The rise and fall of employee loyalty

Global feedback company Netigate has released the findings from a large-scale study into how employee loyalty has developed since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. The study is based on a dataset of 200,000 eNPS responses from 274 different companies and spans three years from 2019 to 2021.

In the original version of the report released last summer, Netigate derived the average eNPS value for 2021 from responses provided between January 1 and May 31, 2021. Based on this data, the average eNPS value was 18, which remained at a stable level compared to the previous year.

Netigate has now analysed the data for the whole of 2021, and the results show that employee loyalty decreased in 2021, with the average eNPS falling from 18 to 13. This drop coincides with the global discussions of a Great Resignation that began in the second half of last year. The findings indicate that while employees may have remained loyal to their employees early in the pandemic, this began to change as it progressed.

Commenting on the findings, Netigate CEO Mikkel Drucker says: “The Great Resignation discussions that came out of 2021 are an indication that employees around the world want more from their employers. It seems that the pandemic has given people a new perspective on working life, and many are now looking for employment that meets their evolving needs.”

“Is an employer open to remote working? How flexible is a company with regards to when and where people work? Can a good work-life balance be attained with this employer? These are some of the questions that people are now asking themselves, and businesses are going to need to adapt if they want to keep hold of their talent,” Mikkel concludes.