What colour would your organisation be?

When working with one of our clients we developed a colourful way of representing the proportion of promoters within their organisation and this got me to thinking, could you guess the proportion of those who would strongly recommend your organisation to others? Hence, what colour would your organisation be?

I would like to think that our organisation would be mostly green – full of happy engaged employees recommending our organisation to everyone they came into contact with.

I am sure you agree; everyone would like to think that employees within their organisation would recommend it as a good place to work. Employee promoters encourage strong growth in business performance because they provide a better customer experience. Those who approach the job with energy, enhance productivity, and come up with innovative and creative ideas for improvements to processes, products and services.

As a business leader, you have good reason to want to earn the enthusiastic loyalty of your staff. But research has shown that, when it comes down to it, employees expect more of their employers than customers. Average net promoter scores provided by customers are substantially higher than their comparative employee net promoter scores.

You can measure your proportions of promoters in a number of ways. Some organisations choose to frequently temperature check how staff feel by undertaking a short one or two question pulse survey, fast paced organisations may conduct these weekly. Any changes at an organisational or team level are then investigated in more detail. Other organisations choose to use annual opinion surveys to track the sentiment of staff; they track how their employee net promoter score changes over time. Additionally, by asking other items alongside the net promoter question they are able to explore how groups of promoters, passives and detractors rate the organisation in other areas, such as communication, leadership and training, thereby allowing them to identify what the promoters like about the organisation and working to replicate that experience for others.

Typical employee net promoter questions include:

• On a scale of zero to ten, how likely is it you would recommend this company as a place to work?
• How likely would you be to recommend this company’s products or services to a friend or colleague?

Your net promoter score is simply the percentage of promoters minus the percentage of detractors. Where your promoters are those employees rating the organisation at the top end of the scale (9s and 10s) and the detractors are those with less positive ratings (6 or less). You can calculate this score for the organisation as a whole; you can also calculate and track it for each department, site, grade, and team.

However, you choose to measure your promoters, any change in trend can then be further investigated to allow you to keep on top of your biggest asset. The important thing to remember is that encouraging employee engagement benefits both your business and your customers.

What colour would your organisation be? To find out more contact us via our contact form or drop us a call on 01255 850051.