How to improve employee engagement: surveys, eNPS and action plans

What is employee engagement and why measure it?

Employee engagement is the degree of emotional and mental commitment an employee feels toward their work, their team and the company's goals. It is not the same as satisfaction: a satisfied employee may have no complaints about their conditions yet make no extra effort. An engaged employee takes ownership of outcomes, speaks up when they see a problem and chooses to stay.

The point of measuring engagement is not to arrive at a single score. It is to see which team has a problem, in which area and why, and to decide on the steps that will fix it. Engagement that is not measured is usually noticed only when a resignation letter arrives. Regular measurement gives early warning: it lets you see problems such as a change of manager, rising workload or perceived pay unfairness before they turn into decisions to leave.

For international companies operating in Turkey, engagement work has a few local angles: surveys that collect personal data fall under KVKK (the Turkish Personal Data Protection Law), working time rules shape workload, and teams are often split between a local entity and a regional head office. This guide covers survey design, how to calculate eNPS (employee Net Promoter Score), how to interpret results and how to build an action plan.

Which factors drive engagement?

Research and practical experience show that the drivers of engagement are broadly similar across organisations. Building your survey around these themes makes it easier to turn results into action:

• Relationship with the manager: regular feedback, clear expectations and fair treatment.
• Meaningful work: seeing how one's work contributes to company goals.
• Growth: learning opportunities, career paths and transparent promotion criteria.
• Recognition and pay perception: effort being noticed and pay being seen as fair.
• Workload and balance: a sustainable pace, managed overtime and actual use of leave.
• Communication and trust: leadership explaining decisions and employees feeling safe to speak.
• Working environment and tools: access to the resources needed to do the job.

Pay alone does not create engagement, but pay that feels unfair can weaken every other positive factor. To address pay fairness separately, see our salary band guide.

How do you design an engagement survey?

A good survey is short, clear and repeatable. If you change the questions every year, you cannot see the trend. The steps below give a framework that works for most companies.

1. Define the purpose and scope

Decide whether the survey covers the whole company or a specific unit. A common approach combines one comprehensive annual survey with short pulse surveys two to four times a year. The annual survey gives depth; pulse surveys track the effect of actions.

2. Group questions by driver

Write two to four statements for each driver and use a 1 to 5 scale (1: strongly disagree, 5: strongly agree). Example statements:

• My manager gives me regular feedback on my work.
• I believe I can develop myself at this company.
• My workload is reasonable.
• When I share my opinion, I feel it is taken into account.
• I can see how my work contributes to the company's goals.

Keeping the total to 20 to 30 questions helps keep completion time under 10 minutes. Add one or two open questions at the end, such as "What is the one thing you would like us to change?"

3. Add the eNPS question

eNPS is measured with a single question: "On a scale of 0 to 10, how likely are you to recommend this company to a friend as a place to work?" It serves as a headline indicator in the annual survey and can be asked on its own in pulse surveys.

4. Protect confidentiality and comply with KVKK

If employees think their answers can be traced back to them, they will not answer honestly. Report results only for groups above a minimum threshold (for example at least 5 responses) and merge small teams into their parent unit. If the survey collects demographic data, provide a privacy notice under KVKK and collect only what you need. Translating the survey into Turkish and any other languages your workforce uses also improves response quality. See our KVKK HR compliance guide for details.

5. Announce it and set a timeline

Explain in advance why the survey is being run, when results will be shared and how they will be used. One to two weeks is usually enough for responses. Ask managers to give their teams time to complete it, but make sure no one is pressured to respond.

How is eNPS calculated?

Responses to the eNPS question fall into three groups:

• Promoters: those who score 9 or 10.
• Passives: those who score 7 or 8.
• Detractors: those who score 0 to 6.

The formula is eNPS = percentage of promoters - percentage of detractors. Passives count toward the total number of responses but do not appear directly in the formula. The result is a number between -100 and +100, written without a percent sign.

