by Miles Burke
Increasing job satisfaction makes great business sense. You end up with engaged employees and a better business.
Recent workplace studies that have shown that encouraging management to focus on strategies that increase job satisfaction creates a more productive workforce and higher rates of business success.
By focusing on increasing job satisfaction, your organisation can:
- Lower employee turnover
- Create brand ambassadors
- Improve company productivity
- Increase bottom line profits
- Reduce recruitment costs
So how do you go about increasing job satisfaction?
Every organisation is different. What works with one team may not work as well with others. But there are a number of similar activities that work.
1. Ask employees about their personal motivations
Ask your team what they want. This can be as simple as team meetings where everyone openly discusses the issues they face in their roles, and looking for creative ways of easing them.
Using an employee survey system can highlight areas of concern, as well as employees who could do with additional mentoring.
2. Reduce micro-management
Nobody likes having a manager constantly peering over their shoulder. Reduced micro-management will make employees feel trusted. They will reward this trust.
By removing micro-management, a task goes from being something that they are expected to do to being something that is their responsibility.
3. Improve the work environment
Improving small things can have a huge impact on the satisfaction of your team. This doesn’t necessarily mean spending big on new equipment or office fit-outs. A new coffee machine or kitchen equipment or comfortable, ergonomic seating for employees makes a difference. Run a survey on what employees would like in their work areas.
4. Improve communication across all levels
Improving communication in the organisation, from leaders to workers and – importantly – workers to leaders, is credited with increasing job satisfaction in many organisations.
Staff should be allowed to be critical and to feel they can raise concerns in a non-threatening environment. If employees are afraid to speak out, they are unlikely to put much effort into the job and will probably want to leave as soon as possible.
5. Create an employee recognition program
An employee recognition program doesn’t mean sticking their name on a plaque in the reception area once a quarter. It could be as simple as managers making an effort to thank people individually.
6. Reduce time stress
Tight deadlines have been shown to be major sources of stress for many employees. Organisations can look for ways to ease this stress by scheduling projects and work further in advance, or freeing up time by having fewer meetings.
Encourage employees to keep a journal for a few weeks, and then ask them to highlight times they felt they didn’t need to spend energy on these tasks. Reducing these tasks through the use of better delegation can free up many employees for more relevant work.
‘True motivation comes from achievement, personal development, job satisfaction, and recognition’ – Frederick Herzberg
Armed with these six strategies, management can focus on improving employee satisfaction to the benefit of everyone.
A longer version of this article originally appeared at 6q.
The level of employee satisfaction at your company can be determined in large part by the answer to one question: do your employees have the tools and support they need at work to fulfill their desires and achieve their goals? If the answer is yes, your employees are most likely satisfied.
According to Statista, 16% of employees who quit their jobs did so due to job dissatisfaction. That makes it the second leading cause only behind the need for higher pay (25%). This is a major problem for businesses, especially since the cost of replacing an employee is up to 33% of their salary, or approximately $15,000 on average. With this in mind, promoting employee satisfaction by improving overall employee experience should be a priority going forward.
Why employee satisfaction is important to your business? Satisfied employees are more motivated, productive and engaged. It depends on many factors. If enough employees are satisfied, the morale and culture of your entire organization improve. This is why, as a leader, it’s so important to take employee satisfaction seriously.
Here are our top 10 tips to help you foster employee satisfaction across your organization.
1. Empower your employees to make decisions
Research shows that when employees feel empowered, they have higher job satisfaction. Top-down management styles still have their place depending on certain variables, but in general, employee empowerment is beneficial. It leads to increased levels of innovation and nurtures innovative problem-solving skills.
In the fast-paced modern business world, this type of “think-on-your-feet” mentality can also cut through traditional bureaucracy and create a more efficient management chain. Empowered employees are more confident, autonomous and feel in control of their work. It’s only logical that this results in more satisfied people.
2. Offer flexible work arrangements
With more people working remotely, flexible work arrangements are becoming a necessity. But along with gaining that flexibility, employees are now faced with an elevated challenge of balancing work and personal life, as these aspects have blurred together. Allowing more flexibility regarding your employees’ schedules and office hours has been shown to improve employee satisfaction in quantitative ways.
