When Does Employee Satisfaction Matter?

Employee satisfaction is an important part of the workplace. But studies differ in how important it really is. Some studies have shown a strong link between an employee’s productivity and their satisfaction.

Others have shown no link at all. There are certainly some aspects of employee satisfaction that are always important, such as the moral/ethical reasons to keep employees happy, retention rate of good employees, and possibly even the likelihood of attracting great employees.

However, studies have also shown that this link may be questionable.

A recent article by Psychology Today illustrated one example of how employee satisfaction benefits can be difficult to measure. The results of a customer satisfaction study at Sears showed that in general satisfaction played no role in employee productivity – at least no affect great enough that it would be valuable. This finding was fairly important at the time, because it implied that employee satisfaction may not be as important as everyone had assumed.

However, at one point during the year there was a snowstorm. It was possible for employees to still come to work, but it would have taken a considerable effort. It was at that moment when employee satisfaction played its biggest role.

The employees that were not fond of their workplace were more than happy to call in and stay home, rather than make the journey to the workplace. The employees that were highly satisfied came to work anyway, despite having a more than adequate reason to stay home.

It’s clear that employee satisfaction is important, but it’s difficult to tell how important satisfaction truly is. From a productivity level, it appears that where employee satisfaction plays the strongest role is when the employee has discretion over how much work they actually want to accomplish, especially above and beyond their pay. One can assume that the most naturally efficient employees are the ones that satisfaction may hit the hardest, because employees that would otherwise go far beyond expectations are less likely to make that extra effort without proper justification.

But this is all speculation, because the way employee satisfaction affects your business may be entirely different than the way it affects others. One thing is clear though – employee satisfaction does have an effect on businesses, but the depth of its effects may change between businesses, and what it affects may differ even more.