Next Generation Capabilities for Employee Satisfaction

Companies should strive to improve the metric on employee satisfaction if they want to attract right talent and be one of the best places to work. Improving employee satisfaction has often resulted into better performance by individuals which translates into companywide performance. With the scale few organizations operate today and with the change in the demographics of the workforce, organizations will have to introduce capabilities which not only offers better policies but also ensures implementation at more personalized level which will make it more beneficial for each employee.

Employee satisfaction - a known area of improvement

It has been a well-known and established relationship that employee satisfaction directly impacts customer satisfaction. This is more relevant for business models wherein customers directly engage with the employees of the company. A satisfied employee, at large, takes extra effort to get things done in favor of the company. For example, let's refer to the famous South West Airlines which features amongst the top employers who are also rated amongst best for customer satisfaction. A lot of this could be attributed to their unconventional policy of ranking employee first, customer second and stakeholders third.

Employees are becoming more critical asset for their employers and several companies have started recognizing these facts resulting in several policy changes worldwide to improve employee satisfaction. Smoother work from home policies, increasing parental leaves, initiatives to encourage employees to leave office on time, mandatory planned leaves are a few most popular examples on how employers are trying to enhance employee experiences. It is an acknowledged area of improvement and many companies have already tried to become a torch bearer for enhancing employee experience.

Changing time and changing workforce needs companies to adapt faster and make constant improvisations

There have been significant efforts to enhance employee satisfaction by multiple companies but the employees in the context are significantly changing their behavior. These fast paced changes have mandated the need for companies to ensure that they react in speed to introduce capabilities which will ensure consistent employee satisfaction. For instance, employees earlier used to aim for a good work-life balance – for the sake of easier understanding, let this be defined as a balance between “work hours” and “life hours”. The most prominent expectation was of employees coming together and working simultaneously for common goal at work when they were having “work hours”. “Life hours” started typically after the work hours when employees could have separate ways and means to celebrate their personal space. However, with Millennials and now with GenZ the “work-life balance” debate is taken over by discussions on “work-life synergy”. With the boundaries between one’s personal and professional life constantly blurring, employees may or may not be looking for a distinct “work hours” or “life hours”, but they are now looking forward to equally fulfilling integrated work and life. This has taken the concept of having flexible work hours to a new level altogether.

Employees need instant gratification and are willing to contribute across hours, at convenience and as required. Technology has ensured 24/7 connectivity and that has eroded the boundaries. Employees now want flexibility to accommodate their life moments in work hours, like attending to fitness class during vaguely defined work hours, while they strive equally hard to deliver their work commitments while accommodating the same in life hours, like attending to an important client call when one is on a vacation. Time could be just one-dimension attributing to employee satisfaction, there are many more. Such collaborations amongst employees and organization, in multiple dimensions, can be complex at times and would require organizations to be ready with their next generation capabilities in order to successfully and consistently maintain employee satisfaction.

Key is to cater to not one but many dimensions that impact Employee Satisfaction

There could be N number of dimensions which adds to an individual employee’s satisfaction. These dimensions would also vary from one to another as these could be very personal to one’s behavior and lifestyle. However, there are few most popular dimensions which could be looked upon to begin with.

1. Powerful career opportunities for power-pack performers

With fraction of Millennials and GenZ increasing in the workforce, need of career development has started gaining more importance for an overall employee satisfaction. Various reports suggest that more than a quarter of the employee leave their jobs because of lack of career development opportunity in their current company or role while there are less than one-tenth of the employees who want to remain a part of the organization because they find favorable career development opportunities within the organization. Companies need to step up and make these opportunities accessible for employees en masse which may include job specific training, company paid general training, opportunities for higher studies, professional development training and networking opportunities.

2. Strong benefits, personalized benefits

Compensation and benefits are probably one of the most critical dimension of employee satisfaction. More than 95% employees consider compensation or benefits as an important factor for an overall employee satisfaction. However, a study shows that less than one-fifth employees are actually satisfied with the overall compensation and benefits which they receive from their employers.

Compensation and benefits includes benefits besides base salary. Paying an employee better or at par with other similar opportunities in the market adds to the satisfaction. However, there are more that employees are gradually seeking and these may be different for different people which may vary from variable performance pay, stock payment, paid time off, medical benefits, work life balance, pension plans, wellness programs or family benefits like child care, medical cover for parents etc.

3. Comfortable work environment for fierce focus

A healthy work environment brings assurance amongst employees about their personal growth while they are focused towards achieving the organizational goals. It makes the entire ecosystem much more effective and efficient it stimulates positivity and supports employees in their day to day work commitments. It helps them collaborate better across teams, be more productive, bring in more agility and to be immensely focused on their goals. It's a common saying that the culture of an organization could be found out not from the meetings in board rooms but small chit chats near the coffee machine. Only if employees have proper tools and strong motivation enabled by a supportive work environment can an organization succeed and be a leader. Work environment can be defined as a function of proper job description, job security, financial stability, relationship with teams & teammates, variety in work, transparent communication, fair reward process and the work itself amongst many others. Again, while about 90% of the Employees believe work environment to be very important for their overall satisfaction level, only about one-third of them find their work environment to be very satisfying.

