TL;DR

• eNPS benchmarks vary dramatically by industry. A score of 25 is excellent in manufacturing but concerning in tech (where the average is 66).
• This guide covers 2026 eNPS data for 15+ industries, company size breakdowns, real company examples, and year-over-year trends from QuestionPro's study (5,000 employees) and Perceptyx's global benchmark database (20 million employees).
• In absolute terms: above 0 is positive, 10 to 30 is healthy, 30 to 50 is strong, 50+ is exceptional.
• The average eNPS is 32 according to QuestionPro's 2025 data (up from 25 in 2024). Perceptyx's broader global dataset shows 14. Both are valid benchmarks depending on your comparison group.
• Company size matters as much as industry. Startups (0-250 employees) average 30. Enterprises (5,001+) average 9.
• Information Technology leads at 66. Government bottoms out at 11. The 55-point gap reflects work structure, not whether industries are "better."

Your eNPS score doesn't exist in a vacuum.

A 25 might signal excellent employee engagement at a manufacturing company. That same 25 at a software company means you're losing ground to competitors averaging 41. Context determines whether you're winning or falling behind.

Most benchmarking guides give you a single global number and call it done. That's useless. Your retail operation shouldn't benchmark against Google's tech culture. Your 50-person startup shouldn't compare itself to a 10,000-employee enterprise.

This guide breaks down eNPS benchmarks the way practitioners actually need them: by industry, company size, and year-over-year movement. You'll see where you stand, which direction your sector is heading, and what scores look like at companies people actually want to work for.

The data comes from QuestionPro's 2025 industry benchmarks study (5,000 full-time employee responses across 15 industries, December 2024-January 2025), Perceptyx's global benchmark database (20+ million employees globally), and SurveyMonkey's 2024 eNPS benchmarks. Real numbers from organizations actively measuring employee advocacy, not survey company projections.

New to eNPS? Start with our complete what is eNPS guide to understand how the measurement works before diving into benchmarks.

Global eNPS Benchmarks: The Baseline

Before diving into industry specifics, here's the global context.

The overall eNPS benchmark depends on which dataset you're looking at. QuestionPro's study of 5,000 full-time employees shows an average of 32 across all industries. This is up from 25 in 2024, reflecting a 7-point year-over-year improvement. Perceptyx's global benchmark database, which tracks over 20 million employees, reports a more conservative global average of 14, with recent data showing stabilization in the "low-to-mid 20s range."

The difference reflects sample composition and methodology. QuestionPro's 2025 data skews toward companies actively measuring employee experience and may capture more US-based organizations. Perceptyx's database includes a broader global sample and longer time horizons. Both are valid reference points. Use QuestionPro's industry-specific benchmarks for competitive context and Perceptyx's global average as a floor.

Here's what the scoring spectrum actually means:

• Any score above zero indicates more promoters than detractors. Technically positive, but context matters.
• Scores between 10 and 30 fall into the "healthy engagement" range globally.
• Between 30 and 50 signals strong advocacy.
• Above 50 puts you in exceptional territory. Top 10% of organizations worldwide.
• Below zero means you have a retention crisis.

One distinction worth noting: employee eNPS scores run lower than customer NPS scores. Employees hold higher standards for their workplace than customers do for products. For context on what is a good Net Promoter Score, a customer NPS of 30 might be average, while an employee eNPS of 30 is genuinely good. Different expectations, different benchmarks.

The global numbers give you orientation. Industry breakdowns tell you whether you're actually competitive.

eNPS Benchmarks by Industry (Updated for 2026)

Industry matters more than any other variable when benchmarking eNPS. Work cultures, compensation norms, growth opportunities, and employee expectations vary dramatically across sectors. Here's where each industry stands as of early 2026:

Source: QuestionPro eNPS Industry Benchmarks 2025. Study of 5,000 full-time employees conducted December 2024 - January 2025. YoY change compares 2025 vs 2024 scores.

What's Driving These Numbers

Lets explore what is driving the eNPS scores of different industries:

• Information Technology (66): The highest score across all industries, though down 5 points from 2024. Tech employees benefit from flexible work arrangements, clear career progression, and innovation-driven cultures. The decline reflects recent tech industry layoffs and restructuring, which eroded trust even at companies with otherwise strong cultures.

