What Is Employee Net Promoter Score: Pros, Insider Tips & How to Measure

A reliable and dedicated workforce is critical to sustaining a business and promoting growth. And it all starts with a positive and growth-driven work environment. Otherwise, you’re basically pushing your people toward the next best opportunity.

But here’s a minor hiccup: How can you measure employee satisfaction and loyalty to create such a workforce?

Enters Employee Net Promoter Score (eNPS).

eNPS is a powerful metric that enables you to zoom in on employee experience and identify gaps and areas for improvement.

So, let’s cover everything about this helpful metric end-to-end—from benefits to best practices and how to get the most out of eNPS in your business. Here’s a quick tutorial to get you started.

Watch: What Is Net Promoter Score (NPS) and Why Businesses Use It?

What Is Employee Net Promoter Score (eNPS)?

The Employee Net Promoter Score (eNPS) is a satisfaction metric businesses use to monitor employee satisfaction and loyalty towards a company and its work environment.

The respondents are asked to rate their likelihood of recommending the company to others on a scale of 0 (not likely) to 10 (highly likely).

This question is generally followed by an open-ended question that explores the reasons behind the respondent’s rating, such as: ‘What is the reason for your answer?’

You can also add more questions to gather in-depth insights about employee experience.

The feedback can help businesses understand the quality of their work culture, office environment, and employees’ work conditions. This way, they can find room for improvement to boost workforce satisfaction, leading to high employee retention.

You can also use eNPS surveys at different stages to track the employee journey, such as during employee onboarding, training, and performance appraisals.

What Are the Benefits of eNPS?

Implementing an Employee Net Promoter Score (eNPS) survey can significantly impact how organizations approach employee engagement and retention. The benefits go beyond generic terms like “improved morale” or “higher satisfaction.” Here’s what makes eNPS surveys invaluable and why they matter to you:

1. Simple and Scalable Feedback
   eNPS surveys are incredibly straightforward, typically asking just one or two key questions. This simplicity makes them less time-consuming for employees to complete and ensures high participation rates. Whether you’re managing a team of 50 or 5,000, the process is easy to scale, giving you consistent insights across the board.
2. Spotlight on Employee Loyalty
   While many surveys measure satisfaction, eNPS focuses on loyalty—specifically, whether employees would recommend your organization as a great place to work. This unique angle helps uncover underlying issues that may not surface through traditional engagement surveys.
3. Real-Time Insights for Actionable Change
   Unlike traditional annual engagement surveys, eNPS can be conducted frequently to capture real-time employee sentiment. This enables organizations to act swiftly on concerns before they escalate, making it an agile tool for improving workplace culture.
4. Benchmarking Across Teams or Industries
   eNPS provides a quantifiable score that can be benchmarked over time or against industry standards. This allows HR leaders to identify which teams or departments are thriving and which may need targeted interventions, enabling data-driven decision-making.
5. Focus on Psychological Safety
   The simplicity and anonymity of eNPS encourage employees to share their true feelings without fear of repercussions. This can reveal insights about the psychological safety of your workplace, which is critical for fostering innovation and collaboration.
6. Early Warning System for Attrition
   A low eNPS score often indicates dissatisfaction or disengagement, which are precursors to employee turnover. By identifying these signals early, HR can implement strategies to address concerns, reducing attrition costs and retaining top talent.
7. Employee Ownership of Engagement
   eNPS isn’t just about numbers; it creates a dialogue. Sharing results and discussing improvement plans with employees shows that their opinions matter, fostering a sense of ownership in creating a positive workplace.

If you’re an HR professional or organizational leader, eNPS offers a low-effort yet high-impact way to assess and improve your workplace culture. It’s a tool that doesn’t just measure loyalty but also strengthens it. By implementing eNPS, you’re not just collecting data—you’re building a stronger, more engaged, and more loyal workforce.

How and When to Measure eNPS?

Watch: How to Calculate Net Promoter Score: 3 Easy Steps

How to Measure eNPS

1. Ask the Core Question

The Employee Net Promoter Score (eNPS) revolves around a central question: “How likely are you to recommend this company as a place to work?” Employees respond on a scale of 0-10, allowing you to gauge their sentiment. To dive deeper, you can include a follow-up question like, “What influenced your score?” This combination offers both quantitative and contextual feedback.

