Practical tips for enhancing employee satisfaction
Helina Harro
The importance of employee satisfaction in modern workplaces
We have seen this numerous times in our previous pieces and industry research: employee dissatisfaction leads to poor productivity and high turnover, which costs companies millions each year if they do not provide the right environment for their staff.
This makes it clear that Employee Satisfaction is essential in the modern workplace. With it comes loyalty and a healthier company culture, which in turn benefits the business’s bottom line.
So, how do we improve employee satisfaction? Employee satisfaction is something you constantly work towards and monitor regularly.
Understanding Employee Needs
The first step is to understand your employees’ needs. It is easy to assume or even guess to“save time” and“resources.” However, this investment needs to be made: ask your employees before you do anything else.
Get to know them
Surveys are great, and we will get to that, but nothing beats genuine human connections: get to know your employees.
By spending time with them, eating with them, playing with them during team-building events, and taking coffee breaks with them, you will learn what motivates them, what they are good at, and where they could use support or training. Regular open conversations and one-on-one meetings are another great way to get to know your staff.
Obviously, this is easier to implement in smaller teams, which is definitely something to consider: research shows that the ultimate size for the best-functioning teams is between 6 and 9 people. For more than 10 employees, it becomes more challenging to dedicate enough time to each individual and their needs, which will also impact the level of satisfaction of the individuals within the team.
a weekly team lunch could help feel more at ease with each other
Conducting surveys and feedback sessions
In parallel with getting to know your staff on a more personal level(while respecting healthy boundaries, of course), regular surveys and feedback sessions are handy tools if and when designed and used correctly.
Instead of using cookie-cutter templates found online, design proper forms that give you clear insights. Send them out regularly and encourage everyone to complete them. If necessary, make them anonymous.
In addition to staying away from basic templates, avoid using the same survey or feedback form repeatedly. Over time, your employees will no longer read the questions and answer automatically without reflecting on how they truly feel, out of habit.
Most importantly, study the results and act on them! After the survey, it is your turn to give feedback on how those results will be used and what actions will be taken in the future to show your staff that their opinions matter.
Identifying key areas for improvement
An easy mistake to make when receiving responses to surveys and feedback sessions is to want to do everything at once. While acting is important, it is essential to create a plan first. Not everything can be done at once; not everything can be addressed.
Identify the most relevant and urgent key areas for improvement by:
Thoroughly analyse the scores by themes and identify patterns and trends across different demographics or employee statuses.
Evaluate the impact of these results on your key metrics.
Benchmark the results against industry standards.
Set the rest aside for future projects and keep the team in the loop!
Creating a Positive Work Environment
It sounds obvious, but it is an essential one that can easily be overlooked. Employee satisfaction does not simply mean individual satisfaction related to higher salaries or interesting tasks. It also involves how the team feels overall, how they work together, how management interacts with the team, and so on.
Fostering open communication
A workplace with open communication is a place where everyone feels safe and encouraged to share ideas and challenges without fearing being judged, shut down or sanctioned.
It has a lot to do with the level of psychological safety within your team, which is something Siffi’s tool also allows you to measure through a dedicated survey on the platform.
To help foster that kind of environment, management needs to lead by example, continuously show they are open and ready to communicate by making themselves available and accessible and encourage everyone to share constructive feedback, even towards them. This can be done through implementing:
Open door policy.
Regular one on one.
Weekly team meetings.
Responding quickly to feedback.
Encouraging anonymous feedback.
Making good use of communication tools, such as chat and apps, is especially beneficial to employees who struggle with face-to-face interactions.
Promoting work-life balance
Very simply put, if you want your employees to be happy at the office they need to have a life outside of it.
To support that, it is important for your staff to be able to balance their work and personal life by feeling like they have ownership over their time and projects.
Focusing on the outcome and deliverables rather than the time spent at the desk increases the sense of trust and positively impacts employees’engagement and loyalty towards the company.
Enhancing workplace culture
Culture, in general, is defined as the way of life, the general customs and beliefs of a particular group of people in a specific time.
When we apply this to the business world, the group usually consists of company employees or a specific team within a large company, each with its own culture.
Work culture can include how people communicate, what is celebrated, and how people give feedback… everything we saw above, that impacts your employees’ satisfaction.
Management needs to think through and lead the development of a workplace culture. It is not something that is built overnight but is a long-term endeavour that is built over time, one step at a time through:
Clearly defining the company’s core values and mission
Establishing communication methods
Create comprehensive onboarding processes
Encouraging collaboration and career growth
Recognizing performance
Encouraging feedback
Championing work-life balance
Recognition and Rewards
Last but definitely not least, never underestimate the power of a“high five”. We all need to feel valued and appreciated for the work we do. Make sure employee recognition happens regularly. Celebrate every milestone and achievement and give credit where it is due. The smallest gestures, a mention on the group chat, or even a small gift can go a long way.
Professional Development Opportunities
Show your employees you care about them by ensuring they have growth opportunities. This will make them feel valued, more motivated, and more engaged.
Training programs
Training programs are a great and easy way to offer your employees opportunities for personal and professional development. To effectively map out your employee’s training need it is important to conduct a comprehensive training needs analysis(TNA) at three levels and identify the gaps before prioritizing:
organizational – skills needed to meet the company’s goals
Occupational-specific role
Individual – employee’s career path
Mentorship initiatives
Mentorship is an opportunity to help employees grow all the while fostering collaboration between staff within a team or a department. To set up such an initiative, you need to outline the goal of the mentorship program clearly(is it employee retention, improving integration of latest hier, developing leadership skills?) and then plan out the process from duration of the program, frequency and format of the meetings, decide on how to select the participants and offer training or guidelines to the mentors and mentees. You will also need to think about how to promote and communicate on the program. And of course, evaluate the results.
Support from within
Career advancement pathways
A way to retain talent and keep turnover low is to have a framework to propose when it comes to career advancement within the companies.
Wellness Programs
wellness and mental health play a massive role in employee satisfaction. We have seen in the past how much employee motivation, engagement and productivity are impacted by their overall well-being and how much poor mental health support at work can impact the bottom line.
Mental health support Tools
Your leadership team is not expected to be mental health experts, so it is recommended that you get help where you can. Many online and offline resources offer various well-being and mental health support for companies like Siffi. Find the one that fits your and your employees’ needs!
Physical health initiatives
Our sedentary lifestyle is one of the culprits behind our poor mental health. By simply encouraging your employees to move more, you can positively help improve their physical and psychological well-being! Lunch power walks, company 5k runs and morning yoga practices are simple but beneficial initiatives to launch!
a team walk is enough to feel refreshed after lunch!
Workshops
Another initiative that can significantly impact employee satisfaction is inviting experts to lead regular talks and workshops, as long as the topics are relevant to your employees and help them build resilience and skills in general. They can be anything from positive psychology to stress management and mindfulness to yoga classes.
Prioritizing employee satisfaction in a long-term game that will bring long-term benefits!
Rather than reinventing the wheel, start simple, use what is already in place and talk to your employees to best understand their needs, then prioritize and put simple things into place, ask for help with needed using third-party tools and monitor progress!
Want to know more about how Siffi is helping organisations? Check out our services
Helina Harro is an innovative Mental Health Lead at Siffi, dedicated to enhancing employee well-being in dynamic and remote work environments. With a rich background in clinical and counseling psychology, she combines analytical problem-solving with empathy to create impactful mental health solutions and empower teams globally.
Helina Harro
