Employee Satisfaction Should Be Made Public

Recently I was told a story by a close personal friend that explained how tired she was of how he was treated at his workplace. He complained that management was consistently failing with their leadership, and when he tried to get in touch with the owner (who started the business simply to make a quick profit off a fad service), the owner would either not respond, or respond with something terse and never follow up. This is a problem. The business was succeeding because of the hard work of some of its lower level employees, while upper management and the owner were trying their best to accidentally run it into the ground.

It’s often said that employee satisfaction is important for a company to succeed, but it is possible for a company to succeed even without treating their employees very well. Once the iPhone was created, Apple could beat their employees senselessly every day with rusty pipes and they would still thrive because the iPhone was a good enough product to sell itself, especially with its great marketing.

But should companies be allowed to succeed if they’re run poorly? This is the moral question that’s constantly debated in today’s society. Now, especially with the Internet allowing people to market complete falsities just to get business, it seems as though employee satisfaction should have more value in terms of estimating a company’s worth to the consumer.

One of the only ways to do that would be to make employee satisfaction results both mandatory and public. This would: Give management an incentive to treat its employees well. Allow employees more of a say in how the company works.

Possibly lead to increased production if employee satisfaction and productivity are truly linked. That latter point is even more important. Not only would employees be treated better (because it would be in the interests of the company to stimulate employee happiness) but presumably the company would also reap the benefits, assuming the link between satisfaction and productivity holds true.

While there is no doubt that the idea of making this information mandatory and public would be met with a lot of ownership resistance, the possible benefit to the market could be pronounced, and the moral component of ensuing employees are treated their best would be clear. It may be nothing but a pipe dream, but there is certainly some merit to the idea that employee satisfaction should be given more importance by companies.