Dell employee satisfaction ratings fell by almost 50% in two years

Every year, Dell asks employees in company surveys how likely it is to recommend the company as a good place for the workplace.

Last year, the results were not great.

This year they’re even worse.

On Tuesday, Dell Chief Human Resources Officer Jenn Saavedra announced that employees’ net promoter scores (industry standard employee satisfaction) had dropped to 32, according to an internal video update transcript obtained by Business Insider.

The results show a double-digit drop in the second year ENP running on Dell (down from 63 to 48 in 2024, a nearly 50% decrease over the two years.

Saavedra said the ENPS score was “under the benchmark we aim to achieve, and we take it seriously.”

Saavedra told employees that Dell was “navigating a lot of change, both in the company and in the wider environment,” adding that the pace and scale of change was “a lot.”

Dell declined to request comment on the story.

“Tell Dell” survey results

The ENPS score is an important metric in Dell’s annual survey called “Tell Dell.”

One question is asked to rank employees on a scale of 1 to 10. ENP is calculated as the promoter percentage minus the withdrawal percentage.

Four Dell employees who spoke with BI about Tell Dell’s outcomes raised factors such as Dell’s return to the office, continuous layoffs, fatigue from the company’s AI push, and cultural changes as reasons for ENP. They spoke anonymously. BI confirmed their identity and employment.

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“All regular layoffs and the feeling that the company doesn’t listen to employee concerns have reduced general confidence,” said one employee at Dell Round Rock, Texas.

The person said that office conditions such as “a noisy room or desk that you can feel temporarily” also contribute to low morale.

“Most people I know are not safe for their job,” they added.

“I was more negative about my Terdel than ever,” a del engineer who had been at the company for over eight years told BI.

The engineer said he felt the push and layoffs of the company’s RTO had damaged Dell’s reputation as a good place.

Previously, managers were flexible, labor cuts were rare, and employees enjoyed work-life balance, the engineer said.

They said they felt that their culture had changed because “gradually and less compassion and understanding was forced into the office.”

“The certain layoffs are the cherry blossoms above,” the engineer added.

Dell has been steadily increasing its RTO policy since February 2024, asking all US employees to classify them as either hybrid or remote. In September, the sales team was called back to the office five days a week, and in January, they were told that all staff members live near the Dell office and that they should be present five days a week from March.

Vivek Mohindra, Senior Vice President of Corporate Strategy at Dell, previously told BI that having staff in the office has provided “great benefits” including “learning, training and mentoring from each other.”

“Nothing about all the technologies in the world is faster than the speed of human interaction,” CEO Michael Dell told staff members of the internal memo when the five-day RTO was announced.

Alongside the RTO push, Dell’s workforce has been shrinking significantly in recent years. SEC submissions from March showed that the company’s staff number has dropped by 25,000 over the past two years. This is a 19% reduction. As of January 2025, Dell employs 108,000 people.

One technical support employee at the company’s Round Rock headquarters said the decline in head numbers led to an increase in team workload. At the same time, ongoing workforce cuts have hindered internal movements and promotions, employees said.

Dell’s leadership was a bright spot

The survey shows a decline in employee satisfaction, but Dell workers responded favorably to questions about leaders.

Leader’s net promotion score was 76 years old, and employees said the leader was cooperative and supportive, and helped them defend modernization, Savedra said in the update.

Dell has guided the company into the future of AI, deploying AI beyond its internal operating model in 2024, as the leading provider of the key infrastructure and servers businesses need when Dell deploys AI.

Dell’s ISG division, which develops AI servers, has grown 29% year-on-year, the company reports in its latest annual results.

Total annual revenues rose 8% in the 2024 fiscal year to $95.6 billion. This is the third highest after the pandemic-era boom in sales pushed annual revenue to $102.3 billion.

Improve employee satisfaction

In a six-minute video update, Saavedra said Dell will be “enhancing visibility” through quarterly updates and people’s leader meetings to help develop more transparent communications.

“Everyone wants direct communication from leadership and clarity about where we are heading and why,” Saavedra said.

Leaders will also review the team’s Tell Dell results and turn feedback into action, she said.

HR Read encouraged more frequent two-way conversations between leaders and teams and suggested using the happiness resources available to employees.

“Hopefully, a reduction in scores over two years means that they will make changes to popular professional workers,” the technical support worker said.

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