Employee satisfaction is a term used to describe how satisfied employees are with their workplace, employee experience, the organization, the working environments, etc. Satisfaction is about to what extent the employee enjoys their job.
Job satisfaction reflects the employee’s feeling of belonging and attachment to his or her job and the organization in general. In other words, job satisfaction is the result of an individual comparison between the present conditions at work and expectations of a good working life.
Typical survey questions on satisfaction could be:
Employee satisfaction and employee engagement may seem like two very similar terms, but they are actually quite different. To drive productivity and build a strong workforce, it is important to understand the difference between these two.
Employee satisfaction is “what can the organization do for me?” Can I have a weekly day off, leave at 2 pm or work remotely? On the contrary, employee engagement is more like a partnership between the employee and the organization, meaning “What can we do together to succeed?”
Employee satisfaction refers to the extent to which employees are content or pleased with their work and environment.
Employee satisfaction is about the extent to which the employee feels that his/her desires and needs at work are fulfilled. Key characteristics of employee satisfaction include:
Employee Engagement refers to the emotional connection, involvement, and commitment employees have towards their work and the organization. It is more related to the greater mission, cooperation, and succeeding as a business.
Key characteristics of employee engagement include:
That means employees may be satisfied with the working conditions, but may not necessarily be engaged in their work. And that can be a problem for the organization, because satisfaction may be enough to retain the employees, but it will most likely not be enough to tap the full potential of an employee’s productivity and ultimately becomes a waste of resources and money in the organization.
Before you can work with employee satisfaction, you need to know what impacts it. The most important thing that impacts your employee satisfaction is the job and all that it entails. To what extent are the job tasks interesting? Are my competencies being used in the best way?
Other aspects that impact employee satisfaction are:
If you want to work very specifically on increasing your employees’ satisfaction, below are the eight main drivers we recommend you focus and work on with dedication.
Working with these eight drivers, you can help create a work environment that supports your employee satisfaction and fosters a positive and engaged workforce.
The reputation driver is largely driven by the immediate feeling an employee has when thinking about the organization. This also means that, if an employee is personally dissatisfied with being a member of the organization, it will influence the sense of organizational pride negatively. Also, this score is typically influenced by the perception of the Senior Management of the organization.
Questions to evaluate this driver:
Senior Management acts as the captain(s) steering the ship that is the organization. The confidence in them determines how you respond to the decisions they make. If the confidence is high, you will follow their directions, even if you don’t always agree or understand them fully. Senior Management is very dependent on managers at all levels to bring forward the voice of the employees, and in this way, there may be steps you can take in relation to your own team to improve the scores on this driver.
Questions to evaluate this driver:
From many years of experience, we know that the immediate manager is key for improving the results on drivers such as Cooperation, the Job, Learning & Development, and Working Conditions. This close connection also means that if your team sees your leader working actively to improve one of these related drivers, it will show in the next result for immediate manager. For leaders, the most important thing is to focus on leadership behavior and make behavioral adjustments in the way the leader works with the actions planned.
Questions to evaluate this driver:
Cooperation depends on a valid and active norm of reciprocation in the team. Team members should feel confident that an effort on their part will be reciprocated by other team members.
Questions to evaluate this driver:
We know from our many projects, that job content is one of the primary drivers of engagement and satisfaction. Actually, it is often the driver with the biggest influence on employee satisfaction and engagement. Hence, it is very common that this driver is among the highlighted focus areas to improve or maintain. Normally this is also an area with a lot of opportunities for the manager, the team, and the individual team member to make an impact together.
Questions to evaluate this driver:
Working conditions are the conditions surrounding the work itself and which enable the employees to perform their job. It ranges from the actual physical surroundings to the mental perceptions of the surrounding environment.
Overall, this driver concerns the prerequisites we have for doing a good job and feeling good while doing it. Working conditions are often highlighted as a focus area for the team, even if the score is not particularly low. This happens when the data shows that this driver has a significant impact on the engagement of your team and that there is potential to achieve an even better result.
Questions to evaluate this driver:
It is important to remember that the remuneration score covers more than just salary. While some organizations choose to invest mainly in monetary rewards such as the monthly base pay, pension, and bonus schemes, others will instead focus on softer benefits like flexible working arrangements, vacation days, health and life insurance, or the opportunity to do volunteer work with pay. The remuneration driver covers both areas, as well as the feeling of job security.
Salary/bonus is one of the most common ways to motivate people, even though it has a low impact on engagement. Studies carried out across industries and organizational levels show that employees who feel they are treated fairly by their organization, superiors and colleagues are more motivated and perform better than employees who perceive their work environment as unfair.
Questions to evaluate this driver:
It is not uncommon to think back to our last classroom training when we evaluated the level of learning and development in our job. But most learning happens on the job and everybody has a responsibility to be proactive about their own development. Leaders should aim to establish a good environment for learning and feedback while expanding the understanding of the many shapes and forms of learning. One way to foster a learning environment is to work with “Action Learning.”
Questions to evaluate this driver:
When you succeed in having satisfied employees in the organization, you will experience a number of benefits that will strengthen your organization. The three main benefits of satisfied employees are:
When your employees are satisfied, they are more likely to provide better customer service, leading to increased customer satisfaction and loyalty.
This guide "8 steps to successful Employee Experience in year 1" exclusively focuses on year 1 of your transformation. We hope that these 8 steps will make your work with employee experiences more manageable - and improved!