Employee Net Promoter Scores (eNPS)

Information on our approach to eNPS and how to enable the eNPS reporting feature

Jared Ellis avatar
Written by Jared Ellis
Updated over a week ago

What can I learn from this page?

Information on our approach to eNPS and how to enable the eNPS reporting feature

Who is this guide for?

Account Admins, Survey Admins, Survey Creators, Report Viewers

An Employee Net Promoter Score (eNPS is an employee-focused version of the Net Promoter Score (NPS). An eNPS is commonly derived from a single question that asks whether people would recommend their organization as a place to work. This type of question is a common component in many Engagement measures, including our own Employee Engagement Index. This means that while we don't recommend using eNPS as your only outcome measure, or any other single question measure, we can provide an eNPS measure for customers who have a need to provide stakeholders with this.

Enable eNPS in Survey Configuration

  1. From your survey configuration page, click Reporting Factors

  2. Scroll to the Choose an eNPS question section

  3. Select your eNPS question for the survey. We recommend “I would recommend [Company Name] as a great place to work” as the eNPS question.

Note: You can disable eNPS by clicking on the cross to the right of the selected eNPS question.

View eNPS in your report

  1. From your surveys Reports page, click the Questions tab

  2. Click on the selected eNPS question

  3. The eNPS calculation will show to the right of the question score

How we calculate our eNPS score

Most customer-oriented NPS research uses an 11-point (0-10) scale (more on this below). However, we use 5-point Likert response formats in our surveys for better usability (and industry benchmarking). Our own research (also others, e.g. here) has demonstrated the validity of a 5-point-based eNPS calculated as follows:

eNPS = Promoters - Detractors

  • Promoters = percentage of strongly agrees (5's)

  • Passives = percentage of agrees (4's)

  • Detractors = percentage of strongly disagrees, disagrees, and neutrals (1-3's)

What makes a good eNPS score?

This can vary across industry, location and size. You can access our benchmarking information on our insights page.

Once you have selected a benchmark best suited to your organisation, click to view and the eNPS score will be shown to the right of the Are employees committed to their organizations? section.

Why the 5-point eNPS and not the 11-point eNPS?

Fred Reicheld (originator of the NPS idea) acknowledged that different scales could be used and even provided a case study using a 5-point scale. Additionally, our research suggests that whether we use a 5-point or 11-point scale, we measure exactly the same underlying feeling or intention.

By using the 5-point version of the question, we can provide our world-class benchmarks for eNPS, and we can help you understand how you're going compared to thousands of other companies.

Smoothed density scatterplot of eNPS scores using 5-point and 0-10 (11-point) scales. The regression line shows a near-perfect correlation (r=.91). N.B. Darker zones represent larger numbers of respondents in the same spot on the chart.

Screen_Shot_2017-08-10_at_6.49.02_pm.png

Why the 0-10 NPS scale isn't necessarily the best scale

The customer-oriented response scale ranges from 0 to 10 (it's actually an 11-point scale). These types of score 'out of 10' methods were once popular for telephone interviews. Researchers also sometimes used the 0-10 option because some people would mistakenly use 1 as a good score. However, these types of scales are much less user-friendly for online surveys and especially on mobile devices. Furthermore, the majority of evidence suggests that fully labeled response scales are the most reliable response method.

The 0-10 eNPS scale or any other single question is never as reliable an outcome measure as a multi-question index

It is a commonly known statistical recommendation that when it comes to self-report scale metrics for an important outcome, we are far better off using a multi-question approach (we combine 4-5 questions into a single index for Engagement, for example). Even within customer and market research studies have shown that using multiple questions is more reliable and accurate than using a singular NPS-type metric or question. Our own data observations tell us that single-item outcome measures result in weaker statistical outcomes and reliability.

Reliability levels (Cronbach's Alpha) shown as the number of questions in an index is reduced. Reliability below .70 is often considered questionable. NB, It is not possible to even calculate reliability for single-item measures.

reliability_chart.png

In conclusion

We recommend that people using eNPS, for whatever reasons, still use Engagement or other multi-item outcome measures for the primary analytics in their surveys. These measures will be more reliable over time (i.e., not move around as much due to random noise), provide stronger and more reliable statistical signals in analyses such as driver/impact analyses, and have stronger relationships with turnover metrics, etc.

Net Promoter®, NPS®, NPS Prism®, and the NPS-related emoticons are registered trademarks of Bain & Company, Inc., Satmetrix Systems, Inc., and Fred Reichheld. Net Promoter Score℠ and Net Promoter System℠ are service marks of Bain & Company, Inc., Satmetrix Systems, Inc., and Fred Reichheld.

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