Employee satisfaction is more important than ever.
As your employees continue to evaluate what’s important to them in their lives, job satisfaction is key. It ensures that your top performers don’t look for work elsewhere.
So, whether you’re looking to reduce employee turnover or you need to recruit new talent as your company grows, it’s time to start prioritizing satisfaction.
Keep reading to learn more about how to improve employee satisfaction, boost productivity, and reduce expensive turnover.
Importance of employee satisfaction
Employee satisfaction is key to the success of your business. If your employees aren’t happy with their bosses or the company as a whole, you can expect lower productivity and less engagement, both of which affect your bottom line.
On the other hand, if you have high levels of satisfaction, your turnover rates will reduce because employees won’t feel a need to start looking for other opportunities.
Having happy employees makes it easier for everyone in the workplace to succeed. These individuals take pride in their work and feel loyal to their employees. Ultimately, happy people are productive people.
Tips for improving employee satisfaction
To improve employee satisfaction, you must first understand why employees are dissatisfied.
Unfortunately, employee dissatisfaction is typically never the cause of one issue or event. Instead, low employee satisfaction is brought about by multiple problems that can all affect the efficiency of their work, their happiness with their job duties, and their overall feelings about the company.
Here are a few factors that can lead to employee dissatisfaction:
Underpayment
Employees deserve to get paid what they’re worth. If you start giving an employee additional duties, they should be compensated for taking on more work. While many people don’t leave jobs due to underpayment, it can contribute to someone looking for another opportunity.
Lack of recognition
Employees need to feel like they are valued. When someone does a good job on a project, they don’t expect a party. However, they might expect someone to thank them for their hard work.
Poor leadership
Very few people leave their jobs because they dislike the work; most people leave because they have bad leadership. Bad bosses come in many forms, including the gossiper and the micromanager.
No opportunity for growth
Most people want careers. Even if someone is hired as a low-level employee, they’re likely hoping for the chance to grow within the company and eventually make more money by learning new skills. However, if your employees are learning new skills and not getting promoted, they might choose to take their skills elsewhere.
No flexibility
Modern employees need more flexible schedules, and more people realize the eight-day workday just doesn’t make sense anymore, especially for parents or those with responsibilities outside of work. While your company may not be able to offer people full days off, people do expect some level of flexibility in their working hours so they can take care of what’s most important in their lives, such as their loved ones.
Understanding the contributing factors of employee dissatisfaction is important because it can help the business understand how to fix employee attitudes and improve their relationships with those who work there.
Here are five ways you can start to improve employee satisfaction.
Give promotions as appropriate
Too many small companies forget to give their top performers the promotions they deserve.
If someone is taking on additional duties without being compensated, they might take their new skills and start applying for other jobs. Your employees are smart, and they know what they’re worth. They can type in their job title on any job board and find hundreds of job listings that align with their skill sets. Many of these listings include the rate someone else is willing to pay them.
If you can’t pay people what they’re worth and invest in your employees, you can’t expect them to be loyal to your company.
Celebrate milestones
Celebrating employee milestones makes employees feel appreciated. It shows you care about them as people and not just cogs in a wheel.
Don’t worry, you don’t have to throw a party every time someone hits their work anniversary milestone. Instead, you can try small gestures, such as giving employees gifts like a snack box or small gift cards on their anniversaries.
Recognition
Recognizing employees for their work goes a long way in building a healthy relationship with them.
By telling someone they did a good job on a project, you can make them feel like their work really matters. Consistently recognizing hard work is key to ensuring employee engagement.
Build a growth plan
Employees may love their jobs. But eventually, they’ll want to start taking on more responsibility to prevent boredom from doing the same work every day.
Providing employees with a growth plan can help them understand what they need to accomplish to get a promotion and start taking on more responsibility.
Be flexible
Some companies give their employees unlimited paid time off because they trust that they are completing their work. However, unlimited PTO might not be a good idea, depending on your industry and the size of your company. Instead, implement a flexible work schedule, allowing people to work when they can and when they’re most productive.
A flexible schedule doesn’t mean that your employees will be working around the clock, though. When offering flexible work schedules, all employees must have the same rules.
For example, you can ensure that everyone works the same number of hours in a day, no matter what time that is. You should also find a way to track projects easily to improve communication when everyone is working on different schedules.
In conclusion
Improving employee satisfaction is easy. However, if you don’t start taking the time to evaluate your employees’ feelings about their jobs and their work, you won’t know when they’re dissatisfied.
Of course, if you have a high turnover rate, that should signal that something is wrong.
Unfortunately, far too many employers care more about sales than finding candidates who can help boost those sales. You can start improving satisfaction and reducing turnover with a few simple techniques.
Have remote employees? Check out our nine tips to better manage your virtual team.
About the author
Julia Olivas graduated from San Francisco State University with her B.A. in Communication Studies. She is a contributing writer at 365businesstips.com where she loves sharing her passion for digital marketing and content creation. Outside of writing, she loves cooking, reading, making art, and her pup Ruby.