4. Stronger ties with management

Employees spend most of their waking hours at office, hence it becomes utmost important for them to feel comfortable as an integral part of the company. Respectful treatment, trust, autonomy, transparent communication, recognition of one’s contribution and relationship with supervisors are a few key areas which needs to be rightfully practiced to maintain healthy relationship between management and employees while instilling satisfaction amongst the employees. Management should be able to show support for employees and encourage them to participate in organization building activities. They should be encouraged to share their ideas and should be widely appreciated for their contribution towards the company. The more involved and appreciated employees would feel within a company the better would be their motivation and loyalty.

Nearly 90% of the employees needs a good relationship with management in order to be satisfied, however, only about 30% of the employees feel very satisfied with their relationship with the management while about one-third of the employees feel that they do not have a good relationship with the management. This is huge opportunity area which needs to be worked upon by several companies in order to uplift overall employee satisfaction.

All of the above pillars are very essential for an overall employee satisfaction and it brings some comfort to realize that a number of companies know them as thumb rule and are striving to achieve these goals. However, multiple studies and reports still suggest that it is working for almost one-third of the employees only who feel very satisfied on few of these parameters. Organizations need to work aggressive to enhance the employee satisfaction level. But this cannot be done by traditional approaches. We need next generation capabilities to raise the benchmark.

Next Generation personalized and engagement capabilities for an enhanced employee satisfaction during ever changing time

The new age employees expect much more than just a good salary or a job security - they expect an end to end employee engagement which help them learn, grow and simultaneously gives them opportunity to be valuable for their organization. Various reports suggest that latest HR enterprise solution caters to a few of the employee needs to some extent but lack the flavor of employee engagement. In my opinion, companies require a platform which is highly integrated for end-to-end employee experience. As an instance, the employee information system which captures the basic information of employees along with their hobbies and preferences can be integrated with the rewards system of the organization. Data about employee hobbies and preferences could be used to create a pool of rewards such as movie tickets, 2 day domestic trips, Netflix subscriptions, e-commerce vouchers etc. In the next stage when employees qualify to receive an award, the ML or AI engine could suggest couple of best reward options to individual employees from the pool of rewards. These rewards would be more personalized to individuals and should be, in most likelihood, more satisfying. Similarly, a project management system designed to capture different projects along with the employees working on them can be integrated to the learning and development recommendation engine. The engine could suggest reading materials and training workshops to individual employee’s basis their role and stage of the project.

Companies are evolving today to engage employees in much better and innovative ways. Family events and birthdays are organized each day to mark involvement of organization to celebrate each individual. They also go ahead and post success stories of individual employees on social media through official handles. These efforts is sure to uplift morale and satisfaction level of the employee. However, next generation capabilities can crawl the social media and identify relevant and important people for that employee and find a way to promote and share the success stories with those people which will increase the relevance and impact of the social media post.

Another example of next generation capabilities could be in evaluating employee’s current mood or emotions and accordingly plan for a celebration or solution. Several companies depend on internal surveys amongst employees to evaluate the infrastructure or policy and access the need for changes. Having an integrated system wherein employees could give real-time feedback on any given topic could help organizations know the need for action as immediately as required. For instance, the facilities in cafeteria may not be operating in its finest conditions and few employees have a concern there which is unnoticed by the infrastructure team. Any one of them can initiate a mail thread in internal groups if they are not aware of the relevant team. Each of such email can have an integrated feedback tracker wherein people can mark the discussion on lines of likes and dislikes. Each such discussions could be accessed by machine learning and a daily report could be sent to respective teams for quick actions. Having such constant engagement and allowing employees to voice their opinions on subjects from low to high impact would bring them closer to the organization. This will instill sense of ownership amongst employees to make things better for the community and would find them on positive spectrum of satisfaction even when things go wrong.

Having an evolved assistive chat-bot for internal employees which can schedule meetings, plan leaves, send reminders, collect feedback or give information about schedules taxes could also influence overall employee satisfaction. Not getting into solutions bit, but there could be several methods from simply collating relevant information to having an integrated, data driven automated system capturing employees needs which could be used to design solutions around it. These innovations could be first introduced to cater known dimensions which directly impacts employee satisfaction - Career development, benefits, rewards, work environment and relationship with management. This will also enable systems to evolve and impact wider dimensions.

Sources : shrm.org | lntinfotech.com | hbr.org | Inside Magazine | hrmagazine.co.uk