Employee satisfaction – is the term that is on the mind of every leader and manager in today’s business world. Why would it not? Improving employee experience and satisfaction has been a major concern for organizations globally. Having gotten familiar with the fact that employee satisfaction is critical for an organization’s future, organizations have started taking concrete steps to improve their employee satisfaction. Let us look at what employee satisfaction exactly and what drives it. Oh, did you know that employee satisfaction can also your organization succeed? How? Stay tuned until the end!
What is employee satisfaction and why is it important?
The term employee satisfaction may appear to be quite a simple term. However, it is a bit more complex than it may appear to be as it constitutes of various aspects. Your organization’s employee satisfaction is impacted by elements such as:
- How influential do they find their jobs
- How engaged and fulfilled do they feel in performing their roles
- The salary and other compensation they receive
- Their relationship with the team, employees, and management
- The resources available for them
- The work flexibility they have
Studies and research have gone on to prove that the biggest benefit of employee satisfaction is that it facilitates employee engagement. Now, employee engagement refers to how committed your employees are to their job and the organization. It also reflects how much effort your employees are willing to make for attaining their objectives. Satisfied and engaged employees tend to outperform unsatisfied and disengaged employees. Not just that, they are far more committed and remain longer in the organization.
Employee satisfaction plays a major role in organizational productivity levels, rate of staff turnover, and the revenue earned by it. Therefore, it’s highly important for guiding an organization toward the desired success. A high degree of employee engagement and satisfaction results in boosting your team’s productivity and customer satisfaction levels. Moreover, it gives you a greater level of employee retention and reduces the employee turnover rate. It helps you to retain your talented workforce, motivate them to work at their best, and boost your organization’s potential to grow further.
How to improve employee satisfaction?
There are multiple ways through which you can improve your organization’s employee satisfaction and engagement. Following are the most effective ones:
Use the survey data wisely
The best way to use your employee satisfaction data is by comparing it with the previous surveys and data. Stating the obvious, when your recent results are better than the last ones, take it as an indication to continue with the changes you made. Now, if you do not have any data, make sure you thoroughly examine the current data. This enables you to determine the areas that need your attention and improvisation. Not just that, but you will get familiar with the positive aspects of your work culture as well.
Give more of what the employees want
The data you get from your employee satisfaction surveys should be enough for you to understand the top motivators for your employees. These surveys make it easy for you to understand the main driving factors of your different employees. Now, these drivers can be anything from the flexible working schedule to competitive salaries and work culture. These can be anything that keeps them engaged and motivated in the workplace.
Provide growth opportunities
Employees value the organizations that provide them with prospects for career development and growth. Be it a chance to climb up in the company, help from additional training, or increased responsibilities, employees prefer jobs where they can progress and develop further. In the long run, this will benefit your organization as well. When these employees are more trained and motivated, they will work more efficiently.
Encourage feedback
Your employees will be more transparent in answering the employee satisfaction survey when feedback is already practiced in your work culture. However, simply taking the feedback is not the entire process. Your employees need to feel that this is not a mere activity, but their opinion is of utmost importance to the organization. Actionable change should be the outcome of this feedback process. This will motivate your employees to be more open and transparent while giving their feedback.
Appreciate the good work
Recognizing and rewarding the efforts of your employees is highly paramount for maintaining high levels of employee satisfaction. In such a work culture, employees get more motivated to work at the best possible level when they know that their hard work will be appreciated and rewarded. This in turn pays back and contributes to the organization’s development and success.
Indeed, employee satisfaction is a key contributor to the organization’s success. Improving employee experience and satisfaction remains to be a high priority for the companies of today. Reach out to us here for all your queries reading improving employee satisfaction.
Gaurav Sabharwal
CEO of JOP
Gaurav is the CEO of JOP (Joy of Performing), an OKR and high-performance enabling platform. With almost two decades of experience in building businesses, he knows what it takes to enable high performance within a team and engage them in the business. He supports organizations globally by becoming their growth partner and helping them build high-performing teams by tackling issues like lack of focus, unclear goals, unaligned teams, lack of funding, no continuous improvement framework, etc. He is a Certified OKR Coach and loves to share helpful resources and address common organizational challenges to help drive team performance. Read More