve overall employee satisfaction. The major, overarching metric we track is employee Net Promoter Score (eNPS). It allows us to measure our team’s satisfaction within the organization. The eNPS is based on the question:

A score is calculated by subtracting the percentage of detractors (people who respond 0-6) from the percentage of promoters (people who respond with a 9 or 10). Individuals that answer 7 or 8 or skip the question are considered passives or neutral. Since they’re neither for or against promoting the organization, they aren’t included.

Scores can vary anywhere from -100 (yikes) to +100 (nobody’s perfect). Anything above a score between 40-50 is not easily achieved, and you should give yourself a pat on the back.

If you’re able to score anywhere from 10-30, this is the sweet spot and you should be proud of the healthy workplace you’ve cultivated. Anything between -10 and +20 is considered a normal score. Anything below -10, maybe start worrying.

Although it’s easy to fixate on the score, we try to pay more attention to the written feedback that’s provided—particularly comments concerning what can be improved. That’s how we ended up revamping our feedback process and developing a Guide to One-on-Ones.

A few months in to 2018, our team’s eNPS score took a dip. We looked closer at our 10 Key Metrics Of Employee Engagement: Relationship with Manager, Ambassadorship, Feedback, Happiness, Satisfaction, Personal Growth, Recognition, Relationship with Peers, Wellness, and Alignment. Out of the 10 metrics, Feedback (specifically quality and consistency) was the lowest. To understand why we are lacking in a specific area and improve our overall eNPS score, we have found it helpful to follow up with five simple steps:

Follow Up Survey

After having the opportunity to respond to the initial survey question, follow up with a more detailed survey – what they like, don’t like, aspects they would like to see improved or different altogether. The more feedback collected, the easier it to make relevant improvements.

Tap Into The Promoters

Here we find out what is actually working for people and capitalize on it. You don’t have to reinvent the wheel – learn more about their process and build upon it.

Get The Details From Detractors

The Detractors are the ones you want the most feedback from so that A) They don’t become a contributor to turnover and B) You can fix problems before new employees inherit them. It’s also reassuring to the Detractors to know you are addressing the issue they have been struggling with.

Follow Up With Promoters

Don’t forget the promoters! Assuming that they’re happy just because they gave positive feedback initially, doesn’t mean you shouldn’t follow up. There is a lot to learn from the Promoters. For example, asking them what is currently working for them, what they can’t live without, and encouraging them to be critical can help align your efforts, identify gaps and unearth untapped opportunities.

Communicate Change

Lastly, as easy as it may sound, keeping everyone in the loop and working toward the same goes is critical. Communicate with as many people as possible throughout the above steps before implementing a change. If employees are involved in the decision-making process, they will feel more responsible and connected to the end goal – leading to higher engagement.

Throughout the process, we saw the need to streamline our feedback process. As a result, we created and introduced the Guide to One-on-Ones to serve as a template for both employees and managers across our organization. Within the guide, we identified the importance of things like cadence, expectations, setting, intentions and following up.

With a little extra intention, these conversations became great opportunities to discuss longer-term vision, such as career development and job satisfaction. All very important things to consider when trying to maintain or boost your eNPS score.

So what about the numbers? Three months after putting our Guide to One-on-Ones into place, we revisited our Engagement Report. The Feedback metric itself increased from 8.5 to 9.5 which helped boost the overall eNPS score from 42 to 47. Beyond the numbers, we had direct written feedback from Promoters and Detractors alike that was both meaningful and frequent.

While we use Officevibe as our feedback tool, there are several other methods for collecting feedback. If budget is a concern the best way to get started is to open the lines of communication within the company. Our Guide to One-on-Ones is an excellent way to start collecting feedback that you can take action on. While it might not provide the hard numbers that Officevibe does, it’s still a great way  to get started.

There are lots of other tools as well that you can use. You could even do something as simple as a Google Form that employees can fill out anonymously. We have provided some example questions to help you get started:

Q: What’s the key to fostering honest and transparent communications amongst peers?

Employee Feedback:

Trust and encouraging everyone to provide feedback, whether good or bad, even when they aren’t asked to do so (ex: one-on-ones).

Q: How does the feedback you receive help you grow?

Employee Feedback:

I believe our team has a culture of providing honest and timely feedback. Meaning, the feedback can be constructive in times of need to help an individual grow and it’s always given in the moment or shortly thereafter.