Ep. 13 Why the Net Happiness Score is Simple and It Works

The Net Happiness Score Measures the Sentiment of Employees

William Adams started at iQor nine years ago. He is Vice President of Operations, managing a team of employees in the Philippines that support two telecom clients. The client programs he oversees manage the entire life cycle of the customer journey, including customer care, collections, chat, and retention. Another client program that William leads is a B2B program. Both are large customer experience programs that require keeping a pulse on employee’s morale. When iQor moved thousands of agents to work-at-home (WAH), he came up with the Net Happiness Score to monitor their morale with data to enable leaders to engage with them more effectively.

Net Happiness Score Defined

The Net Happiness Score is derived from a simple survey that determines an employee’s sentiment based on one question: How’s life going for you at iQor? The employee clicks one of five smiley faces on a scale of one (unhappy) to five (very happy).

Similar to Net Promoter Scores (NPS), the Net Happiness Score measures satisfied employees by subtracting the number of unhappy employees from the number of happy employees. This method is calculated by the Mood-o-Meter model, invented by Andrew Reilly, the lead data scientist featured in episode 14.

Context for Net Happiness Score

Covid was the springboard that accelerated the need for a metric to measure employee morale. In 2020, we moved thousands of employees to work-at-home. We realized that we needed an effective way to monitor agent sentiment for the expanding remote workforce.

William saw that previously, high-performing teams were beginning to struggle with attrition and performance, so he made it his mission to determine how to address this challenge. He met with 600 agents on his quest to understand what agents want from an employer relationship. What he learned is that frontline employees want compassionate leadership. They want an environment that balances conversations about KPIs with recognition of effort while celebrating small successes.

William realized the need to create a best-in-class employee experience. He needed a measurement tool to help meet that mission.

Operationalized Data

The Net Happiness Score metric has provided the impetus for leaders to create richer engagement and balanced conversations with agents. Simple things such as asking about their family demonstrate compassionate leadership. To get there, iQor trained frontline supervisors and managers to engage with more intentional compassion. The results include an improvement in sentiment score while one program experienced reduced attrition by 50%. 

Now, we’re experiencing an amazing cultural improvement through one-on-one conversations. Leadership engages with iQor agents effectively through an intentional conversation focused on the agent’s humanity, and positive sentiment continues to grow.

The Mood-o-Meter survey is provided to employees weekly. At that time, frontline leaders can access the data to put the proper action steps, such as reaching out to employees for more details on their positive and constructive feedback. Since the survey data is updated weekly, leaders can be constantly engaged in intentional conversations and ensure employees are getting what they need.

The Future of the Net Happiness Score

The survey process is elegantly simple creating room for the consumption of the data and actions to evolve and improve continuously. The survey delivery will continue to occur weekly so we may continue to maximize our employee’s happiness on an ongoing basis.

What William Does for Fun

In pre-pandemic times William liked to ride motorcycles. During pandemic times, he enjoys binge-watching Netflix shows and spending time with his family.

Learn more about iQor digital customer experience capabilities.