In this article, Oksana Izmailova, CHRO at RedCore, explores how the company uses employee Net Promoter Score (eNPS) surveys to encourage honest feedback, identify workplace challenges, and turn employee insights into concrete changes that support business growth.
If you ask a specialist what they would like to change about their job, you can probably predict the answers in advance: twice the salary, a shorter working week, and better breakfasts.
Of course, I’m exaggerating. But this is exactly where one of the main challenges of any survey lies: how do you ask questions in a way that gives you not just answers, but information the business can actually work with?
At RedCore, eNPS became that tool — the Employee Net Promoter Score, which measures their willingness to recommend the company to friends and acquaintances as a place to work. We conduct it every six months and use it not just as an HR metric, but as an effective way to check in with reality and turn feedback into a driver of change and business growth.
This was the topic of my presentation at HR MeetUP by RedCore, which recently took place in Limassol, Cyprus. And today, in this article, I want to talk about our survey system and how it helps us implement real changes in the business.
An environment for honest dialogue
Launching any survey should begin with the most important question: “Are we ready to work with the information we receive and implement changes?” If a business asks specialists for their opinions but is not prepared to take their feedback into account, it becomes demotivating. After all, specialists will feel that they have not been heard.
The next step is to create conditions in which people are willing to tell you the truth. And here, I must honestly admit, we didn’t find a working approach right away either.
Our first surveys were conducted as part of the Performance Review process. Specialists answered the questions, but there was almost no useful feedback: mostly positive and neutral ratings. Formally, everything looked fine, but it was impossible to understand what was really happening inside the business group. We then made the surveys anonymous, while keeping the option to voluntarily provide a name. And the quality of responses changed: specific problems and direct comments appeared, giving us something we could actually work with.
It’s important not only to create a safe environment for giving feedback, but also to maintain it after the survey. We specifically teach managers not to look for the authors of negative comments, but to work with their content. As a result, the share of specialists who voluntarily sign their responses is growing. We measure this separately as a “trust percentage” — in some teams, it has already reached 50%.
A common frame of reference
What could be easier to understand than a scale from 0 to 10? But in practice, it turned out that the same number can be perceived very differently by different people. That is why it is important for everyone to speak the same language of numbers.
At RedCore, responses are divided into three groups: 9–10 — promoters, or brand ambassadors; 7–8 — passives; and 0–6 — detractors. Once, I encountered a situation where I asked a specialist:
“What score did you give?”
“A high one — seven.”
And when I asked why not nine or ten, the answer was:
“Well, that would be something absolutely out of this world.”
But according to the eNPS methodology, a seven means that the person falls into the passive category: the group where “everything is generally fine, but something is missing before I would genuinely be ready to recommend the company.”
That is why today we explain separately to specialists what each number means. Otherwise, we will be upset about sevens and eights and try to figure out what needs improvement, while people are convinced that they have told us: “Everything is great.”
It’s also important to explain how these ratings form the final eNPS score and what its values mean.
At RedCore, we use the formula:
eNPS = % of promoters − % of detractors. In the industry, a score between 50 and 70 is considered excellent, between 30 and 50 is considered good, and below 30 signals areas for improvement.
Our current eNPS is 61%.
A survey isn’t an interrogation
Our first eNPS at RedCore was a real “monster.” We collected questions from different functions, and as a result, completing the survey took about 30 minutes. We received a lot of genuinely useful feedback, but we decided not to test our specialists’ patience a second time.
The next time, we reduced it to ten questions and encountered a different problem. For example, we asked specialists to evaluate their managers, but from the responses, we couldn’t always understand whom they were referring to: their direct manager, C-level executives, or the business group’s leadership as a whole.
Eventually, we arrived at two main questions that can be answered in five minutes and that we ask today:
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Explain your rating.
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What arguments would you give a friend to explain why it is worth working at RedCore?
The first “takes the company’s temperature at the moment”: how our specialists feel about their work, what they are satisfied with, and what they aren’t. The second shows what our colleagues value, what we need to build on, what we need to develop, and why they choose to stay at RedCore.
After each question, we ask specialists to explain the score they have given and leave enough space for their own words.
Three groups — three different signals
The number shows the result, the comment explains the reason behind it. And from there, we get three groups of specialists to work with further.
Promoters are the people we can rely on. They’re already brand ambassadors: they can be involved in referral programs, mentoring, and onboarding new specialists, while their feedback can be used to strengthen the corporate culture.
Passives are the people we need to fight for. Today, they’re generally satisfied with everything, but they have their own “yes, but.” If we understand exactly what they’re missing and address these demotivating factors, they can become promoters. If we leave them without attention, they may become detractors.
Detractors are the people whose criticism cannot be ignored. It may point to real problems: if a pain point can be resolved, it needs to be addressed. But if the reason cannot be eliminated and the person continues to spread negativity, it begins to affect the entire team.
From results to actions
At RedCore, we prepare a report for each C-level executive, include excerpts from specialists’ direct comments, and hold separate meetings with managers to review the results. After that, the manager, together with the Business Partner, develops an action plan.
Changes are more powerful than any message saying, “We heard you.” A specialist sees a direct connection between what they said and what the business did afterward.
It’s at this stage that the survey transforms from a measurement tool into a tool for real change.
A survey is a cycle
We ask questions → receive information → analyze it → share the information with managers → identify problem areas together → develop a plan → implement changes → track the dynamics in the next survey. And we repeat this every six months.
And perhaps, for me, this is the main purpose of the survey. Because whether the outcome is positive or negative depends not so much on the tool itself, but on what the company does with the information it receives.
Want to work and grow in an environment where your voice is heard? Join the RedCore Team — explore our open positions. https://link.redcore.group/3VZmhnb