The One Number Businesses Need to Know

How Emojis Can Help Manage Employee Turnover and Improve Corporate Culture

There is one number that matters more than anything else to businesses striving to make positive advances in corporate culture — and the key to finding it may lie in an emoji.

“In 2003, the Harvard Business Review published an article about the Net Promoter Score, describing it as the one number you need to grow,” said Tina Schweiger, chief executive officer of Mindful Appy, an Austin-based tech firm. “We created the Net Emotional Index, which we believe is the one number you need to know.”

The groundbreaking Net Promoter Score (NPS) is based on a simple concept: a number — or score — indicating the percentage of customers enthusiastic enough about a company to refer it to a friend or colleague. The higher the score, the more directly correlated with growth rates among competitors. Schweiger believes the NPS is limited, however.

“Complex humans have feelings and contradictory opinions,” she said. “I may promote or recommend a product to my grandmother but not to my kid. So at the same time, I can be a promoter and a detractor. That’s where the Net Emotional Index comes in.”

The Net Emotional Index (NEI) is a new business metric — think real-time emotional KPI — based on emotional data that enables businesses to manage employee turnover and corporate culture in the age of Covid and work from home. A single number between -100 and +100 tells a company how happy — or unhappy — their employees genuinely are.

The benefits of rooting out toxic elements of company culture are real. According to research highlighted by the Harvard Business Review, toxic workplace cultures have driven 20 percent of U.S. employees out of their jobs in the past five years — at a turnover cost greater than $223 billion.

“Why wouldn’t a company want to learn more about toxic workplace issues?” she said. “We provide a truly anonymous platform that cannot be traced back to a single person. That empowers employees to express how they are feeling throughout the workday.”

With Mindful Appy, companies can review emotional states by team, department, group, or region. There is no additional software or mobile apps required. Staff simply respond…