How to Increase Employee NPS

When presenting to your board, leadership team, or even workforce, it’s helpful to have one datapoint to sum up the overall sentiment of the company. Employee Net Promoter Score (eNPS) is an extremely helpful metric on overall employee engagement, but in order to drive it up, you need to know exactly what’s going on in the company.

As an HR professional, you’re often working with limited time and resources, not to mention, each employee has a slightly different set of needs and priorities. To increase your eNPS, you need to identify the driving factors of employee happiness and address any major barriers. “In my experience, employees want to be heard, included, and communicated with openly,” says Nneka Craigwell, HR Business Partner at Namely. “When leaders do any combination of the three, it makes a ton of difference.”

Here are four tips to help you increase employee morale and your employee NPS:

1. Collect Qualitative Feedback

Time spent speculating about what your workforce wants is time wasted. More often than not, employees are happy to tell you exactly what they need for a better work experience. Include open-ended questions on your employee engagement surveys to explain ratings and give feedback. The more information you collect, the easier it will be to find out what you need to do to boost morale.

2. Continue the Conversation

To holistically improve the quality of life at your company, it takes more than just an annual survey. Once you understand some of the factors driving your eNPS, it’s time to start talking to your population. Consider assembling a cross-departmental task force to voice the sentiment of their respective teams. Alternatively, you might schedule individual meetings with employees from across the organization. You’ll want to hear a variety of voices to help you prioritize your resulting initiatives.

3. Don’t Neglect Data

By definition, eNPS reveals a lot about why employees are choosing to join or leave a company–and whether or not they would encourage others to apply. Through onboarding and exit interviews, you should be collecting data on what attracts employees to your company and what impacts their decision to leave. This information can help you identify any disconnect between expectation and experience, and pinpoint exactly what needs to be done to reconcile it.

4. Follow Up

Asking for feedback and neglecting to take action will diminish employee trust. Your company’s eNPS is a direct result of the perceived response to feedback. HR may do a lot of work behind the scenes, but without ongoing communication, employees may not even realize they have been heard. Communicate any initiatives launched as a result of employee feedback and solicit further feedback to make sure the problem was adequately addresses.

As you continue to collect HR data, be careful not to get so caught up in the numbers that you lose sight of the people you’re serving. Communication and active listening are key to increase employee morale, productivity, and as a result, your eNPS score.

Looking for inspiration? Try these 14 proven hacks to increase employee engagement.