2. Categorize Respondents

Based on their ratings, employees fall into three categories:

• • Promoters (9-10): Highly engaged and satisfied employees who are enthusiastic advocates.
  • Passives (7-8): Neutral employees who may lack strong loyalty.
  • Detractors (0-6): Disengaged employees who are dissatisfied and may share negative feedback.

3. Calculate Your eNPS

Use this straightforward formula:
eNPS = % of Promoters – % of Detractors
For example, if 70% of employees rate your organization as promoters, 20% as detractors, and 10% as passives:

• • % Promoters = (70/100) × 100 = 70%
  • % Detractors = (20/100) × 100 = 20%
  • eNPS = 70% – 20% = 50

Let’s explain it with a real-life example:

Say you’ve sent out your net promoter survey using our tool to 500 users and have received 250 responses in return.

• 60 respondents shared a detractor score (0 – 6)
• 90 respondents gave a passive score (7 – 8)
• 100 respondents gave a promoter score (9 – 10)

After you have tallied up the number of scores for every range, it’s time to find out the overall percentage of both promoters and detractors.

For the promoters, you’ll want to divide promoters by the total number of responses received (i.e., 250) and multiply by 100.

You’ll arrive at 0.4 or 40% when converted into a percentage. Similarly, for your detractors, you’ll arrive at 24%.

Next, you will subtract your percentage of detractors (24%) from your percentage of promoters (40%) to get your total Net Promoter Score of 16.

When to Measure eNPS: 

1. Quarterly for Real-Time Insights

Measuring eNPS quarterly ensures you’re capturing timely feedback without overwhelming employees. It also helps you respond to changes in sentiment before they become bigger issues.

2. After Key Organizational Changes

Major events like mergers, leadership changes, or restructuring can significantly impact employee sentiment. Conducting an eNPS survey during or shortly after these changes helps gauge the workforce’s reaction and identify areas needing attention.

3. As a Part of the Onboarding and Exit Processes

Incorporating eNPS into onboarding surveys allows you to understand how new hires perceive your organization early on. Similarly, including it in exit surveys can uncover trends driving turnover and provide valuable feedback for retention strategies.

4. Before Annual Reviews or Engagement Initiatives

Use eNPS to set the stage for engagement strategies or review cycles. It serves as a benchmark for measuring the effectiveness of initiatives aimed at improving employee satisfaction and loyalty.

Why Timing Matters

The frequency and timing of eNPS surveys influence the quality of insights. Too frequent, and it becomes a chore; too infrequent, and you risk missing critical changes in sentiment. Choose intervals that align with your organization’s culture and events to make the data meaningful and actionable.

By following this approach, you can make eNPS a powerful, ongoing tool for building a more engaged and loyal workforce.

Examples of Employee Net Promoter Questions

Here are examples of how organizations use Employee Net Promoter Score (eNPS) questions to measure employee sentiment effectively:

1. Basic eNPS Survey Question

• “On a scale of 0-10, how likely are you to recommend this company as a great place to work?”
  This is the standard eNPS question that gauges overall employee sentiment and engagement.

2. eNPS with Follow-up Questions

• “Why did you choose this score?”
  Adding a follow-up question gives employees the opportunity to explain their ratings, providing actionable insights into what’s working and what needs improvement.

3. Department-Specific eNPS Example

• “On a scale of 0-10, how likely are you to recommend your current team or department as a great environment to work in?”
  This variation focuses on team dynamics and can uncover specific departmental issues.

4. Leadership-Focused eNPS Example

• “On a scale of 0-10, how likely are you to recommend the leadership team as effective and supportive?”
  This helps evaluate employee perception of leadership and its role in fostering a positive workplace.

5. Onboarding eNPS Example

• “On a scale of 0-10, how likely are you to recommend this company’s onboarding process to a friend or colleague?”
  This is used to gather feedback from new hires about their onboarding experience.

6. Retention-Focused eNPS Example

• “On a scale of 0-10, how likely are you to continue working at this company for the next two years?”
  A predictive question that ties engagement to retention.

7. eNPS During Change Initiatives

• “On a scale of 0-10, how likely are you to recommend this company’s approach to managing organizational changes?”
  This targets employee sentiment during major transformations like mergers, policy updates, or leadership changes.

What Is a Good Employee Net Promoter Score?

A “good” Employee Net Promoter Score varies by industry, company size, and regional benchmarks, but generally, scores fall into three broad categories:

1. Negative Scores (-100 to 0)

A negative eNPS indicates that detractors outnumber promoters, signaling significant dissatisfaction among employees. This is a clear warning sign for leadership to act promptly to improve engagement and workplace culture.