Worked eNPS example

Suppose 200 employees respond with the following distribution:

eNPS = 45% - 25% = +20. The same calculation in Python:

def enps(promoters, passives, detractors):
    total = promoters + passives + detractors
    return round((promoters - detractors) / total * 100)

print(enps(90, 60, 50))  # 20

If you are starting from raw scores, first classify each response: 9 and above as promoter, 7 to 8 as passive, 6 and below as detractor. Then apply the same formula.

How should you interpret an eNPS score?

An eNPS above zero means promoters outnumber detractors. Beyond that, there is no universal "good" or "bad" threshold; results vary with sector, company size, survey timing and response rate. So compare your result first with your own previous measurements and across units, rather than with an external average.

• Trend: an eNPS that rises from +10 to +20 tells you more than +20 on its own.
• Distribution: the same eNPS can come from different distributions. 45% promoters and 25% detractors gives +20, and so does 30% promoters and 10% detractors, but the first is far more polarised.
• Response rate: a low response rate can mislead. Many of those who did not respond may be dissatisfied.
• Unit differences: if the company score is +20 but one unit is at -15, that unit is the priority.

Read eNPS together with driver scores. eNPS answers "how much"; driver scores and open comments answer "why".

How do you analyse survey results?

The following sequence keeps analysis manageable:

1. Calculate the average score and the favourable rate (share of 4 and 5 answers) for each driver.
2. Identify the three lowest drivers and the driver that fell most since the last survey.
3. Break results down by unit, tenure and location; merge groups below the confidentiality threshold.
4. Code open comments into themes and count the most frequent ones.
5. Compare with attrition data: do low-scoring units also have higher resignation rates?

Looking at performance data alongside the survey also helps. Feedback collected during year-end reviews can be used to validate manager relationship scores. See our year-end performance review guide and performance review methods guide.

How do you build an action plan?

The value of a survey is measured by what happens afterwards. In a company that does not share results or take action, participation and trust drop in the next survey. Build the plan on these principles:

Choose a small number of priorities

Set no more than two or three company-wide priorities. Each unit can also choose one or two topics based on its own results. Too many goals means none of them moves.

Make every action measurable

"Improve communication" is an intention, not an action. Write concrete steps with an owner and a date instead, such as "every team holds a monthly one-to-one and the completion rate is tracked quarterly".

Involve managers

A large part of engagement depends directly on the manager. Share each manager's team results with them, ask them to choose one action together with their team and add it to the manager's own objectives.

Sample action plan

For workload issues, overtime data is a key signal. In Turkey, work beyond 45 hours a week counts as overtime and there is an annual cap of 270 hours; teams approaching these limits are an engagement risk. See our overtime rules guide for Turkey.

How should results be shared with employees?

Sharing results within a few weeks of the survey closing protects trust. Include:

• Participation rate and overall eNPS.
• Two or three areas of strength.
• Two or three areas to improve and the priorities chosen.
• When the next measurement will take place.

Acknowledging negative results openly, rather than hiding them, shows employees the survey is taken seriously. Each unit should discuss its own results in a team meeting and choose actions with the team's input.

How often should you measure?

A common rhythm is one comprehensive survey a year with two or three short pulse surveys in between. Pulse surveys have 5 to 10 questions, including eNPS and questions on the drivers you are acting on. Surveying too often causes fatigue, especially if people are asked again before they have seen any action.

Alongside surveys, collect short feedback at the start and end of employment. A conversation at the end of the first 90 days surfaces integration problems early, and exit interviews clarify why people leave. See our employee onboarding process guide and employee termination process guide.

What are the common mistakes?

• Targeting individuals: breaching the confidentiality threshold or trying to identify who wrote a comment damages trust permanently.
• Chasing external averages: set targets based on your own trend rather than benchmarks with unclear sources and methods.
• Surveys without action: results that are not shared or followed up lower participation next time.
• One-off campaigns: an event or gift does not fix a structural problem; manager behaviour and processes need to change.
• Constantly changing questions: comparisons become impossible.