Employee Satisfaction: Not My Goal Nor My Responsibility
Employee satisfaction is an elusive goal for many organizations. I believe that is because employee satisfaction shouldn’t be a goal at all. Employee satisfaction is an outcome, an outcome of business practices that empower and enable employees to contribute to the success of the business.
I’m not saying that you can treat employees unkindly or with a lack of respect for their dignity and humanity. But, ethical, moral, respectful treatment of employees should be a given in workplaces. This treatment is a given in workplaces that experience escalating business success, serve customers, and retain their best employees.
Rather, the discussion about employee satisfaction should be about how to engage and empower employees. I’d like to know more about how to remove the barriers my organization erects that inhibit employees from contributing. I’d like to become superior at selecting employees who are engaged and empowered already.
I’d like to do a better job of providing a framework of expectations and goals that sets employees free to contribute because they know where they are supposed to be going and what they are supposed to be doing. And, I’d like to get better at providing regular feedback and only rewarding and recognizing real contribution.
Do you care about the satisfaction of employees who aren’t performing at their utmost for their customers, their coworkers, and the business? I don’t. In fact, I want them gone.
It’s not my job to make up for an employee’s lifetime of blah experiences, bad parenting, poor outcomes, half-baked contributions, failure to take responsibility, and unhappy life choices. All I can do is create a respectful work environment in which employees know what is expected and are enabled to do their jobs – successfully and effectively.
Employee satisfaction is largely a choice employees make. I’ll try to stay out of their way while they create it.
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Comments
Amen to that. I have not seen an article that is more on the employer’s side than this one…and it hits the nail right on the head. I have a successfil catering business and have been thru so many part timers whom are so …uuuugggghhh into sharing their problems. Even when you give them the best jobs, they still feel entitled. My responsibility is customer satisfaction…not employee’s. Right on
I agree. Like with ‘FISH’, choose your attitude. If you value employee’s input and provide a safe and respectful workplace, you have to leave it to them to be satisfied or dissatisfied. I have found that employee’s who have a ‘life’ outside of work tend to be more satisfied. If they depend on work to be their social life as well, they tend to be less satisfied….
In theory, that sounds awesome and would be ideal but if you guys work at Utopia Company, Inc., where everyone is well-adjusted, productive, smiling, and ready to contribute, please show me where to apply! In the real world, I find that life is more like “The Office” and less like the aforementioned Utopia Company. But it’s nice to dream…
Not your responsibility? Sure it’d be great if all recruiters had some magic tool that allowed them to select employees who’d be 100% engaged on day one and stay that way, but life and work are a bit more complex than that. Not everyone has the luxury of “choosing” job satisfaction sometimes they are working because otherwise they’d be out on the street, and you are just ditching you responsibility to all other employees and to the organization by using that excuse. Good for you. Do you parent the same way? Jettison the kids who don’t choose to be happy?
Great article! I totally agree that employee satisfaction rest squartely on the individual. It doesn’t matter what hellhole or utopia you’re employed with, if you are a griper you will NEVER BE SATISFIED!. People need to realise that a business is not their homes and employers are not their parents.
It’s simple really: unsatisfied employees = unsatisfied customers. You’re going to tell an employee that his/her satisfaction isn’t your problem and then expect that employee to make customer satisfaction a priority? Good luck.
Very good points about employee satisfaction. Employers are not to blame, but wouldn’t everything be so much easier if employees were better matched to their work? How can employees be happier on the job?
It’s a good article. I do not agree that the employers are not responsible to keep employees engaged and satisfied. It is employer’s responsibility to make a place of work and content of work interesting. They are responsible to provide free and democratic environment so that employees open up and contribute their best. Building a positive work culture over a period of time may help to improve employee satisfaction.
Very good article in general however I see some conflicting views that do not sit well with me. I do however agree with B. T. Boke with the statement that employers are responsible for employee satisfaction in-so-much as they foster an environment which allows an employee to be engaged and feel valuable to the organization. I very much disagree, in fact I am very much disturbed, with such an obviously harmful statement that the Human resource officer should not care about the employee that is not performing at their utmost. What better metric does an organization have to measure its ability to empower and motivate its employees? An employee that is not performing need to be considered and if the organization is the factor that is stifling their ability to perform this needs to be addressed. If the employee is simply a bad fit with the company then steps should be taken to correct this. But to clearly state “I do not care” especially in an article supporting employee empowerment, is not only disconcerting, but entirely inappropriate!
I worked for a major Canadian company who’s mission specifically stated that they were to “first ensure employee satisfaction” and that by doing so, the “customers would be taken care of” – and this plan WORKED. We had good relations between every department and profit margins were soaring. Then we were purchased by an American company who shall not be named. Their mission was towards the bottom line. They started isolating departments and cut out the ones that were “least productive”. Well, those “least productive” were actually adding value to the bigger picture in terms of customer satisfaction. Today, that business has gone under. Work was created so that human beings would have something to do. Work should serve ALL of us and not the other way around.