Engaged employees direct their energy towards the right tasks and outcomes, driving customer advocacy. But when it comes to engagement, other aspects matter even more:
- a strong sense of purpose
- autonomy
- opportunity for growth
- and a sense of belonging, being part of a bigger group
Given the importance of employee engagement and its long term effects, you surely want to measure it and keep track of your engagement initiatives.
Measure employee engagement just like customer engagement and link both metrics
Just as NPS provides strong descriptive and predictive power with customers, it works just as well among employees. eNPS is a simple metric that can be used for front-end, back-end and managerial employees alike. Experience demonstrates a strong correlation between NPS and eNPS. The reasons that customers become advocates or detractors highly relate to the level of employee engagement.
Put employees at the center of customer feedback loops
To make progress with the NPS system, you must incorporate customer feedback into your daily operations and close the loop with your employees. This means measuring NPS after important customer interactions (moments of truth) and quickly sharing the customer feedback with the employees most responsible for the experience. Be selective with your feedback loops to keep it manageable. The focus should be on a few “moments of truth” that shape the customer’s attitude toward yours company. The feedback loop is as much about reinforcing what your employees should do and are doing right as it is about correcting what they did wrong. Share both negative (to quickly act upon) and positive feedback. Hearing a customer’s descriptions of how an employee’s actions had a positive effect can be a powerful reinforcement of desired behaviors and reminder of the employee’s purpose.
Employee Net Promoter Score (eNPS) explained
“How likely are you to recommend your employer to friends and family?”
eNPS is calculated as the percentage of promoters minus the percentage of detractors.
- Promoters (score of 9 or 10): Employees feeling their lives are enriched by their relationships with their organisation or leaders. They are loyal, typically stay longer and talk positively about the organisation to friends and colleagues. Promoters go the extra mile to help customers and colleagues.
- Passives (score of 7 or 8): Employees who are fairly satisfied, but not loyal. They rarely talk up their company. If a better offer comes along, they are likely to leave.
- Detractors (score of 0 to 6): Employees who feel their lives have been diminished by their associations with their organisation or leaders. They are dissatisfied by how they are treated. They frequently speak negatively about their organisation and are likely to leave as soon as they find something better.
Note that most companies using the eNPS, use the following question “On a scale of zero to ten, how are you to recommend your employer to friends and family?” However, eNPS is an emerging science. In some cases, a second question “How likely would you be to recommend this company’s products or services to friends and family?” can yield an even more accurate measure for engagement.
A few tips
- Employee surveys must be kept confidential to encourage honest feedback.
- Because eNPS is meant to be part of an ongoing operating system that can support coaching, action and continuous improvement, you should strive to collect eNPS data on a frequent base. Some companies survey all their employees every few months. Others survey a subset of employees on a staggered or rotating basis; for example by sending an eNPS survey linked to the onboarding process (to each employee x days after hiring, and again on every anniversary of the hiring date).
- Speed of action. In an eNPS system, the surveys are short, and emphasis is placed on sharing feedback as quickly and as fully as possible at individual and team level.
We believe an eNPS system makes the HUMAN-side of your business more transparent. It helps you identify best practices and see which team leaders are doing great and which need more coaching. It shows you which elements of the employee experience drives customer advocacy and provides insight on how to improve employee experiences.
