Employee Satisfaction

Employee satisfaction is used to describe if employees are happy and fulfilling their desires and needs at work. The most important factor in employee satisfaction is that satisfied employees must do the job and make necessary contributions to the organization they work in. It is a wider term used by the Human Capital industry to describe how satisfied or content employees are with elements like their jobs, their employee experience, and the organizations they work for. Employee satisfaction helps in determining the overall position of the organization, which is why organizations employ regular surveys to measure employee satisfaction and track satisfaction trends over time. In surveys, having a high satisfaction level counts that the employees are happy.

Employee satisfaction is important for retention, but is not necessarily a predictor of performance, while employee engagement which indicates an employee’s passion for their work, among other things-is directly tied to output. Satisfaction occurs as a result of both factors like compensation and benefits as well as less-tangible elements like engagement, recognition, and strong leadership.

Often people confuse between employee engagement and employee satisfaction but for the knowledge, they’re two different things holding different meanings altogether. ‘Employee engagement is the term that occurs when workers are committed to helping their companies in achieving their set of goals. Whereas, ‘Employee satisfaction is the state where employees are enjoying their jobs but not completely interested or devoting their time in contributing to the company’s goal as they are not contending with the job because of various factors.

How do achieve employee satisfaction?

1. Be Realistic with your expectations — Employers need to be very open about whatever they expect from their employees. Employees feel a lot of stress and anxiety because of the stress of meeting the expectations of the company. As an employer, it’s your duty to make sure employees are not feeling pressurized out of work, they likely won’t have the courage to raise that as an issue. This might be hard for you to do depending on the organization’s goals, but it is important to have an open mindset and honest conversation with your team to see if the expectation level is set high.

2. Recognize good work — Recognizing your employees is one of the easiest ways to increase job satisfaction. The only thing required here is to be more mindful of what’s going on around you. This will help you in knowing what your team is doing.

3. Focus on the Long Term — Short-term thinking will help you in achieving short-term goals or quick wins which are not bad for the business but can sometimes be very exhausting and frustrating for the employees. In order for employees to get motivated, they need to see the similar long-term vision that the senior management team has.

4. Communication — There needs to be good communication between the employees and the employer. Work on creating a culture of open and honest communication within your team. That feeling of safety and comfort of saying whatever you want to anyone on your team is a key component of a successful team.

5. Care about employee well-being — Being concerned about employees’ well-being and knowing how they are keeping up with it is the most effective way to increase job satisfaction.

6. Offer opportunities for learning — Personal growth is arguably the most important factor in employee engagement. Companies need to make sure that it is offering knowledge and skills to all their employees so that they keep learning throughout their tenure.

7. Give frequent feedback — Just like an appreciation is required, feedback is needed too. This needs to be pretty straightforward and honest, employees will respect that. Make time for regular feedback by scheduling one-on-ones once a month with every individual on your team and create more informal opportunities for conversation.

8. Empower Employees — For employees to be satisfied at work, they need to feel that they’re performing well and are in control. They need to feel that they have the autonomy of producing excellent work for the organization which they can be proud of.

Some of the employee satisfaction ideas

1) Respect them — Every individual employee must feel respected by their managers and colleagues.

2) Listen more — Managers need to keep their doors open to all the employees and encourage the staff to approach them to ask questions, share ideas, and voice concerns.

3) Be transparent — The most important thing in a business is transparency. Every employee would not always like what they hear, but they’ll respect you for being open and honest.

4) Make space for creativity — Creativity brings out the uniqueness in an individual. When employees feel that space for creativeness they feel more connected to the organization and productivity tends to increase.

5) Accept mistakes — It’s okay to make a mistake from time to time. It’s not a big deal and people learn from their mistakes.

6) Training and skills development — The development of skills is good for business and good for morale if it is done in the right way.

7) Create a wonderful ambiance — Having a positive workplace will bring positive vibes to employees as well as in the office.

8) Rewards — Pay, perks, benefits, and bonuses should be paid to every employee based on their contributions and should be motivated for the same.