How Your HR Department Can Use NPS Surveys?
Surveys definitely belong to the wide array of an HR Manager’s favorite tools, used in a variety of occasions and with different objectives. The Net Promoter Score (NPS) is one of the most popular survey types chosen by HR departments because it’s so universal, quick, easy to analyze and automate. It can be also a great source of insight into the employees’ engagement and satisfaction levels, equipping HR professionals in data-driven companies with one of the crucial metrics.
What is the Net Promoter Score (NPS)?
NPS is a metric generally used for measuring customer satisfaction and loyalty, however, it has way more use cases than that. It was first described by Frederick F. Reichheld as a simple yet useful way to replace complex, traditional customer surveys. When HR departments started to rely more and more on data, NPS became one of the key metrics, helping companies to assess the morale of their personnel.
How does the NPS survey work?
It’s pretty simple: the person surveyed is asked to rate his or her experience on a scale of 0 to 10, with 0 meaning ‘definitely not recommended’ and 10 ‘definitely recommended’. Based on the response, respondents can be categorized into three segments:
- Detractors: those that respond with a score of 6 or lower.
- Neutrals (or passives): with a score of 7 or 8.
- Promoters: the most enthusiastic respondents that answer with a 9 or 10.
The NPS formula
After gathering NPS survey answers, you can proceed to calculate your company’s Net Promoter Score. In order to do so, you’ll need to subtract the percentage of detractors from the percentage of promoters:
NPS = % Promoters – % Detractors
The result is an index ranging from -100 to 100.
Example:
If the results are 80% Promoters, 10% Detractors and 10% Neutrals, then the NPS is 70 (80 – 10 = 70). As simple as that!
How to evaluate NPS?
Now that you know your NPS survey result, you’re surely wondering how to tell if your score is good or bad. The first thing that you should be focusing on is the improvement. It’s more important to compare your current result to the past ones and make conclusions that will respond to the key questions in your company’s human resources management: is my employees’ engagement rising? Are they more satisfied with their jobs than in the last quarter? Has there been an improvement in candidate experience? Have we improved our internal processes such as employee training and onboarding? Are the company at risk of losing valuable employees due to low job satisfaction?
However, you might also want to compare your results with the market’s average. Generally speaking, any result above 0 is considered quite good. Obviously, the more ambitious company, the higher result should be expected. Even for these businesses, + 50-60 NPS score is a big achievement.
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Examples of NPS surveys in HR
Surveys for employees (eNPS)
Employee NPS is the most common use case of Net Promoter Score surveys in HR. The goal of this survey is to measure employees’ engagement quickly, by asking them how willing they are to recommend the company as a place to work to their family or friends. When eNPS is carried out in regular periods of time (eg. quarterly) and compared with past results, it can become an invaluable source of information regarding employee satisfaction.
Surveys for candidates (cNPS)
Candidates are one of the stakeholders in the recruitment process, and their positive experience should be one of the priorities. However, not all candidates, especially after a negative response from the company, bother with filling extensive surveys. In this case, a short NPS survey comes to the rescue. By sending out this brief questionnaire to all applicants that participated in the hiring process, both employed and rejected, you can find out whether the candidate experience was positive or there is room for improvement.
Surveys for training attendees
If your company organizes training sessions for employees, you surely want to evaluate their effectiveness by asking attendees to rate the experience in an NPS survey. You can also use NPS software to send out a simple post-onboarding survey that will allow you to find out how your new hires liked their first days in a new job and the training they received.
NPS software: how to send employee surveys?
Carrying out an NPS survey among employees is a breeze when you have at your disposal the right tool. You can choose either a dedicated NPS software or a fully-fledged HR platform with a survey module. The latter option has the advantage of being integrated with a wide range of other features extremely useful in human resources. For instance, you can determine the survey recipients easily based on the company’s organizational chart, or set up automatic surveys for training participants or new hires.
Such a tool will also allow you to send other types of surveys, or combine NPS with other questions when needed. It’s worth noting that a single NPS survey might give an idea of how engaged and happy your employees or candidates are, but won’t give you reasons for their (dis)satisfaction. Therefore, it’s recommended to add an open question asking for an explanation of the rating (‘What is the reason of the score you gave?’, etc.). This will provide you with more detailed and actionable insights indicating what you should improve and what actions are rated positively.
If you’re still looking for the perfect HR platform with a survey module, we have good news: you can try tomHRM for 30 days for free!
