Keys to Employee Satisfaction
What You Can Do to Increase Employee Satisfaction
BY
Americans of all ages and income
brackets continue to grow increasingly unhappy at work -- a long-term trend
that should seriously concern employers, according to a report by The
Conference Board.
The
report, based on a survey of 5,000 U.S. households conducted for The
Conference Board by TNS, finds only 45 percent
of those surveyed say that they are satisfied with their jobs, down from 61.1
percent in 1987, the first year in which the survey was conducted.
The Bad News
About Employee Satisfaction
While
overall employee satisfaction has declined to 45 percent, the percentage
of employees satisfied with their jobs is lowest in the under 25 age group with
only 35.7 percent satisfied. Among employees in the age group 25-34, 47.2
percent are satisfied; employees in the age group 35-44 scored 43.4 percent in job
satisfaction.
Employees
in the 45-54 age range scored 46.8 percent; employees 55-64 scored 45.6 percent
in employee satisfaction and, of those employees age 65 and over, 43.4 percent
are satisfied.
Implications
for Employers of Falling Employee Satisfaction
Employee
satisfaction at work has decreased significantly in the past twenty years, as
these figures indicate—and I predict employee satisfaction will get worse in
the next few years. A combination of events is creating a perfect storm
affecting employee satisfaction.
A generation
of employees who feel entitled to employee satisfaction has entered the
workforce and several generations of employees for whom work never quite
fulfilled their dreams, are leaving.
And,
they are leaving in the worst of economic times which will affect their satisfaction
with the rest of the quality of life they experience.
This
downward trend in job satisfaction raises concerns about the overall engagement of
U.S. employees and ultimately employee productivity, retention, creativity,
risk-taking, mentoring, and in overall employee motivation and
interest in work.
“These
numbers do not bode well given the multi-generational dynamics of the labor
force,” says Linda Barrington, managing director, Human Capital, at The
Conference Board. “The newest federal statistics show that baby boomers will
compose a quarter of the U.S. workforce in eight years, and since 1987 we’ve
watched them increasingly losing faith in the workplace.”
Twenty
years ago, 60 percent of Baby Boomers were satisfied with their jobs;
today only 46 percent are. Barrington expresses concern about the growing lack
of employee satisfaction because of its potential impact on knowledge
transfer to and mentoring for the next generations of employees.
According
to The Conference Board’s survey results announcement, “The drop in job
satisfaction between 1987 and 2009 covers all categories in the survey, from
interest in work (down 18.9 percentage points) to job security (down 17.5
percentage points) and crosses all four of the key drivers of employee
engagement: job design, organizational health, managerial quality, and
extrinsic rewards.”
What Employers
Can Do About Employee Satisfaction
In
this environment for employee satisfaction, it is vitally important to
know which factors most affect employee satisfaction.
You
want to spend your time, money, and energy on programs, processes, and factors
that will have a positive impact on employee satisfaction.
A
2009 survey, by the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM)
looked at 24 factors that are regularly thought to relate to employee
satisfaction. The study found that employees identified these five factors as
most important:
- Job security,
- Benefits (especially
health care) with the importance of retirement benefits rising with the
age of the employee,
- Compensation/pay,
- Opportunities to
use skills and abilities, and
- Feeling safe in
the work environment.
The
next five most important factors affecting employee satisfaction were:
- The employee's
relationship with his or her immediate supervisor,
- Management
recognition of employee job performance,
- Communication between
employees and senior management,
- The work itself,
and
- Autonomy and
independence in their job.
Factors
that were not strongly connected to employee satisfaction included:
- "The
organization’s commitment to a green workplace,
- Networking
opportunities,
- Career development
opportunities,
- Paid training and
tuition reimbursement programs, and
- The organization’s
commitment to professional development.”
In
contrast, Human Resources professionals ranked these ten factors as
most important in employee satisfaction:
- Job security,
- Relationship with
immediate supervisor,
- Benefits,
- Communication
between employees and senior management,
- Opportunities to
use skills and abilities,
- Management
recognition of employee job performance,
- Job-specific
training,
- Feeling safe in
the work environment,
- Compensation/pay,
and
- Overall corporate culture.
I’ve
consolidated for you the results of employee satisfaction surveys and
their implications for the workplace. Most importantly, I have provided
research data that defines the factors most important to employees as you
continue to seek to provide a workplace that emphasizes employee satisfaction
as a recruiting and retention tool. Use this data to your best advantage.
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