
Ask HN: What are your thoughts on NPS surveys for employees? - sweeeety
I did a quick search but couldn&#x27;t find any past discussion on that, so I hope to see some opinions on this :)<p>My company (~100 engs) has decided to replace 360s with NPS surveys to sort of measure employee performance.<p>It is my first time on this and feels a bit odd to receive positive feedbacks but have them labeled as &quot;passive&quot; just because....<p>I remember reading elsewhere that NPS is a common tool to measure performance within Customer Service   &#x2F;Success. I just can&#x27;t see how this would work long term, am I being to cynical &#x2F; skeptical?
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dyeje
I don't see how NPS would in any way be useful for a performance review. Could
you elaborate on the goals of switching?

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0_gravitas
Coming from a retail environment where we used NPS surveys; I've encountered
few things more useless, and all it ended up being was another metric that we
had no real choice but to game, or else the District Manager would get on our
asses. It did not provide any useful information to us at all.

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retiredcoder
Couldn’t relate more. Even things like Employee Engagemebt surveys need to be
gamed to save managers face.

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dmarlow
I'm curious on the sort of questions being asked if it's meant to replace a
360. Typically, 360s aren't sent to a large group because not everyone has
enough practical working experience with everyone else.

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sweeeety
"Would you to recommend $employee (as $role) to a friend or colleague?"

I just got back my "feedback". None of the answers addressed the question per
se, felt useless.

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muzani
I have a very negative view of NPS in general. For example where I live, a 6
might be seen the same as a 0. I often troll it as a form of protest... if I'm
about to give a 8, I give a 6 instead.

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sweeeety
I also find that NPS such a very poor statistic.

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sethammons
I could see nps as a maybe-proxy for workplace satisfaction. I don't see the
link to performance reviews. What is the question? "Would you recommend
working with $employee to others?"?

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sweeeety
"Would you to recommend $employee (as $role) to a friend or colleague?"

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wjossey
Hey there!

Happy to talk live about this if you'd like. My email is in my profile, and I
can speak more in depth[0].

Sorry to hear that your company is ditching 360s in favor of NPS. I've
facilitated dozens of 360s across a wide range of companies as a part of my
startup, and I can speak without hesitation that when they are done well, they
are invaluable in a growth and development conversation.

NPS is a flawed metric for measuring people. In particular, numeric rating
systems that have no descriptive meaning behind them are exceptionally
unreliable when not run at scale. As an example, we used to run surveys where
we asked individuals to rate someone on a scale of 1-10 for a particular
skill. It quickly became apparent through customer interviews that every
individual had their own definition of what it means to be a 5, 6, 7, etc. You
end up with scenarios where you have "hard" graders who use "5" as meeting
expectations. You have others who use "7" to mean "average". And then you have
others who say "9/10" means meeting expectations.

Another example of faulty NPS is when we attempted to measure the satisfaction
of direct reports with regards to their manager. If we ask an NPS style
question, we end up actually measuring how much they _like_ their manager as a
human being, rather than whether or not that person is actually doing a good
job as a manager. There's some data floating around that says that 75% of
employees leave their job because of their manager, and not the role itself,
and we see similar information in our data. So, oddly enough, someone will
respond positively to "Would you recommend this manager to someone else", but
will simultaneously quit in six months for reasons related to their manager
not doing an effective job.

Lastly, measuring employee performance is exceptionally hard, and I'm
unconvinced that you can do it at scale and across multiple departments and
organizations using the same techniques. What works for a software engineer
does not necessarily work for measuring performance for a marketer, which does
not necessarily work for an executive. Putting everyone into the same bucket
seems more convenient than effective.

Because of this, our process tends to focus less on measuring people, and more
about creating effective conversations on how people can improve. We do this
by recommending that companies implement role rubrics[1], so individuals
understand what the expectations are of them in their role, and how those
expectations shift as one progresses through titles and responsibilities. In
addition, we gather peer written feedback on the behaviors that mostly closely
are associated with how we work together as a team. These tends to be non
"functional" behaviors, and they are fairly universal regardless of industry,
title, or seniority.

Unfortunately, both for my company and employees, this tends to not really be
a priority for many companies. Managers don't feel like they have the time to
do a good job in these areas. Employees appreciate the process, but often
aren't given carveouts in their day to actively provide feedback to one
another. It basically becomes a time-intensive process that is never a "top
priority", so companies devolve to the quickest possible solution to the
"objective", which they think is measuring performance, rather than helping
employees grow and develop. I'm still fighting the good fight though, and
there are plenty of companies out there that take this stuff seriously and
care about helping their employees grow.

So, in short, no, I don't think you're being cynical. But, what do I know, I
just do this for a living :)

[0] wes@eagerlabs.com

[1] [https://circleci.com/blog/why-we-re-designed-our-
engineering...](https://circleci.com/blog/why-we-re-designed-our-engineering-
career-paths-at-circleci/)