2. Positive Scores (0 to 50)

An eNPS within this range suggests a healthy but improvable level of employee satisfaction. Most companies fall into this category, with room to identify and address specific areas for enhancement.

3. Excellent Scores (50 to 100)

A score in this range indicates a highly engaged and loyal workforce. Companies achieving these levels typically have strong leadership, clear communication, and a supportive workplace culture.

Industry Averages:

• In general, 30+ is often considered a good benchmark, while 50+ is excellent and rare.
• For highly competitive industries, such as tech, even reaching a neutral score of 0 might be acceptable, as these environments often have higher turnover and stress.

However, eNPS benchmarks are like fingerprints; each company has its own employee net promoter. It also varies from industry to industry. For example, Google’s eNPS is around 35, which might be average for some industries but high for its industry.

So, instead of comparing your employee net promoter score with other companies, benchmark your eNPS on your previous score. This way, you can track your success with your score and how far you’ve improved.

How to Improve Employee Net Promoter Score

Simply calculating the eNPS score won’t help your business. So, it also makes sense to cover some best practices to make the most out of the exercise.

1. Make eNPS a Part of Your Retention Program

Think of NPS for employees as a gateway into opportunities to improve. Along with your survey surveys, you can also ask employees:

• Their opinions on what skills they’d like to get training for,
• What workshops can help them upskill,
• What else can a company offer to improve its experience?

Probing deeper into your eNPS insights can also help you understand why some employees are promoters and what makes other detractors or passives.

2. Be Transparent

Being open and transparent with your employees is important to improve your work environment. Loop them in your final decisions and how you plan to enhance their experience.

Keep the communication open and encourage them to share their thoughts and feedback about your recommendations.

3. Time Your eNPS Surveys

You must wonder, “How often should you conduct employee net promoter score surveys?” Well, there is no one-word answer.

You don’t want to overdo or underdo it. So, it’s best to track your eNPS regularly. You can aim to collect the scores every 3-4 months.

This way, you will have enough time to address the feedback and then re-run the survey to track the results of your efforts.

4. Make the Surveys Anonymous

To gather unbiased employee feedback, you can make your employee NPS surveys anonymous. Doing so will put your employees at ease since they won’t fear repercussions for their honest feedback and can freely share their feedback.

5. Follow-up on Your eNPS

As mentioned above, adding a follow-up question to your eNPS surveys is an effective way to collect contextual employee feedback. It’ll allow you to understand why they gave you the score they gave.

The passives may not be detractors yet, but they can become detractors or promoters depending on your corrective measures.

In the same way, detractors will help you understand where you’re lacking, and promoters will inform you about what you’re doing right.

6. Consistently Track Your eNPS

To consistently enhance your employee experience, you need to track your eNPS score. Deploying an eNPS survey after implementing positive changes can help you assess the effectiveness of those changes.

Using this feedback tool consistently is important to ensure you’re on track toward your goal.

For example, let’s say you’re a tech startup manager who recently implemented flexible work hours and remote work options for your team.

By deploying an eNPS survey a month after implementing these changes, you can get valuable feedback from your employees and determine if these changes have positively impacted their work-life balance and overall satisfaction.

7. Don’t Just Collect; Act on It

Like customer NPS, conducting employee net promoter score surveys will only be worthwhile if you act on the feedback and explore the reasons behind your scores.

So, utilize the contextual feedback from the eNPS surveys and follow-up questions to fix what needs fixing and strive towards an efficient and positive work environment.

8. Send Reminders

Since taking employee NPS survey is usually effortless, you can expect a relatively high participation rate. So you might not need to send reminders for the same.

Even so, if you need to gather more responses, you can gently remind your employees to complete the survey. This way, you can retarget people who might have forgotten to fill out the survey or didn’t want to in the first place. A brief email will suffice here.

Employee Net Promoter Score (eNPS) Questions

Here are some examples of questions you can use in an eNPS survey to measure employee sentiment effectively:

1. Core eNPS Question

• • “On a scale of 0-10, how likely are you to recommend this company as a great place to work?”
    This is the foundational question for calculating eNPS.

2. Follow-Up Open-Ended Question

• • “Why did you give us this score?”
    This allows employees to provide context for their ratings, offering actionable insights.

