How to Effectively Measure Employee Satisfaction

Measuring the job satisfaction of your workforce is tricky business.

Employee satisfaction is vital to the success of your company, as a happy and productive workforce leads to greater business performance and customer satisfaction.

But apart from your traditional ‘scale of 1 to 10’ questions, job satisfaction in itself is difficult to put an exact number on. 

And without data to learn from, how can you improve?

Here are our top 5 ways to effectively measure job satisfaction in your business.

Internal Surveys

Employee satisfaction surveys give you the unique opportunity to gain an in-depth understanding of the employee experience.

Depending on what elements you choose to measure, you’ll find out first-hand how your employees feel about:

• Company culture

• Workplace wellbeing

• Compensation

• Team members

• Management

As well as their actual job.

Conducting internal surveys at least once a year (or even quarterly) not only gives you a sense of how your workforce is feeling, but also sends the message that their opinion is valued.

You should also consider anonymising your employment satisfaction surveys, so that employees are given the chance to share their true thoughts without worrying about negative consequences.

Employee Satisfaction Score (ESAT)

An Employee Satisfaction Score is a metric used to create an overall figure of job satisfaction within your business, based on the results from an employee satisfaction survey.

You can calculate this metric by taking the total number of satisfied responses (ratings of 4 or 5 out of 5, for example), dividing it by the number of overall responses (how many people completed the survey) and multiplying the result by 100.

Using the ESAT score, you will have an effective measurement of overall job satisfaction in your business.

When you complete future employment satisfaction surveys, you’ll also be able to compare the ESAT scores over each one to spot changes in job satisfaction.

Review Performance

• Are you noticing a dip in performance from a once high-performing colleague?

• Is there a team within your business achieving particularly poor results?

• Have you picked up on a change in general attitude or behaviour?

If so, it may be time to review the state of job satisfaction in your business.

A key indicator of low job satisfaction is a noticeable change in employee performance.

Those who don’t enjoy one aspect or another of their work may struggle to feel motivated and stay productive.

Especially if there have been any significant changes in your company, reviewing performance over a certain period of time can help you to spot a trend in decreasing job satisfaction levels.

At this point, following up with the employee or team to find out what may be causing this change in performance is a good place to start.

Employee Turnover

Statistics show that just over 50% of new hires actively begin looking for a new job within the first six months of their employment.

Why?

Mostly because those employees felt unsatisfied working in their new role or company.

Employees with high job satisfaction won’t feel the need to look for new opportunities that fill in the gaps they’re currently missing.

If you’ve noticed a high employee turnover within your company (the number of workers who leave the business over a set period of time), this is a good measurement of the state of job satisfaction in your business.

Ask yourself: what is my workforce not feeling fulfilled by, where they feel the need to look elsewhere?

Talk to your People

What’s the best way to learn about the state of job satisfaction in your workforce?

Go to the source and ask them directly.

If you aren’t having regular conversations (one-to-one and in team settings), then you’re missing out on the opportunity to hear what your people have to say. 

Normalise having regular, transparent and honest conversations with your employees about their experience working at your company.

And perhaps the most important part: act on what’s been said to you.

Make an effort to actively implement change based on any concerns raised by your employees.

This will not only address any problem areas within your business, but highlight a focus on employee wellbeing that will show your workforce that they are valued within the company.

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