• Financial Services (46) and Banking (39): Financial services gained 8 points year-over-year, while banking dropped 4. The split reflects different employee experiences. Fintech and modern financial firms score higher, offering better work-life balance and technology-forward environments. Traditional banking struggles with rigid hierarchies and legacy systems. Compliance pressure affects both, but compensation remains competitive enough to keep scores in positive territory.

• Computer Software (41): Software companies that aren't pure IT infrastructure sit slightly lower than the broader IT category. Down 2 points from 2024. The score reflects intense competition for talent, high performance expectations, and the reality that not every software company offers Google-level benefits or culture.

• Construction (35): The steepest decline in the data: down 13 points. Construction faces a labor shortage, physically demanding work, and safety concerns that weigh on employee sentiment. The drop likely reflects post-pandemic worker burnout and ongoing supply chain disruptions that make project timelines unpredictable. Good pay keeps scores positive, but the work itself creates natural limits on advocacy.

• Hospitality/Tourism (33) and Food Service (33): Both industries gained ground, up 6 and 27 points respectively. Food service's 27-point jump is the largest improvement in the dataset. This reflects post-pandemic wage increases, better scheduling flexibility, and companies finally addressing burnout that peaked during COVID-19. Hospitality's smaller gain suggests recovery is uneven. Both industries still face high turnover and customer-facing stress, which caps how high scores can realistically go.

• Transportation (33): Up 14 points. Driver shortages forced companies to improve compensation and working conditions. The gains are real but fragile. Long hours, time away from home, and regulatory pressure remain structural challenges that prevent transportation from reaching higher scores.

• Insurance (30) and Healthcare (25): Insurance dropped 8 points. Healthcare gained 8. Insurance faces process complexity, regulatory burden, and a perception that the work lacks meaning compared to direct patient care. Healthcare's improvement reflects better staffing ratios and wellness program investments. For more context on NPS in healthcare and patient satisfaction, the score remains low because burnout, emotional labor, and administrative burden haven't disappeared.

• Education Administration (23): Down 19 points, the second-steepest decline. Budget cuts, political pressure, and pandemic-related workload increases hit education hard. Teachers and administrators report feeling unsupported, underpaid, and burned out. The work still holds meaning, which keeps the score positive, but advocacy has cratered.

• Manufacturing (21), Retail (18), Automotive (17): Manufacturing gained 8 points. Retail stayed flat at +1. Automotive jumped 11. All three face similar challenges: repetitive work, limited career mobility, and pay that hasn't kept pace with inflation. Automotive's gain reflects increased investment in EV production and battery manufacturing, which brought higher wages and new roles. Retail remains stuck because customer-facing stress and unpredictable scheduling haven't improved meaningfully.

• Government/Public Sector (11): The lowest score, down 13 points. Government employees face bureaucratic inefficiency, political volatility, and compensation that lags the private sector. Job security used to offset these drawbacks. That's no longer enough. The score indicates systemic problems that can't be fixed with surveys alone.

Company Size and eNPS: Why Startups Score Higher

Industry matters. Company size matters as much.

The pattern is consistent across datasets: smaller companies report higher eNPS scores than larger ones. This isn't about whether big companies are "worse." It's about structural realities that come with scale.

Source: SurveyMonkey eNPS Benchmarks 2024

At 50 employees, everyone knows everyone. Leadership is accessible. Changes happen fast. At 5,000 employees, you have layers of management, multiple departments with competing priorities, and decisions that take months. Employees at small companies feel their individual impact more directly. That shows up in eNPS.

The drop isn't linear. The steepest decline happens between 250 and 1,000 employees, where companies transition from "everyone in one building" to "regional offices and departments." Culture becomes harder to maintain. Communication becomes more formal. Employees start feeling like they're working for "the company" instead of working with their team.

