Dubs makes the very good point that satisfaction and engagement are not the same thing in his post on the “top 10 employee satisfaction indicators.” He has a point. After all, who cares if employees are happy, so long as they’re engaged with their work. But satisfaction does play a role in engagement. Even if the traditional markers of engagement (right tools, personal growth, common purpose, etc) are in place, it’s hard to see the benefits (more productive, profitable, customer-focused) if employees are caught up in nagging Dis-satisfiers.
This study on 2.2 million respondents at over 2,100 companies revealed some obvious and not so obvious elements of employee satisfaction:
1. Higher salaries – pay is the number one area in which employees seek change.
2. Internal pay equity, particularly having concerns with “pay compression” (the differential in pay between new and more tenured employees).
3. Benefits programs, particularly health/dental, retirement, and Paid Time Off/vacation days. Specifically, many employees feel that their health insurance costs too much, especially prescription drug programs.
4.“Over-management” (A common phrase seen in employee comments is “Too many chiefs, not enough Indians”).
5. Pay increase guidelines should place greater emphasis on merit.
6. The Human Resource department needs to be more responsive to their questions and/or concerns.
7. Favoritism.
8. Improved communication and availability (both from their supervisors and upper management).
9. Workloads are too heavy and/or departments are under-staffed.
10. Facility cleanliness.
If I asked you to guess what would be on this list, I’d wager you could get most of these right. Just about everyone wants to be paid more (1), to be paid fairly (unless they’re paid more) (2), to have more and better benefits (3), to work less (9) and to know more (8).
With that said, a couple of these answers jump out at me. First, #5 – Pay increase guidelines should place greater emphasis on merit. It’s almost as if employees are asking to have pay linked to performance. Second, #7 – Favoritism. How to eliminate favoritism? Have an objective mechanism for measuring and rewarding performance.
So even in a rather obvious setting, some insight can reveal itself. While it’s unlikely that you can easily do anything about the majority of these complaints, #5 and #7 give you a toe hold on the way to improving satisfaction and engagement.
November 15th, 2006 at 6:49 am
Max:
Thanks for the follow-up. I really wish I had some data to show that engagement is correlated (and drives) satisfaction and not the other way around, But I don’t.
Thinking about it, I can actually think of a couple areas where this isn’t true. We would hope that physicians are highly engaged, although they might hate their employers. Scientists and researchers “doing their life’s work” or creating drugs that amy save lives could also be in te category of being dissatisfied with the employer, but loving the work they do.
At any rate, it deserves more discussion.
-Dubs
November 19th, 2006 at 3:47 pm
I don’t think it is surprising that employee’s want fairness, transparency, and less favoritism as it relates to the reward system. However, finding a solution that meets this demand is not as simple as it seems. Most companies I have been a part of have some type of goals/reward system, but implementation of that system and follow through on that system seems to be mixed at best. The question is whether managers have the support from their leadership, and HR in helping them execute on systems that are put in place. Any tool that helps simplify the work effort on behalf of the manager, and makes it simple for HR and leadership to support their managers, will in my mind, give employees what they are looking for.