Employee Satisfaction Categories and Process to Improve Retention

Guest Contributor: David McGillivray is a Human Resource Management consultant with over 20 years of management experience in small, medium and large organisations. He has considerable knowledge in strategic, operational and compliance HRM.

Human Resource Management is about achieving the best from your workforce. Achieving high levels of motivation, engagement and productivity is impossible when employees are unsatisfied or actively looking for alternative employment. Do you know which team members are seeking alternative employment and are these team members critical to your business? It is vitally important to business performance and success to understand the answer to this question.

HR Management can help you to understand employee satisfaction, retain key team members and improve productivity. In every organisation, employees will fit into one of the following categories:

1. Employees most satisfied with the organisation
2. Employees satisfied with the organisation
3. Employees content to stay with the organisation
4. Employees dissatisfied with the organisation
5. Employees looking to leave the organisation

The following is a method to retain your employees and improve business performance.

For employees that are most satisfied with the organisation you need to continue to identify ways to ensure job satisfaction, are challenged, productive and motivated in their role.

For employees that are content in their role you need to ensure they are continuing to contribute in a productive manner and identify ways to promote higher levels of motivation.

For employees that are dissatisfied with the organisation or are actively looking to leave, you need to assess whether these team members have the competencies that are of value to your business. Generally, dissatisfaction occurs over time, with both the employee and employer becoming increasingly more frustrated with one another.

What to do with employees who are not satisfied?

Firstly you need to endeavour to take the emotion out of the decisions you make so that you make the best decision for the business. Generally the most senior person has the most ‘power’ and therefore is in a stronger position to initiate methods to improve the relationship. Below are the steps in remedying this situation.

1. Assess if the competencies of the team member are valuable to the business. If they are and the employee is looking to leave, the organisation needs to communicate with the employee in an effective manner. As a reminder it needs to be remembered that this situation has occurred over time and that it will take time to repair. If the team member does not believe the manager is able to work a way around the problem the employee will continue to be dissatisfied and most likely leave.

2. Reflecting as to why this situation has occurred, and invariably there can be a myriad of reasons. This is not a situation of blaming anyone but looking holistically and identifying why. Facilitate a meeting with the employee to determine why they are not satisfied with the organisation.

3. It needs to be determined if the reasons for the level of dissatisfaction are valid if anything can be done, remembering that if we continue to do what we have done in the past we cannot really expect any different result. Therefore to change behaviour and performance we need to change the way we communicate and or the environment.

4. If it is decided that the situation is not going to be addressed the problems existing between the employee and employer will continue to fester. Eventually the employee will leave the organisation. The consequences of having an unsatisfied employee eventually leaving needs to be assessed. For minimum impact to the business this process needs to be properly managed. This will include succession planning.

5. The major concern for most businesses is that employee’s leave at inconvenient times and this is extremely disruptive and costly to the business. Therefore, to have minimal impact this process needs to be planned. Managers can provide improved workforce planning by understanding which employees fit into each of the five categories.

Managers who understand their team member’s satisfaction levels have increased capability to improve morale, productivity and business profitability. Managers who chose to ignore employee satisfaction do so at their peril, and can expect reduced employee morale, productivity and profitability. While you may not lose a valuable employee right now, you will at a time when you least expect it, and at a time when it has a substantial impact on your business.

In summary managers have a choice of three strategies. Managers can:

1. Make it happen by improving employee satisfaction.
2. Watch it happen experiencing poor performing team members and positive performers leaving.
3. Say ‘What the hell happened?’ and experience poor business performance

Sources and references: Sandbox Advisors, Article courtesy of the Recruiting Blogswap, a content exchange service sponsored by CollegeRecruiter.com, a leading site for college students looking for internships and recent graduates searching for entry level jobs and other career opportunities.