Do your employees feel you complete them? Are top job candidates sending you love notes? They should be. More employees are satisfied with their current jobs now since the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) started measuring employee satisfaction nearly 15 years ago. How many? An impressive 86 percent are perfectly satisfied where they’re at. That means it’s becoming harder than ever to woo top candidates away from current positions, and to keep great employees on board if your company isn’t doing a great job keeping them happy.
Want to know what it takes to be irresistible? Here are the top five ways.
- R-E-S-P-E-C-T. Respectful treatment of all employees at all levels was rated as the top employer attribute by seven out of every 10 satisfied workers in the SHRM poll. Specifically, more than half admitted that an immediate supervisor’s respect for the employee’s ideas was the absolutely top factor in their satisfaction at work. To help you channel some serious respect, use this video as a primer.
Source: 6ABC.com via Giphy.com
- Trust. At 64 percent, trust between employees and senior management was the second most important contributor to job satisfaction in SHRM’s poll. The key is for the trust to go both ways. Austin-based Spiceworks—currently a Best Place to Work in Austin for 2015—touts management’s trust in employees as a huge factor of the company’s success, telling the Austin Business Journal, “When you work at Spiceworks, you are fully trusted to be an expert in your job—no micro managers here.”
- Great benefits and compensation, of course. Don’t let anyone tell you that money doesn’t matter. According to a recent LinkedIn study, while money is usually the top reason a job switcher starts looking for a new job, it is the second most-popular reason a job switcher will decide to take a new position. To stay on top, do your research. You can start with our recent article, “Texas Salary Trends: Focusing on 2020.” If you feel your company isn’t in the position to offer top dollar, don’t fret. You can offer more in the way of compensation and benefits than you may know. Take a look out our previous post, “Innovative Perks for Small Businesses” for ideas.
Source: Reddit via Giphy.com
- Being rewarded. Management’s recognition of employee job performance ranks high on SHRM’s list of employee engagement wins. Deloitte sees it as a huge factor for employee satisfaction this year too, finding that one of the biggest needs in the new world of work is the need to rethink how organizations manage, evaluate, and reward people. Online employee engagement and reward programs like Austin-based YouEarnedIt can make the process fun and, well, rewarding.
- Meaningful work. More than 70 percent of Millennials expect their employers to focus on societal or mission-driven problems. At the same time, 70 percent want to be creative at work. What does it look like to be a company that puts meaningful work first? It’s not what you think. Many companies that seem to have a traditional corporate culture are getting it very, very right. Take David Weekly Homes for instance. The Houston-based homebuilder is nationally ranked among the 100 Great Places to Work because 99 percent of its employees “feel good about the ways we contribute to the community” and 97 percent “feel a sense of pride when I look at what we accomplish.”
What’s your secret to success? Do you have plans to brush up on your attractiveness to employees (and potential employees)? Share them with us! We’d love to know!
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