eNPS calculator: work out your employee net promoter score

Your employee net promoter score (eNPS) tells you whether more of your people would recommend your company as a place to work than would not. Enter how many people gave each answer, or paste the list of scores, and the calculator gives you the score, the share of promoters, passives and detractors, and your response rate if you add how many people you invited. The working is shown, so you can explain the number to anyone who asks.

What is eNPS?

eNPS is one question, borrowed from customer research and pointed at your own staff:

"On a scale from 0 to 10, how likely are you to recommend [company] as a place to work?"

It comes from the Net Promoter Score, which Fred Reichheld introduced in Harvard Business Review in December 2003 in "The One Number You Need to Grow". His claim was that one question about recommending a company could replace a long satisfaction survey as a predictor of growth.

That claim has been tested, and it did not fully hold. Keiningham and colleagues, writing in the Journal of Marketing in 2007, used data from 21 firms and more than 15,500 interviews in the Norwegian Customer Satisfaction Barometer. In the industries Reichheld had cited as examples, they could not replicate his claim that Net Promoter is clearly superior to other measures. Their study was about customers, not employees, but the lesson carries over: one number is useful, not magic.

The employee version keeps the same scale, groups and formula. Bain & Company, the consultancy behind the Net Promoter System, calls eNPS "an emerging science". Treat it as a quick signal, not a full diagnosis.

How do you calculate eNPS?

Every answer falls into one of three groups:

• Promoters answered 9 or 10.
• Passives answered 7 or 8.
• Detractors answered 0 to 6.

Then:

• % promoters = promoters ÷ all responses × 100.
• % detractors = detractors ÷ all responses × 100.
• eNPS = % promoters − % detractors, rounded to a whole number.
• Response rate (%) = all responses ÷ people invited × 100 (optional).

Passives count in the total, so they pull both percentages down, but they are not part of the subtraction. The score runs from −100 (everyone is a detractor) to +100 (everyone is a promoter). It is a number, not a percentage: write 15, not 15%.

What does a worked example look like?

This is a made-up example with round numbers. A company invites 125 people and 100 answer: 40 promoters, 35 passives and 25 detractors.

Notice that 35 people, the passives, change nothing in the subtraction. If ten of them moved to 9 or 10, the score would rise from 15 to 25.

What is a good eNPS score?

Above zero means you have more promoters than detractors. Beyond that, be careful. There is no trustworthy universal benchmark, and the published ones disagree with each other.

Two vendors publish industry figures and state their base. Hive HR, from more than 500,000 employee responses in April to June 2025, puts retail, together with government, at around −20 to −13. Winningtemp, from more than 1,300 organisations in 2024 and 2025, puts retail and sales at +40. That is a gap of more than 50 points for the same industry. The difference comes from who the customers of each vendor are, which countries they work in and how each survey was run. Neither is wrong, but neither is your benchmark.

When we checked in November 2026, we found no published eNPS benchmark for Egypt, Saudi Arabia or the Gulf that disclosed its sample. So compare your score with your own previous result, asked the same way, and compare teams inside your company. Also, do not compare it with your customer NPS. Bain notes that employee scores can be much lower than customer scores, because employees hold their company to higher standards.

What can eNPS tell you, and what can it not?

eNPS is good at one thing: a quick, repeatable reading of how your people feel about the company, which you can track over time and compare across teams.

It cannot tell you why. A score of 15 does not say whether the problem is pay, a manager, workload or the commute. That is why Bain's own Net Promoter method asks "Why?" straight after the score. Add one open question, for example "What is the main reason for your score?", and read every answer.

It also swings a lot in small groups. With 10 people, one person moving from 7 to 6 changes the score by 10 points. With 100 people, the same move changes it by 1 point. So do not read much into a few points of change in a small team.

Common mistakes

• Taking the average of the scores. An average answer of 7.5 is not an eNPS. You have to count the three groups.
• Leaving passives out of the total. This makes both percentages too high and changes the score.
• Changing the question or the scale. A 1 to 5 scale, or different wording, gives a number you cannot compare with last time.
• Asking without real anonymity. Bain stresses that eNPS feedback must stay confidential to get honest answers. If people think their manager can see their score, they answer differently.
• Ignoring who did not answer. A score from 30% of your people describes those 30%. Report the response rate next to the score.

What should you do with your score?

1. Record the score, the three percentages and the response rate, with the date and the exact question. 2. Read the open answers and group them into a few themes. 3. Break the result down by team only where groups are large enough to protect anonymity. 4. Share the result and one or two actions with your people. If nothing changes after a survey, fewer people answer the next one. 5. Ask again, the same way, and compare with yourself.

eNPS is a start, not a full picture. Our guide on how to measure employee engagement explains what a fuller survey adds, and the GK Engagement Survey measures the drivers behind a score like this one.

Frequently asked questions

Can eNPS be negative?

Yes. If you have more detractors than promoters, the score is below zero. The lowest possible score is −100, when every person answers 0 to 6.

Do passives count in eNPS?

They count in the total number of responses, but they are not added or subtracted. A team where most people answer 7 or 8 will score close to zero, even if no one is unhappy.

What questions should an eNPS survey include?

The core question is how likely people are to recommend the company as a place to work, on a 0 to 10 scale. Add one open question asking why. Bain also suggests a second rating question, such as agreement with "My job inspires me". Keep it short. For longer surveys, see our employee survey templates.

How often should you measure eNPS?

Often enough to see change, and never more often than you can act on the results. Bain reports that companies using its eNPS approach most commonly ask monthly. Whatever you choose, keep the same rhythm, so each result can be compared with the last.

Is eNPS the same as employee engagement?

No. eNPS measures one thing: willingness to recommend the company as a place to work. Engagement surveys measure several drivers, such as the manager, growth and recognition. eNPS can sit inside an engagement survey, but it does not replace one.

Sources

• Reichheld, F. F. (2003). The one number you need to grow. Harvard Business Review, December 2003. hbr.org
• Markey, R. and Reichheld, F. (2011). Introducing: The Net Promoter System. Bain & Company, Loyalty Insights. bain.com
• Bain & Company (n.d.). Employee NPS. Net Promoter System. netpromotersystem.com
• Keiningham, T. L., Cooil, B., Andreassen, T. W. and Aksoy, L. (2007). A longitudinal examination of Net Promoter and firm revenue growth. Journal of Marketing, 71(3), 39-51. doi.org
• Hive HR (2025). The employee engagement benchmarks Q2 2025. hive.hr
• Winningtemp (2026). What is a good eNPS score? Benchmarks by industry. winningtemp.com