If your team consists mostly of clock watchers and paycheck chasers, it might be time to step back and assess your employees' level of job satisfaction.
As a common success metric in Human Resources (HR) departments, employee satisfaction measures how happy workers feel in their current position. Their satisfaction stems from factors such as:
Because your workforce dictates the overall performance of your organization, you want them to stay happy and motivated throughout their employee lifecycle.
So, what can you do to get there?
The main motivators of job satisfaction include competitive pay, honest recognition, and meaningful work. After all, people want a job that not only pays their bills, but one that also brings emotional fulfillment to their lives. As a dependable manager, it's your job to help your team achieve those goals.
However, you won’t accomplish much if your company’s culture overlooks employee satisfaction. While being satisfied with one's job isn't a one-sided matter, some companies may slack off on their side.
As a quick example, flaunting the words "employee satisfaction" on a slide deck is a fairly easy task. Bringing this goal to life isn't difficult, yet it requires attentive planning. You worked hard to build your all-star team – so give them plenty of reasons to stay.
This article will go over why employee satisfaction matters, including some of the ways HR professionals can boost workplace happiness and engagement.
The Deloitte Global 2021 Millenial and Gen Z Survey stated that 62% of millennials think businesses “have no ambition beyond wanting to make money."
To avoid losing a large percentage of their workforce, leaders should strive to reverse that kind of distorted assumption. Especially when so many companies are dropping their best talent due to a lack of proper recognition.
Another study published in the Journal of Corporate Finance found a connection between employee performance and sentiment based on Glassdoor reviews. The goal of this study was to show that a satisfied workforce drives business results.
They were right: the results showed that each 1-star uptick in a company's rating brought a 7,9% average increase in market value.
As you can see, a lack of job satisfaction creates all of the bottlenecks that paralyze any business – from low engagement to poor reviews. By contrast, high satisfaction comes with generous benefits.
Below are just a few of the benefits high employee satisfaction brings along.
Employee turnover is expensive. Besides covering exit costs, organizations need to sustain recruiting, interviewing, and hiring costs. That can cost companies between 30 to 50% of an annual salary to replace an entry-level employee, reaching up to 400% for senior employees.
If you have multiple dissatisfied employees, expect increased turnovers. The reason being that, without enough reasons to stay, people will leave as soon as they get the chance. That's why working to increase employee satisfaction is key to keeping your top talent around for the long haul.
Over the last year, about 52% of employees felt burnt out in their jobs. And the pandemic wasn't the only event to blame.
Truth is, people are unlikely to be productive at a job they don't enjoy. They're much more likely to avoid work or commit to doing the bare minimum until they can find a better opportunity.
A study conducted by economists at the University of Warwick found that unhappy workers are 10% less productive than content employees. That same study showed that happy employees boost productivity by 12%.
Plus, according to The Harvard Business Review, satisfied employees help increase sales by 37% and productivity by 31%, on average.
Simply said: if someone enjoys what they're doing, they'll put in the work while rooting for the company.
If dissatisfied employees don't feel like they're part of a team, let alone a company's bigger purpose. When only 21% of employees report feeling engaged at work, a whopping 79% don't feel the need to be loyal to their companies.
Disengaged workers are okay with being wallflowers. They'll do what they have to do and dismiss any opportunities for improvement. While that attitude isn't wrong, it isn’t scalable, either.
Satisfied and engaged employees, on the other hand, have a much deeper connection to their positions. They're the ones whose enthusiasm is contagious, and who are willing to contribute to a productive work environment. Whatever they do, they do it for the company – not just themselves.
Even if an employee is satisfied with their job, that doesn't mean they'll be engaged in the job. Here's what that means.
Although there's a clear link between satisfaction and engagement, these terms aren't interchangeable. Each of them has their own job to fulfill.
Employee engagement refers to a worker's level of commitment to their duties within a company. It involves their dedication to tasks and how productive they are while accomplishing them.
Employee satisfaction, in its turn, doesn't necessarily improve productivity. Yet, it ensures that workers are content with their role and remain in it for an extended period.
One can't work without the other, in that satisfaction is crucial if you'd like your employees to be more engaged. Only satisfied team members have the foundational happiness necessary to carry out their duties in a way that benefits the entire company.
Still, employee satisfaction isn't one-sized. Not two teams are the same, and it's essential that HR professionals can measure and identify the motivators for both happiness and engagement.
Even if you've never heard your employees complain, it's lazy to assume that they're content. You need to reach an educated guess of where they currently stand, and work from there.
Here are a few ways you can measure your team's level of satisfaction to get a strong reference point.
Surveys are one of the easiest ways to assess and track employee satisfaction in the company. They can give you a baseline assessment of what employees like, dislike, and ways management can improve to better accommodate their needs.
Ideally, you should run employee surveys quarterly or annually.
In your survey, it's important to ask questions that are 1) easy to understand and 2) will give you the answers you need.
When designing your survey, avoid including multiple-choice questions only. Open-ended questions, although longer to fill out, will provide more detailed answers. Including both types of questions will help you collect enough quantitative and qualitative data.
For instance, if you need to know whether your employees feel like their input is valid, you could ask a question such as:
Do your managers value your feedback?
Or, if you need to know their opinion on compensation:
Do you feel adequately rewarded for your contribution toward your work?
Making your surveys anonymous – and being transparent about the anonymity – increases the chances of employees being candid in their answers.
When combined with intentional surveys, employee performance reviews provide many benefits. They can help you pinpoint the areas your employees excel at, as well as areas that need improvement. Based on that discovery, you can offer helpful feedback.
Assuming you have several team members to assist, using performance management software solutions will streamline the job. Solutions like Spring give you access to centralized features such as self-evaluation, team shoutouts, team questions, and team performance metrics.
Meetings may not be everyone's favorite method. They may not even be necessary if surveys and performance reviews have shown effectiveness. That said, one-on-one meetings can be the perfect way to triangulate any data you've already collected.
Since meetings dedicate a time slot to a single employee, they are powerful ways to improve personal relationships in the workplace.
As a downside, meetings are more time-consuming than practical tools and surveys. When scheduled too frequently, they could hinder the engagement you've been working so hard for. For best results, you should use a dedicated software to find the most fitting one-on-one cadence for your team.
It's true that pay isn't everything, but it surely makes a difference in both satisfaction and engagement levels. Don't expect employees to vouch for the company if their salary doesn't support a healthy work-life balance.
Compensation will always rank high as a contributor to job satisfaction. Therefore, offering competitive pay should be a top priority – unless you want your employees to look for better pay elsewhere.
It's one thing to ask for employees to share their suggestions, but quite another to make real changes with the feedback they give you.
Whether you collect that feedback through surveys or interviews, these methods are useless if their results never see the light of day. You can show employees that you appreciate their suggestions by using the collected information to boost their morale.
60% of employees consider benefits to be a critical factor when saying "yes" to any job offer, according to Glassdoor's 2015 Employment Confidence Survey. Plus, 80% of survey respondents have placed desirable benefits over a pay raise. That's how essential benefits are for retaining your top talent.
Some of the key benefits for employees include paid time off, healthcare, remote work, and flexible working hours. You can get creative with additional benefits such as vacation bonuses, pet-friendly offices, and reduced hours.
You worked hard to build a remarkable team. It's about time you've created a culture of recognition, in which employees feel as appreciated as they deserve to be.
It takes a dedicated effort to keep employees both satisfied and engaged. But all the work will pay off once you see turnover rates decrease, productivity increase, and performance metrics skyrocket.