Gone are the days when company management would shower an employee with more monetary compensation to make them stay with the firm. In the modern corporate world, firms all over the globe battle the scourge of employee attrition and secure heightened employee retention ratios.
The corporate world keeps evolving by the minute, and so do the lures pulling employees one way or the other. Modern employees are not so monochromatic as to be drawn in by a simple equation of a higher pay package. A combination of job satisfaction, high morale, a cordial team environment, and a healthy work-life balance helps employees find their feet in a corporate set-up, encouraging them to stick through with a firm despite external enticements.
Mindlessly bumping up an employee's pay package might not be the cure-all to all employee complaints that managerial leadership often attributes it to be. Even if such a strategy manages to retain the employee, it could still lead to an unmotivated employee burdening a company's resources rather than contributing to its bottom line.
So, here is our take on what a company needs to do to keep great employees satisfied and, in the company:
Let us first look at the causes of job satisfaction
Messaging Comes from The Top
Cultivating a company culture that stokes job satisfaction is the principal responsibility of not just the HR but the board of directors as well. They seed the idea of a company's goals, ideals, and vision and the means the company will employ to achieve them. Of course, no company can hope to achieve its objectives if it does not accommodate the well-being and prosperity of its employees in its original blueprint. Therefore, efforts to ensure job satisfaction are set in motion from the top of the corporate chain.
Cordial Relationships with Supervisors
One's immediate seniors inevitably determine job satisfaction levels. Mid-level managers of a company must be trained to collaborate with authority marked in equal measures with empathy and efficacy. Going overboard with just one will yield a far too lenient or far too authoritative manager. Emotionally intelligent managers capable of encouraging, guiding, and extracting the best work from their subordinates through thick and thin do not just make for good leaders but also groom leaders out of ordinary employees.
Being Valued in a Team Setting
Contrary to the popular notion that pay packages motivate employees to perform better, it is the sense of self-worth that an employee derives from his official peer group that determines how long a company retains an employee. Out of all the job satisfaction factors, this factor alone trumps others. An employee can put up with low pay packages, heavy work schedules, and even a skewed work-life balance if he feels valued and seen for his work and his skills by his fellow teammates.
Career Advancement Opportunities
Employee satisfaction is an easy code to crack, provided the company has a clear path for young employees to rise the ranks. A company that does not grant opportunities for upward movement- either because higher roles have been captured by mid-level managers or the company continues to perform in an old-fashioned manner runs the risk of losing out on fresh ideas and its market edge.
Modern companies often offer young professionals an opportunity to pursue academic courses and diplomas to help keep their skillsets updated. These professionals, in turn, deliver a bounty for the company by putting their newly acquired talents in service of the company providing a win-win solution for both the parties involved.
Cultivating A Non-Toxic Work Environment
One often hears of instances where employees quit in anger or fury. No employee in their right mind would want to depart from a company on bad terms and potentially degrade their future career prospects. However, the corporate culture of some firms is outrightly toxic. It encourages pressure tactics and bullying gambits as a ploy to push up productivity or maintain it at elevated levels. Such tricks might work in the short run but only serve to dent the company's reputation and employee participation in the long haul. A healthy work-life balance and an office culture that emphasizes the de-escalation of stress during high-pressure scenarios help retain employees for longer.
It is not easy to retain and keep employees happy these days, but companies that are willing to do the work make leaders and grow trifold with those leaders. At Extentia, we believe this to be a key differentiator and leave no stone unturned to make extra efforts to instill job satisfaction. The following blog will address how a company can scale up employee satisfaction. Stay Tuned!
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