White Paper
Attract, Engage and Retain: The Employee Experience Advantage
In addition to ROI, employee experience measures help companies succeed at retention and recruiting.
3. Install a transparent culture based on communication
Lack of communication between employees and management creates tension in the workplace and can ultimately lead to many undesirable outcomes. Employees want to stay in the loop and be kept informed about where the business is heading. Be transparent about the company’s objectives and communicate with them on a regular basis through the digital workplace. A social intranet platform provides a simple, elegant framework where these communications can take place organically.
5. Enact health initiatives
A worker’s mental and physical health can make a dramatic impact on their productivity. Healthy individuals are more productive and tend to be more satisfied. That’s why it’s so important to monitor your employees’ mental and physical well-being. Keeping a close eye on morale can also serve as a feedback loop for employee engagement.
Emphasize the importance of maintaining physical and mental health in the workplace by encouraging exercise and offering fitness classes or gym discounts. Additionally, consider providing healthy snacks and meal alternatives in the workplace to help employees make better decisions for their well-being.
LumApps, the Employee Experience Platform
6. Provide a roadmap for growth
People who can’t see a path ahead of them for career growth are less engaged. Essentially, workers want to know how to advance and what it takes to move forward in their careers. Ultimately, investing in an employee’s career path leads to higher job satisfaction because it will help them see a successful future.
By offering career advancement programs and additional training, you show your employees not only that you value their work, but also that you see great potential in their abilities. Instilling such confidence is a huge boost to employees’ motivation, productivity and overall job satisfaction.
7. Recognize employee achievements
Over two-thirds (70%) of employees who received praise for their work had high job satisfaction compared to only 39% who hadn’t been recognized. Be sure to hold regular recognition ceremonies and frequently communicate with individuals to let them know that their efforts are appreciated.
A social intranet allows for seamless communication through features like videoconferencing integrations and calendar syncing, helping your team get together quickly. You can even send out recognition updates to targeted teams and highlight high-performing members.
8. Provide continuous learning opportunities
When looking to improve employee satisfaction, review your approach to professional learning. Creating a workplace with learning and development opportunities matters – particularly to certain age demographics. In fact, 87% of millennials say it’s important to them in their jobs.
While most organizations believe in the power of learning — 84% of corporate leaders view learning as a critical issue — most learning initiatives are less impactful than they could be. Professional development requires more than books or training courses; it requires providing opportunities for actively learning by doing. This type of learning is otherwise known as experiential learning. Be sure that’s a part of your professional learning program.
9. Provide user-friendly cloud solutions that are easy to deploy
Your company will have some tech-savvy employees that will embrace new work-at-home policies and catch on quickly. Others, however, may not be as familiar with more modern applications. Even tech-minded workers are probably missing out on key information that would make them more productive. As such, be sure to provision user-friendly cloud solutions and applications inside a digital workplace that employees can deploy out of the box.
When you deploy a social intranet, the onus on training shouldn’t be put squarely on your shoulders. Look for a solution that offers comprehensive, easy-to-follow training materials that can get employees up to speed quickly and effectively.
10. Ditch micromanagement
Employees commonly cite micromanagers as the biggest complaint in their jobs. While top-down management can still be effective, micromanagement is demonstrably not and can poison employee experience by impeding creativity and increasing stress. Your employees want room to learn, grow and achieve on their own – they don’t want a manager breathing down their necks. Identify problem managers and re-train them to take a more collaborative approach.
If you have a transparent, honest culture based on regular communication, measuring employee satisfaction is easy. It can be done through many channels including one-on-one meetings, feedback sessions and digital surveys. A collaborative social intranet allows for survey integration where you gather feedback from different employees and teams. The insights you gather from honest feedback can help your business move forward with productive, satisfied employees, creating a positive overall employee experience.
White Paper
Attract, Engage and Retain: The Employee Experience Advantage
In addition to ROI, employee experience measures help companies succeed at retention and recruiting.