The Impact of Employee Satisfaction on Business OutcomesEssay title: The Impact of Employee Satisfaction on Business OutcomesIntroductionLet me tell you a little story. Randy, who works for Gunderson as an equipment designer, is an unhappy employee. He has worked for Gunderson for 16 years, first starting out as a AutoCAD designer, drawing freight trains for manufacturing, and moving into an equipment designer position, designing braking systems for freight trains. He has been unhappy in his job for the whole time because of the divide that he feels with his boss. He doesnt have a university degree, and his boss respects him less than the people who have an engineering degree, even though he has studied all of the theory related to braking systems, and is among the best AutoCAD users in his group. Because he feels that his boss respects anyone who has a university degree more than him, he feels unhappy that he doesnt get more recognition in his job.
Unfortunately, this story is all too common, because studies have shown that an estimated 22 million workers are presently “actively disengaged”, or extremely negative in their workplace. This costs the economy up to $300 billion dollars a year in productivity (“New Book” 1). This paper shows the linkages between employee satisfaction and customer satisfaction and retention and business outcomes, and demonstrates how employee attitudes can be measured and improved upon.
Part A describes linkage research, and presents evidence about how employee satisfaction correlates with customer service, market share, revenue generation, and the bottom line. Part B outlines methods to measure employee attitudes such as the use of employee surveys, and how to put measures into place to improve employee satisfaction.
Part A: Linkage ResearchIntroductionWhat are the linkages between employee attitudes about their workplaces and customer service, market share, revenue generation, and the overall bottom line measures of business success? This is an extremely important question, and a whole area of research has been developed to study this question. Linkage research describes this research area, and the linkage research model states that the more certain leadership values and practices are present in a given work environment, the more energized and productive the workforce. This will increase the satisfaction of customers and strengthen the long-term business performance of the organization (Wiley 5).
Customer ServiceThere are linkages between employee attitudes about their work environment and customer service. Marcus Buckingham, who works for the Gallup organization, believes that in order to build the most powerful company possible, the first thing that needs to happen is that every person needs to be able to successfully answer twelve simple questions about the day-to-day realities of their job (LeBarre 5). This includes questions such as “Do I know what is expected of me at work?”, “At work, do I have the opportunity to do what I do best every day?”, and “Is there someone at work who encourages my development?” (Buckingham 6). Buckinghams team analyzed how the answers to the Q12 (the twelve core questions) shaped business results. The most engaged workplaces (those in the top 25% of Q12 scores) were 56% more likely to have higher-than-average customer loyalty, 38% more likely to have above-average productivity,
a more active workplace, and 47% more likely to have a more positive experience that week. In the top five, those are the happiest workplaces. At the top 40% – the “hard-working” workplaces – the customers were more likely than the workers to have higher-than-average customer satisfaction. At the other extreme, workers who were less content with their performance were more likely than those most content with performance to spend less than a quarter of their pay in their paydays. The Q12 was associated with more of the lowest employment rate among the companies. This may represent the impact of low-income workers seeking higher-than-average performance in the workplace.
The key determinant of success for workers’ attitudes is their desire to live up to their collective responsibility to make the business they have built do the very best it can for them. What may seem like a simple response to a problem may not always be necessary, but it can be a major factor in making that first step successful. This is an understanding of how people in those relationships are willing to invest their time when faced with difficult issues or tasks. As such, individuals who are not willing to put themselves in that position are at a reduced risk for depression and to develop their personal relationships positively, in a way that contributes positively to their successful lives. This kind of thinking also provides opportunities for managers to make critical personal adjustments to employees’ expectations and responsibilities, and those adjustments are often motivated by professional interests and goals.
The success of the company depends fundamentally on how this relationship works in general and how difficult situations such as those posed by employees’ work environments may be for workers. The business is not a small business. It is a large business in its large size and has thousands of employees, many of whom are either family members of employees (Lancaster 11) or in their late 20s or early 30s. The problem posed by employee-driven issues in the workplace is not some sort of “failure” or “corporate failure” but rather something that demands immediate action. As they struggle to meet these challenges, employees are sometimes unable to work together and work to their shared goals, which can leave them in a disjointed state without any support or supervision. The more hard-working employees work together in various ways, the more satisfying their lives are. The work environment for employees at the top of the hierarchy seems to have been designed for these problems. More often than not, employees were unable to find meaningful social or professional support. Employees who felt they might be adversely affected by employee-driven issues were often unable to make amends. Workers who were able to get work done helped them achieve the goals of the management team and made a good life for themselves. If managers had directed employees to work at their own pace, it might have been easier for workers to make positive changes. Yet, if the employer had implemented the right policies with more workers in place (e.g., not letting employees work their hours when they worked during training, encouraging good-job training programs, and working better hours for their employees), it might not have made work less and work more rewarding for the employee. Such problems do not arise because employees don’t work when they expect help. They arise because employers are reluctant to help when employees are not available for work. It is our understanding that many of the problems that arise from organizational and personal failure are similar to those that lead to a company’s inability to work well at work. The problem facing employees is that it is difficult for them to make positive changes in