Employee Satisfaction (ESat) is a metric which measures how happy employees are in their job.
This metric will generally track factors including:
- Satisfaction with day-to-day tasks
- Alignment with the goals of the business
- Sense of purpose
- Likelihood of professional development
- Attitude to shift patterns and lengths
- Opinions on pay and benefits
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How is Esat measured?
It’s possible (and easy) to measure ESat in exactly the same way as CSat; a single question asking employees to rate satisfaction, usually out of 5.
That gets you a nice digestible number to follow and improve on.
However, that’s a very limited approach. A single question won’t cover the breadth of experiences or reflect why some staff are more satisfied than others.
The better option is the Employee Satisfaction Index.
This index provides a far more comprehensive insight into employee satisfaction. It can also reflect any number of ‘categories’ of satisfaction.
Here’s how it works.
Define your questions. For example, you might be especially interested in the three areas of pay, purpose and general happiness. Therefore you would ask one question about each of these. For example:
- How well do pay and benefits meet your expectations?
- How aligned do you feel with the business’s purpose?
- How satisfied are you generally with your role at <company>?
Ask staff to provide scores out of 10. This is important to get right! Staff should be clear that 10 is full agreement or support, and that 1 is the bare minimum.
Calculate your ESI. The equation is fairly simple:
Why does ESat matter?
Today, many businesses focus on improving customer satisfaction (CSat) and are directing more resources to facilitate this.
The trend isn’t surprising; millennials, (who currently represent the largest segment of the US population place high value on service quality.
Unfortunately, most enterprises find it very hard to achieve their CSat goals. This is often because they don’t give enough thought to employee satisfaction, which enables CSat.
Let’s be clear; making employees happy is its own reward.
But if you’re looking for the business case, it’s CSat!
Enterprises looking to improve their CSat should start by boosting their ESat, as it’s only possible for them to realize the full potential of their CSat measures when ESat is optimal.
Workplace challenges, especially in inbound or outbound call centers, can be overwhelming for many employees.
In most situations where ESat is low, companies provide lackluster customer services.
How do businesses gather ESat data?
Businesses use several methods to gather data on employee satisfaction.
- Employee forums: You can create forums where you can directly ask your employees to share insights on their satisfaction with their work environment. Create a safe space where the employees won’t fear retribution for speaking out their opinion if you want honest answers.
- Anonymous employee surveys: You should also run anonymous surveys for suggestions that employees might want to give in confidentiality. You might find that there are a lot of issues the staff raise anonymously.
- Examine your employee trends: Is your staff retention rate wanting? If you always have to hire new customer service employees, then there is a problem you need to address.
How to boost ESat *and* CSat
#1 Develop your self-service tools
Self-service tools help quickly serve customers calling with minor issues.
That leaves your customer service staff to handle only the most challenging customer issues.
By having self-service tools, all your customers can be attended to, boosting your CSat.
#2 Introduce tools that simplify work
This means providing them with integrated systems and automating standard tasks.
NLU is an exciting area that assists staff – especially new starters – by suggesting next actions.
Thus, the call center staff can quickly identify the problems customers are experiencing and offer solutions. As a result, they may spend less time with each client and are certain to waste less time performing manual research.
#3 Establish a centralized knowledge base
Not even the most veteran agents are familiar with every problem a customer might face.
More junior agents will have an especially hard time with unusual issues.
Establishing a centralized knowledge base will put all the information in the call center staff’s hands. Therefore, they can more easily attend to customers.
To summarize
If your employees are satisfied with their work conditions, they will go out of their way to make your customers happy.
Employee satisfaction and customer satisfaction are two sides of the same coin; neither can exist without the other.
It makes complete sense to put as much effort into improving your ESat as their CSat. It’s a move that opens up your company for more incredible success opportunities.
