eNPS and how it works

Employee Net Promotor Score in Qualee

Vipula avatar
Written by Vipula
Updated over a week ago

Qualee allows you to view scores in average mode and in eNPS mode. This article will discuss the eNPS score, which refers to the engagement score in eNPS mode.

To learn about the difference between average and eNPS mode, see Comparing the average score mode to NPS score mode.To learn more about how scores are calculated, see How scores are calculated.

This article will cover:

  • Background

  • How it works

  • How the eNPS score is calculated

  • Recommended use for the eNPS score

Background

The Net Promoter Score has become the global standard of customer loyalty through its ability to predict real-world behaviours. Similarly, employee Net Promoter Score (eNPS) is rapidly becoming the most widely-adopted measure of employee engagement in organisations around the world.

The broad use of NPS can make the introduction of the platform to all levels of management easier. It should be noted – and potentially communicating to your team when implementing Qualee – that eNPS may return significantly lower scores than customer NPS. The reason for this is that people tend to hold their place of work to a higher standard than the services they purchase.

The question used causes people to consider many factors that influence engagement (satisfaction with the organisation’s culture, work environment, career prospects, brand) and apply them to a very simple decision making process.

How it works

Qualee uses a sophisticated weighted algorithm across all 46 engagement questions.

Employees answer all questions on a 0 to 10 scale. NPS uses three distinct categories in its calculation. We have defined the behaviours associated with these categories from an engagement perspective below:

Grouping

Behaviour

Detractors (0-6)

These employees have strong reservations about their role in the organisation. This resulting disengagement significantly reduces performance, negatively impacts the morale of others, and projects an unattractive image of the company to the public. There are generally clear, common problems, causing disengagement in teams. A manager's Qualee priorities will identify and promote action towards addressing these concerns.

Passives (7-8)

These employees are not actively disengaged, however are remain reserved from applying their full-selves in the workplace. Reviewing the engagement feedback of passives helps to reveal concerns and demonstrates why even though 7s and 8s are positive scores in the Average mode, improvements can be made. Whilst passive employees are typically not lower than average performers, they may be "cruising along". Prolonged neglect of the underlying issues can lead to passives becoming detractors, as they become further distanced from the organisation.

Promoters (9-10)

Promoters are highly engaged with their role and the organisation. They approach their work with positive energy, enthusiasm, and conviction. They are self-initiators in going beyond expectations and seek to continuously improve how things get done. Internal ambassadors for the business's goals, they boost morale of those around them, whilst also spreading a positive tone to external stakeholders. Global research indicates promoters are seven times more likely to stay with their organisation over the next three months than detractors.

How the eNPS score is calculated

The eNPS is calculated by subtracting the percentage of detractors from the percentage of promoters. Therefore, scores can range from -100 to +100.

% of promoters - % of detractors = eNPS score

The percentage of promoters, passives and detractors is rounded up to one decimal place. For example, if the percentage of promoters was 73.298542% it would be displayed on the dashboard as 73.3% promoters. Original percentages are used for the calculations within Qualee in order to maximise precision throughout the various reports.

The numbers of passives count towards the total number of respondents, therefore can shift the overall net score towards 0 by diluting the proportion of promoters and detractors.

Calculating an eNPS score across multiple engagement questions

This section outlines how Qualee calculates the eNPS score across the total engagement questionnaire set.

  1. The system identifies the latest score per employee, per engagement question

  2. Each employee's engagement scores are tallied with all other employees' responses to that question.

  3. Each employee's single engagement score is converted to the eNPS scale (scores of: 0-6 are detractors, 7-8 are passives, and 9-10 are promoters).

  4. The number of promoters, passives and detractors is converted into an overall eNPS score using the standard methodology.

  5. All the questions are weighted within their driver and each driver score is calculated.

  6. Finally all driver scores are aggregated and the total eNPS is displayed in the Engagement Dashboard.

Recommended use for the eNPS score

Honesty is the best policy to employ when looking to increase engagement using eNPS. It is important not to pull apart the metric (e.g. “how can I turn passives into promoters?"), or suggesting to employees “if you’re happy, you should score us a 9 or 10”.

The strength of eNPS is its strong prediction of behaviours (e.g. performance and retention). Being “happy” or giving a “good” score is a falsification of eNPS. “Good” in engagement terms, is not good enough. Falsely improving the score will not deliver the real-world benefits associated with it, and will therefore invalidate the usefulness of the data.

We recommend focusing your improvements on the priorities that Qualee identifies for each segment and manager, and addressing them in a way to benefit everyone in a team. The ability to create Initiatives in Qualee greatly improves the transparency of leadership actions with employees and helps build trust. Tracking the resulting movements in eNPS will quickly demonstrate the effectiveness of these initiatives.

Another attribute of eNPS is that it fluctuates more broadly than averages scores, enabling managers to take an iterative, test and learn, approach.


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