New Engaged Marketing report finds the NPS for employees recommended their company's products and services is -6%
The raft of Australian employees wouldn’t recommend their company’s products and services to others if they were asked, a new study claims.
The State of Employee Engagement in Australia 2015 report by Engaged Marketing found 30 per cent of the more than 3300 employees surveyed would actively recommend their organisation’s products and services to family and friends. Yet 36 per cent were found to be ‘detractors’, and would actively discourage others from doing so.
The report used the Net Promoter Score (NPS) to determine the attitude of employees towards products and services produced by the company they work for, and awarded an overarching NPS of negative 6 per cent across the Australian workforce.
“It is well-known that word-of-mouth is the most powerful marketing channel – four times more effective than television advertising,” noted Engaged Marketing managing director, Christopher Roberts. “But if Australian companies were hoping their employees were their greatest advocates, they need to think again.”
Roberts claimed the overall result showed a highly disengaged staff base, many of which are struggling to understand their organisation’s strategy and direction.
“It begs the question: If your own employees are not willing to recommend your products and services, what chance do you have?”
Overall, the Australian eNPS result recorded by Engaged Marketing for staff engagement with organisations was -23 per cent, with 43 per cent of staff classified as detractors. The report also noted that more senior staff were more engaged with their organisation. In contrast, customer-facing service staff were the least likely to be engaged (-36 per cent).
According to the report, the top three negative emotions Australian employees felt were stress (32 per cent), frustration (29 per cent) and anxiety (15 per cent).
Meanwhile, feeling ‘valued’ was the top wish of staff surveyed (69 per cent), yet only 36 per cent felt that way currently. In addition, while 54 per cent wanted to feel supported, only 28 per cent claimed to have the right level of support from their organisation.
The report also found promoters were much more likely to feel a sense of personal accomplishment and pride, have accomplishments that are recognised, and see opportunities to grow, develop and learn new skills.
“Australian organisations need to focus on giving employees reasons to feel proud to work at their organisation, instilling a culture that emphasise fun at work and finally ensuring that there are processes in place to ensure staff efforts are appreciated, through both informal and formal means and across teams and individual settings,” the report advised.
The role of leaders is also critical.
“Largely, leaders are judged by what they ‘do’ as opposed to what they ‘say’. However, a critical aspect is the selling of strategy and this role cannot be underestimated. The understanding of strategy is one aspect but personal commitment to the direction requires ‘selling’ the strategy effectively,” the report stated.
“This is where leaders need to understand exactly what is driving commitment and then link to employee’s core needs, motivations and purpose to drive engagement.”
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