This doesn't mean large enterprises are doomed to low scores. It means they need to work harder to maintain the same level of employee advocacy. Segment your eNPS by department. A 5,000-person company might have a product team scoring 45 and a support team scoring 12. The aggregate hides what's actually happening.

eNPS Scores of Top Companies (Real Examples)

Benchmarks tell you what's typical. Real company examples show what's actually possible. These scores come from Comparably, Custify's industry analysis, and publicly disclosed eNPS data:

• HubSpot: 74-77 (varies by reporting period). The SaaS company consistently scores at the top of employee satisfaction rankings. Flexible work policies, transparent communication, and genuine investment in culture aren't just marketing.
• Adobe: 76. Another tech leader. Strong career development programs and competitive compensation keep employees engaged.
• Asana: 69. A smaller player with exceptional scores. Demonstrates that you don't need Google-scale resources to build strong employee advocacy.
• SurveyMonkey: 67. Ironic that a survey company scores well on employee surveys, but the data checks out.
• Atlassian: 63. Remote-first culture before COVID made it mainstream. Employees value the autonomy.
• Slack: 52. Solid score, though lower than you might expect for a communication platform. Reflects the challenges of maintaining culture during rapid growth and acquisition by Salesforce.
• Microsoft: 38. Decent for a company of its size (200,000+ employees). Shows that large enterprises can maintain positive eNPS with the right programs.
• Shopify: 27. Lower than you'd expect for a high-growth tech company. Rapid scaling created cultural challenges that haven't fully resolved.

The pattern: companies scoring above 50 tend to have transparent leadership, clear career paths, and cultures that prioritize employee wellbeing beyond surface-level perks. Companies below 30 often have one of three issues: rapid growth outpaced culture-building, leadership turnover created instability, or compensation hasn't kept pace with employee expectations.

Year-Over-Year Trends: Who's Gaining Ground

Static benchmarks don't tell you where industries are headed. Year-over-year changes reveal momentum. Based on QuestionPro's 2025 data comparing 2024 to 2025 scores:

Biggest gains:

• Food, Beverage, Restaurant: +27 points (6 → 33)
• Transportation: +14 points (19 → 33)
• Automotive: +11 points (6 → 17)
• Financial Services: +8 points (38 → 46)
• Healthcare: +8 points (17 → 25)
• Manufacturing: +8 points (13 → 21)

Steepest declines:

• Education Administration: -19 points (42 → 23)
• Construction: -13 points (48 → 35)
• Government/Public Sector: -13 points (24 → 11)
• Insurance: -8 points (38 → 30)
• Information Technology: -5 points (71 → 66)
• Banking: -4 points (43 → 39)

The industries gaining ground are the ones that made structural changes post-pandemic: better wages, more flexible schedules, clearer career paths. Food service's 27-point jump isn't an accident. Companies that ignored labor shortages went out of business. The ones that survived adapted.

The industries losing ground are dealing with systemic issues that surveys can't fix. Education's 19-point drop reflects political dysfunction and budget cuts. Government's 13-point decline shows what happens when compensation lags inflation by years. IT's 5-point drop, despite remaining the highest-scoring industry, signals that even tech employees are feeling uncertainty from layoffs and restructuring.

If your industry is trending down, your eNPS won't improve just by running surveys. The fundamentals of how when and where to collect Net Promoter Score surveys matter, but you need to address the root causes first.

How to Use These Benchmarks: A Diagnostic Framework

Benchmarks don't tell you what to do. They tell you where to look. Here's how to interpret your score relative to the data:

The framework works only if you act on what you find. NPS detractors sitting in a dashboard doesn't improve eNPS. Following up within 30 days does.

How to Benchmark Properly: Internal vs. External

External benchmarking tells you if you're competitive. Internal benchmarking tells you if you're improving. You need both. This section explains when to compare against industry averages versus when to track your own progress.

• External benchmarking (comparing your score to industry averages) gives you context. It tells you whether you're competitive in the labor market. Use it to set realistic targets and identify gaps.

• Internal benchmarking (tracking your own score over time) gives you direction. A manufacturing company improving from 15 to 21 over two years is making real progress, even though 21 is still below the global average. A tech company dropping from 50 to 40 is losing ground, even though 40 is still "good" on paper.

Compare externally to understand your position. Compare internally to measure whether you're actually improving. If your score is stagnant for six months, something in your closing the feedback loop NPS process is broken.

Set improvement targets based on internal baselines, not external benchmarks. If your current eNPS is 18, aiming for 30 within a quarter is unrealistic. Aim for 22. Incremental progress compounds. A 4-point improvement in one quarter often leads to a 6-point improvement the next, because employees see that feedback actually changes things.

