At Labor Solutions, we ask a lot of questions to workers, but there is one in particular that’s our favourite: worker net promoter score.
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.
There are a lot of different factors that go into how a worker answers a question. For example, workers who don’t know their rights and responsibilities may think they are being treated fairly when they’re not. Or very engaged workers may hold their employers to a higher standard and rank their employers low on specific topics because they know their employer will respond and make changes based on the survey results.
Those variables are all before you add in cultural attitudes and gender variations. For example, women, who are almost always paid less, almost always report being happier with their pay than men.
All of these variables can make comparing results across a supply chain difficult or even unfair.
But the net promoter question is uniquely globally comparable. This question enables us to differentiate between engaged workers, who feel heard and as a result may be more critical of their employer in other questions, from disengaged workers who responded negatively to other questions because they have legitimate unaddressed grievances.
You’ll always need to ask it and it’s always changing. Engagement is an ongoing process; it’s never something that is “solved.” It requires employers to constantly reach out and adjust based on worker feedback. No matter where you are in your maturity as a company, you’ll always want to know how engaged workers are. This question will show up in every survey you do and be a great measurement post.
Buyers, Suppliers, and Direct Employers Alike Like This Question
If you’re a global supply chain manager, you’re familiar with suppliers pushing back against your requests. We find this can happen when surveys include questions on topics suppliers already know the answer to, like “is there a fire extinguisher?” Suppliers obviously already know the answer, so when they see this question on a worker survey, they automatically think the buyer is trying to catch and police them. Conversely, direct employers sometimes want to know things that are hyperlocal or of little consequence to the buyer, like if workers like their meal choices in the cafeteria.
But NPS is interesting to everyone.
Not only is NPS 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
Engagement is the best determinant of worker long-term safety. Engaged workers hold their employers accountable. Engaged workers mean engaged employers, and engaged employers mean safer workplaces.
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
Labor Solutions’ new survey reporting tool provides clear comparable results for NPS.
NPS calculation formula is distinct from other scored questions. It groups responses into three categories: Detractors, Passives, and Promoters. WOVO NPS question follows the standardized formula to ensure that your results are comparable globally. When aggregating multiple survey data, we take the average score of all surveys.
Workers who give a 9 or 10 are considered promoters: the people most engaged. Workers who respond with a score between 0 and 6 are known as detractors: the most likely to be disengaged and speak negatively about their employer.
Those who give a 7 or 8 are called passives—the calculation doesn’t take their scores into account, but they’re still considered in the number of employees.
NPS is also presented differently from other scored questions on the WOVO survey dashboard. Highlighting both the score on the standard scale of -100 to 100 and the distribution of Detractors, Passives, and Promoters.
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
NPS is a great starting point to dig deeper. Worker surveys alone are never a solution. They are guiding lights 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 NPS help us ask better follow-up questions that may not have been captured by the first survey.
Reach out to your Labor Solutions representative to learn more and to start measuring NPS now.