3. Team-Specific eNPS Question

• • “How likely are you to recommend your team or department as a great environment to work in?”
    This can help identify issues within specific groups or departments.

4. Leadership Perception Question

• • “How likely are you to recommend this company’s leadership team to others?”
    It assesses how employees view their leadership.

5. Onboarding Feedback Question

• • “How likely are you to recommend our onboarding process to new hires?”
    Ideal for evaluating and improving the new hire experience.

6. Career Growth Assessment

• • “How likely are you to recommend this company as a place for career growth?”
    This highlights whether employees feel they have opportunities for advancement.

7. Change Management Feedback

• • “How likely are you to recommend the way this company manages organizational changes?”
    Helps understand employee sentiment during periods of transition.

NPS vs. eNPS: What’s the Difference?

NPS (Net Promoter Score) and eNPS (Employee Net Promoter Score) both measure loyalty but focus on different audiences and objectives. Here’s the distinction:

Net Promoter Score (NPS):

NPS gauges customer loyalty and satisfaction. It asks customers a standard question like, “How likely are you to recommend our product/service to others?” Responses help businesses assess how well they’re meeting customer expectations and identify areas for improvement. The focus is external—on customers and market perception.

Employee Net Promoter Score (eNPS):

eNPS measures employee satisfaction and engagement. It asks employees, “How likely are you to recommend this company as a great place to work?” This feedback helps organizations improve their workplace culture, employee retention, and overall satisfaction. The focus is internal—on the workforce and organizational health.

Tips for Successfully Using eNPS

Want to turn eNPS into more than just a score? It’s not just about knowing where your workplace stands—it’s about using that insight to drive real change. Here’s how to make your eNPS surveys actionable and impactful:

1. Go Beyond the “Would You Recommend?”

While the standard eNPS question is essential, don’t stop there. Include a follow-up question that digs deeper. Instead of a generic “Why?” try something more specific like:

• “What is the one thing that would make you more likely to recommend [Company Name] as a great place to work?” This focuses on actionable improvements.
• “What do you value most about working at [Company Name]?” This helps you understand what you’re doing well and should continue to prioritize.

2. Make it Personal, Not Just Automated.

Automated surveys are efficient, but a personal touch can make a big difference. Consider these strategies:

• Manager follow-up: Encourage managers to have one-on-one conversations with their team members about their eNPS responses, especially with detractors.
• Team-level discussions: Facilitate team meetings to discuss the overall results and brainstorm solutions together.

3. Don’t Just Measure, Act. Publicly.

Transparency builds trust. Share your eNPS score with your employees, and more importantly, outline the specific actions you’re taking based on their feedback. This demonstrates that you’re listening and committed to creating a better workplace.

4. Segment Your Audience for Targeted Action.

Analyze your eNPS data by department, role, tenure, or other relevant demographics. This allows you to identify specific challenges and tailor your actions accordingly. For example, if new hires consistently score lower, you might need to revamp your onboarding process.

5. Use eNPS to Fuel Your Performance Reviews.

Integrate eNPS feedback into your performance management system. This provides a more holistic view of employee performance and identifies areas for growth and development. For example, if an employee consistently receives positive feedback in their eNPS responses, it’s a strong indicator of their positive contributions to the team.

6. Tie eNPS to Recognition and Rewards.

Recognize and reward teams or departments that consistently achieve high eNPS scores. This reinforces a culture of engagement and encourages everyone to contribute to a positive work environment. This could involve anything from a simple shout-out to a team lunch or even a bonus.

By implementing these tips, you can transform eNPS from a simple metric into a powerful driver of employee engagement, retention, and overall organizational success.

Build a Loyal Workforce by Tracking Employee Net Promoter Score

The employee net promoter score (eNPS) is valuable for measuring employee satisfaction, loyalty, and engagement. You can use NPS for employees to identify areas for improvement and take action to boost employee engagement and loyalty.

Besides the ones we discussed, some additional effective strategies for improving eNPS include offering competitive compensation and benefits, fostering a positive work environment, and investing in employee development and training.

By prioritizing employee satisfaction and loyalty, you can build a team of motivated, loyal, high-performing employees committed to achieving your company’s goals.

But to effectively collect and analyze the contextual feedback and track your eNPS, you can use a tool like ProProfs Survey Maker. It offers features like readymade NPS survey templates, automated reports, an AI survey generator, and much more to make the process a breeze!