Measure quarterly, not annually. Annual eNPS surveys tell you what happened six months ago. Quarterly pulse surveys let you catch problems while they're still fixable. NPS survey response rates stay higher when employees see that leadership acts on results fast.

Factors That Impact eNPS (Beyond Industry)

Industry and company size explain part of the variance. The rest comes down to these six factors:

• Compensation and benefits. Employees who feel underpaid relative to market rates score lower, regardless of industry. This isn't about absolute pay. It's about whether pay feels fair for the work and competitive with alternatives. If your eNPS is low and turnover is high, start here.

• Manager quality. Bad managers drive down eNPS faster than bad pay. Research from Perceptyx shows that manager effectiveness accounts for 70% of the variance in team-level engagement scores. Employees who rate their manager poorly are overwhelmingly detractors. Train managers or replace them. There's no middle ground.

• Career growth opportunities. Employees who see a path forward are promoters. Employees who feel stuck are passives or detractors. This matters more in industries where external mobility is high (tech, finance) than in industries where careers are stable by default (government, education).

• Recognition and appreciation. Feeling valued doesn't require elaborate programs. It requires consistency. Companies with integrated recognition programs see a 15x increase in the likelihood of employees thriving at work, according to O.C. Tanner's 2025 Global Culture Report. Regular, specific feedback matters more than annual awards.

• Work-life balance. Burnout kills eNPS. According to Deloitte's Workplace Burnout survey, 77% of employees have experienced burnout at their current job, and poor work-life balance is the top driver. Flexible work arrangements, reasonable workloads, and leadership that models boundaries all contribute.

• Transparency and communication. Employees who trust leadership score higher. Trust comes from consistent, honest communication about company direction, challenges, and decisions. When leadership hides bad news or makes unexplained changes, eNPS drops fast.

Fix these six, and your eNPS will improve regardless of your industry benchmark.

Regional Differences in eNPS

Geography matters. Employee expectations, cultural norms, and labor market dynamics vary by region. Here's what global eNPS data shows:

• North America: Scores tend to run slightly above global averages in most industries. Tech hubs (San Francisco, Seattle, Austin) skew higher due to competitive markets and progressive work cultures. Industrial and service sectors in the Midwest and South score lower, reflecting wage stagnation and fewer career opportunities.

• Europe: Nordic countries (Sweden, Norway, Denmark) report eNPS scores 10-20 points higher than global averages, driven by strong labor protections, work-life balance norms, and social safety nets. Southern and Eastern Europe score lower, closer to global averages, reflecting economic pressures and less flexibility in work arrangements.

• Asia-Pacific: Wide variance. Singapore, Australia, and parts of Japan score well in tech and finance. China and India show mixed results: high scores at multinational tech companies, low scores in manufacturing and traditional sectors where work hours are long and upward mobility is limited.

• Latin America: Generally lower than global averages, with exceptions in Brazil and Mexico's growing tech sectors. Economic volatility and political uncertainty weigh on employee confidence.

• Middle East and Africa: Limited data, but what exists suggests scores below global averages in most industries except oil/gas and financial services, where compensation is competitive enough to offset other concerns.

If you operate globally, segment your eNPS by region. A company-wide score of 30 might hide a European office scoring 45 and a Southeast Asian office scoring 15. Regional differences require regional solutions.

Using Benchmarks to Drive Real Improvement

Benchmarks tell you where you stand. They don't tell you what to do next.

If your eNPS is below your industry average, the fix isn't to run more surveys. It's to identify why employees aren't recommending you as a place to work, address the top three issues, and measure whether those changes move the score. If your eNPS is above average, the work isn't done. Culture at that level requires active maintenance.

Start by measuring your baseline eNPS. Compare it to your industry and company size benchmarks. Identify whether you're competitive. Then segment by department, tenure, and role. Find where the lowest scores cluster. That's where to focus first.

Quarterly pulse surveys keep you ahead of problems. Close the feedback loop within 30 days. Employees who see action after providing feedback become promoters. Employees who see surveys but no follow-up become detractors.

The companies with the highest eNPS scores aren't the ones with the best perks. They're the ones that fix what's broken, communicate openly about challenges, and treat employee feedback as data worth acting on.