As a business owner or manager, you want satisfied employees who are excited to come to work and motivated to do a good job.
Happy employees give back to your company. They help to make it grow into the best place it can be. In turn, this attracts more employees, business opportunities and can push your company to new levels.
But how do you measure employee satisfaction? It can be difficult to know if the critiques that come from your employees are serious signs they’re dissatisfied, or are run-of-the-mill suggestions. So, eCard Shack is here to help you measure the satisfaction of your staff.
Read on to find out how to measure employee satisfaction…
Why is measuring employee satisfaction important?
The benefits of high employee satisfaction can be immeasurable when you get it right. There are various reasons employee satisfaction can lead your company to success, but some are:
- Self-motivated to do great work
- More open to collaboration
- High-performing within a team
- Happier overall
- More productive
- More likely to stay at your company for longer
- More likely to say positive things about your company
Figuring out if an employee is satisfied is much more difficult and complex than simply asking them, “do you like your job?”. It’s too broad a question to ask and employees can be satisfied with some parts of their job but not others. Furthermore, each employee has a different personal definition of ‘satisfaction’.
Just remember, satisfaction can be affected by the job itself and your company.
Measuring Employee Satisfaction
You can’t understand where to improve your employee satisfaction if you don’t know what you’re lacking.
We’ve picked out some potential ways you can measure employee satisfaction. Some are easier to implement than others, such as simple conversations, but each one will result in benefits for your business.
One-on-One Conversations
If you own a large business, it’s unrealistic to expect that you’ll get one-on-one time for each employee – this is a job that should be delegated to managers.
However, there are few better ways to get an insight into how your employees feel about their jobs and your business than conversations. Many companies have conversations scheduled on a weekly, monthly, or quarterly basis. You need to be clear about the goals of these sessions.
Ultimately, you want to find out how satisfied the employee is with their job and the company as a whole. You can also build in progress discussions for each employee.
Don’t go with an agenda when you have a one-to-one conversation. Come up with a series of questions to ask your employees, then actually listen to their answers. Go in wanting to learn. Here are some good questions to ask employees in a one-on-one meeting about satisfaction:
- What are some things you think we’re doing well?
- What aren’t we doing well?
- If you could change one aspect of your job or the business, what would it be?
- What would you like to be doing more of?
- Do you think the team is successful at working together? If not, why not?
- Do you see yourself here in five years? If not, why not?
Note down what they say. Ask employees to clarify what they mean, but don’t get defensive if they say something you don’t agree with. Furthermore, reassure them that it’s alright to constructively criticise or say they don’t see themselves at your business in five years.
Employee Satisfaction Surveys
Employees can sometimes find it difficult or awkward to express themselves and their thoughts or critiques to their leader or manager.
This is especially true if they are concerned about how the other party will take constructive criticism. That’s why surveys, especially anonymous ones, can be useful tools for businesses. Surveys also help you collect quantitative data, rather than lots of ideas and suggestions which can be challenging to implement or make sense of.
Surveys can help get a percentage if you ask employees if they feel generally satisfied with their job. It is easier to break down those who say they are and those that aren’t. These percentages will help you gauge how you’re doing instantly. You can then take these percentages and ask employees exactly where you need to make improvements – qualitative research – for a holistic approach.
You can create two types of employee satisfaction surveys, based on the Employee Satisfaction Index (ESI). The first is a three-question survey based on the following:
- How satisfied are you with your current workplace and job?
- How well does your workplace meet your expectations?
- How close is your current workplace to your ideal workplace?
You can use variations on these questions.
Ask for grades out of 10 and then you can create overall percentages.
The second survey is a seven-category based on these categories:
- Extrinsic rewards: Tangible rewards given to employees, such as salary and bonuses.
- Supervisory support: How happy an employee is with their manager’s performance.
- Reward fairness: How rewards are distributed among employees.
- Autonomy: How much freedom an employee feels they have in their job.
- Corporate image: How much the employee likes the company.
- Affinity: How supported an employee feels by colleagues.
- Development: How satisfied an employee is with career prospects and opportunities.
You can, again, use a scale of 1-10 here and come up with some questions for each category. You can ask employees how much they agree or disagree with a question or statement you’ve put to them.
Pay Attention & Ask Around
Sometimes, it’s not always obvious to pick up on the satisfaction of your employees and colleagues, so you have to pay attention.
Even if you enter them with the very best intentions, one-on-one conversations might go nowhere. This is because employees may feel intimidated or inhibited to speak openly about what they don’t enjoy at work. It could be due to your position of leadership or even being fearful of potential repercussions.
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