4Cs Blog: Happy Employees = Happy Customers

It has been established that employee engagement does help businesses to prosper. However, the full effects of this are not completely transparent. Many studies have been done to try to see the whole impact of employee engagement on the company.

Disengaged employees definitely bring a business down, so what about engaged employees? There are over 30 studies that show correlation in several key areas when it comes to engaged employees:      

Several Keys to Job Satisfaction

Achieving employee engagement or satisfaction is the goal of many companies. This is because happy employees complete more work in less time and with better quality than the employees who do not care about their jobs. One way that employers judge how their employees feel is with an employee satisfaction survey.
This employee survey often tells you several things:

• The employee is/is not happy
• What the employee is unhappy about
• Possible ways to solve this issue

In addition to the surveys, the University of Leicester in England has found that there are several other ways to improve job satisfaction. One of the most important ways is variety. It will lessen the stress on most employees and make them more satisfied. It really proves that boring and tedious are not the way to go.
Freely sharing information about projects, feedback, and consulting with employees also boosts morale and productivity. This type of management style falls under what is referred to as a “high performance work system.” It really works! This styles of management gives employees more involvement in their own companies. In doing this, employees are happier and engaged.
All in all, the way a company designs their jobs will have the greatest impact on employees. However, the way employees are treated also plays a major role in satisfaction. In delivering the best possible workplace, the company must learn to communicate in a nurturing way to employees, while giving them more investment (mentally) in the company. This is truly the best way to raise productivity, morale, and quality.

When looking at working for a smaller company versus a larger corporation, the issue of job satisfaction might come up. The larger corporation most certainly might offer employees more, but that does not always make it a better place to work. Research has proved that sometimes the smaller businesses win out when it comes to employee satisfaction.

Why is this? Often the answer is quite clear: smaller businesses usually have more time for personalized management. This simply means that employees usually have more stake in the company, more involvement, and more one-on-one time spent collaborating. Successful small businesses often hit all those points without difficulty because their employees are fully engaged and satisfied with their work.

This is why larger companies with engagement problems need to create and implement an employee morale survey. This will allow management to see where employees are not satisfied. Then, correcting these issues should boost morale. This is not a short or completely easy process, by any means, but with dedication, it can be done.

When the larger corporations start working out the engagement issues with their employees, they need to start slow. They should create measurable goals in each department. The first thing each department should consider is getting employees more involved with the company. Getting everyone involved and on the same page is a good start.

Once large corporations institute programs designed to help with employee engagement, they need to implement another employee morale survey. The data returned will be the deciding factor of whether or not the program is working and if it should continue. Tracking profits and productivity during this time will also help to determine if a difference was made.

The employee satisfaction survey is a good measure of how happy and engaged your employees are in their jobs. Knowing what the problem areas are in your organization will help you to make the changes needed to have a higher percentage of engaged employees. Below are five of the most popular questions to be asked on employee satisfaction surveys.

Employee engagement is a goal that most corporations spend a lot of time and effort to meet. It is not easy, since in America, alone, only 30% on average of employees are considered to be engaged.

The other 70% fall either in the middle, where they are just striding along, or they are in the category of being actively disengaged. More employees fall in the middle, than actively disengaged, but they are still a problem. Successful companies employ many different strategies to keep their employees engaged. The first order of business is to identify just how many disengaged employees you have. This is easily implemented with a staff satisfaction survey.

This survey includes targeted questions on topics ranging from opinions on policies, to how happy the employee is with his or her job. Open-ended questions are an excellent tool to see exactly how employees feel. Carefully measure management in these surveys. Publicizing the results of the survey will often yield great results. There, the managers can let the employees know that they care and ask for suggestions to improve.

This accomplishes two things:  it tells your employees that you are concerned about them, and it gets them involved in finding a solution as a team. Employee engagement does not really have a secret formula. You have to make it a priority. A common excuse for not doing so is that of finances, but employing a survey and maybe a meeting or two will not add much in additional costs. Plus, with most of your employees engaged, studies show that sales and profits tend to trend upward.  

Having fully engaged employees is the goal of many larger organizations, but they are not as easy to come by as not-engaged and actively disengaged employees. Only 13% of employees worldwide are engaged, but, in the United States, the figures are better, at about 30%.

Still, this is a small number when compared to the 70% of employees who are not engaged in their job. Disengagement is problematic. These employees are unhappy at work and often act out their unhappiness. What does that mean for you? This means low customer satisfaction rates, loss of customers, and a waste of time and money by management. All of your performance metrics within your organization will be low, with high rates of turnover, absenteeism, safety incidents, and low quality work. DIsengagement causes:

• Lower Productivity
• Lower Profitability
• Lower Customer
• Satisfaction
• High Absenteeism
• High Turnover
• Organization shrinkage
• Higher Levels of Safety Incidents
• High Levels of Poor Quality Work

When you consider all of the data, if most of your employees fall into the non-engaged or disengaged group, this means that there is a problem in your business’s organization. However, as with all problems, in time this can be corrected. The first line of defense you have is to create an employee satisfaction survey. It needs to be concise and focused on what you can do to make employees happier.

Once you identify the key issues, you can work on fixing them, so that more employees become engaged. Engaged employees are happy, and they know their opinions and suggestions are acted upon.  

About

Recent Posts

Favorite Links