Our Favorite Worker Survey Question for Supply Chains

The WELL Worker Survey was designed to be modular and for each company to decide which indicators work best for them. But there is one indicator we always encourage everyone to include.

Worker engagement is one of the most important signals we track, and within WELL there is one question we always recommend asking, every time: worker Net Promoter Score (eNPS).

We always recommend asking the NPS question every survey.

What is a Worker Net Promoter Score?

Net Promoter Score (NPS) is a comparable metric that measures worker satisfaction and engagement, offering insight into safety, retention probabilities, and assessing workers' momentum and willingness to improve their workplace.

The question: “On a scale of 0 to 10, how likely are you to recommend our company to a friend or family?”

Why We Love It

First and foremost, it's easy to deploy at scale and easy for workers to understand.

It is uniquely globally comparable. Its simplicity helps eliminate other variables impacting workers' responses.

Worker survey results are shaped by a range of factors that make comparison difficult. Workers who don’t know their rights may report being treated fairly when they’re not. Highly engaged workers often hold their employers to a higher standard and can score specific topics more critically because they trust management to respond. Cultural norms and gender dynamics further complicate interpretation—for example, women often report being more satisfied with pay than men even when paid less.

All of this makes topic-level benchmarking across a supply chain unreliable if it’s taken at face value.

eNPS cuts through much of that noise. It is one of the few questions that is genuinely globally comparable. It helps distinguish between workers who are engaged but constructively critical, and workers who are disengaged because legitimate grievances are not being addressed. That distinction is critical when deciding where to focus time and resources.

You’ll always need to ask it and it’s always changing.

Engagement is not something that is ever “solved.” It changes over time and reflects whether workers feel heard and whether employers are responding. Regardless of how mature a company is, this is a signal you always want to be tracking.

Buyers, Suppliers, and Direct Employers Alike Like This Question

From a supplier perspective, this question generally lands well. Suppliers tend to push back on surveys when questions feel like compliance checks or policing—particularly when they already know the answer. eNPS is different.

Not only is eNPS a great tool for global companies looking to better understand their supply chains, but it’s also a great tool for employers to better understand their workforce and increase the bottom line. Gallup research shows companies with engaged workforces are 23% more profitable and have 81% lower absenteeism.

Worker Engagement is Key to Safety + Due Diligence

Engagement is one of the strongest predictors of long-term safety. Engaged workers hold employers accountable, and engaged employers are more likely to identify and address risks early. For that reason, we see eNPS as an important signal within human rights due diligence—not on its own, but as part of a broader worker voice system.

Human rights due diligence and remediation must be a collaborative, ongoing effort. Direct employers must be engaged in the process and actively working to identify and remediate risks. NPS is a great way to determine if suppliers are doing this.

When global companies are inundated with supplier information and data and looking to focus on one key data point—we always recommend focusing on worker NPS.

Reporting and follow-up

Reporting Tools to Understand Results

Labor Solutions’ survey reporting tool provides clear comparable results for NPS.

In WOVO, eNPS follows the standard methodology: workers scoring 9–10 are promoters (the people most engaged), 7–8 are passives, and 0–6 are detractors (the most likely to be disengaged and speak negatively about their employer).

eNPS on WOVO

Results are shown on the standard -100 to +100 scale, alongside the distribution of responses and changes over time.

eNPS Reporting on WOVO

Like our other question types, WOVO eNPS score instantly provides a change value from the previous time asked in the series of surveys and charts can be viewed as a proportion stacked bar, count bar, and automatic over time when applicable.

Beautifully Simple, but It’s Just a Starting Point

eNPS is a great starting point to dig deeper. Worker surveys alone are never a solution. They are guideposts to help global companies and their suppliers know where to dig deeper. We always recommend following up on survey questionnaires, and sometimes that involves asking more questions. Results from an eNPS help us ask better follow-up questions that may not have been captured by the first survey.

Reach out to your Labor Solutions to learn more about eNPS and the WELL Worker Survey.