10 smart tips to increase employee satisfaction

Month: February 2016

To achieve competitive advantage, high employee satisfaction is a must. Not only are satisfied employees more productive but this also delivers higher customer satisfaction up. But how do you make sure employees are satisfied? And more importantly, how do employees stay happy? This article describes key tips for achieving employee satisfaction.

1. Value employees

It may sound a little cliché but satisfaction starts with expressing appreciation to employees. Appreciate and reward (extra) effort. Showing appreciation to employees is important for maintaining motivation and satisfaction. When employees put in extra effort, it is important that this effort is recognised and acknowledged.

2. Motivate mutual bonding

Healthy relationships between employees and colleagues are essential for an employee. This creates a stronger sense of shared responsibility for the department. To achieve this, it makes sense to schedule structural group activities such as get-togethers, dinners, celebrating birthdays and weekends away.

3. Support a healthy work-life balance

Challenge employees sufficiently but do not make sure they are completely left to their own devices. Offer opportunities to critically examine flexible work arrangements, working from home and stress management.

4. Appoint the right leaders

Ensure that employees are paired with suitable managers. For example, when there are many new employees, they should, for both development and satisfaction, be able to make mistakes. Assigning a leader who does not allow this will not easily motivate employees so friction will quickly arise between them.

5. Make work content flexible

Offer scope to make work more interesting/complex so that employees remain sufficiently challenged. Challenging work has been shown to contribute to job satisfaction. It is important to take employees' work-life balance into account (point 3.).

6. Give an attractive salary

Employees' basic salary should be a logical consequence of the work they do. Also ensure sufficient perspective by building up the salary in scales.

7. Give job security

Let job security depend as much as possible on the employee's performance. This supports the perception of job security and thus psychological security.

8. Support development

Offer employees sufficient space to develop. This can be both on-the-job and off-the-job with coaching and training opportunities. This ensures future prospects within the organisation, increasing overall satisfaction.

9. Lead by example

When specific behaviours are required of employees, it is important that management applies these behaviours themselves. This creates more support and gives employees room to learn from their examples. "Practice what you preach" is the most important motto here.

10. Employer branding

Employees want to be proud to tell family and friends that they work for their organisation. Therefore, it is important that the employer is known as a "good employer" where employees enjoy themselves. The ultimate goal is for all (former) employees to be ambassadors of the organisation.

As shown above, employee satisfaction is complex and not achievable overnight. Confidence will only increase when areas for improvement are heard and translated into specific actions. If this is done successfully, it leads not only to higher satisfaction but also to competitive advantage.

The number of respondents is crucial to the success of a employee survey. This is because a low response rate ensures that the data is not a good reflection of the real thing. As a result, without enough participants, the outcomes will be taken less seriously. When few employees respond, it means that the added value of the survey is greatly reduced. These tips will therefore help you increase your response rate for the next survey.

Definition response rate

The response rate is the number of unique completed questionnaires divided by the number of people invited (respondents). Usually, this number is expressed as a percentage. For example: If 600 employees are invited and 550 actually complete the questionnaire, the response rate is 91.6%.

1. Ensuring anonymity

For both a higher response rate and valuable input, anonymity for employees is important. When the anonymity of a questionnaire is guaranteed, employees will be candid in their answers. For answering questions about managers and cooperation with other employees, perception of anonymity is particularly important. Especially when trust is already an issue within the organisation, there will be more need to confirm employees' anonymity.

2. Clear objective

In any communication, explain the purpose of the questionnaire. Tell what the benefits for the organisation are and what the employee gains from it. This will create support and employees will also encourage others to fill in the questionnaire.

3. Follow-up steps

Show what the next steps are after data collection. Make it clear when the results will be shared with employees. Tell what the follow-up steps are after the data is collected. What will be done to translate the results into improvements? When this is transparent, employees gain insight into the entire process. This leads to greater support and, as a result, a higher response rate.

4. Management support

Involving executives in inviting employees can boost the response rate. When the survey is supported from the top it shows that they are involved in the survey. It can therefore be smart to have the responsible manager or board member sign the invitation. It is even better to send the survey entirely from the board.

5. Compact questionnaire

Longer questionnaires have a lower response rate. It is important to estimate in advance how long it will take to complete the questionnaire. This allows employees to know how much time they should set aside for the survey. As a rule, it is better to finish earlier than to take longer than expected. If the questionnaire is relatively long then it is good to allow employees to complete it in parts. This limits the impact on workload.

6. Timing and deadlines

Make sure that you think carefully about when to launch the questionnaire and that the deadline is achievable for employees. After all, it can be frustrating when the workload is high and then employees are expected to complete the questionnaire within a few days.

7. Meeting commitments

For follow-up research in particular, adherence to planning is essential. When communicating to staff, let them know what has been promised and make it clear what the results will be. Should certain deadlines ultimately not be feasible, communicate this in good time.

What is a good response rate?

This depends on the type of survey but usually a response rate above 70% is good. If you achieve a rate below 60% then it is smart to go through the suggestions above.

Also make sure you have the right engineering behind the survey. When it is easy to fill in the questionnaire, employees can complete it faster.

The above points are the important ones to achieve a higher response rate. Employee survey is, however, highly dependent on the context in which it is applied. Therefore, it is important to think carefully beforehand which points might be crucial for your organisation. Just remember that there are always areas for improvement as every research has its limitations.