Enhancing Employee Satisfaction

Human Resource Development (HRD) is a practice that combines training, organizational development, and career development efforts to encourage improvement of individual, group, and organizational performance.  Its purpose is to enhance employee performance and productivity, which leads to employee and customer satisfaction and an increase in the profitability of the organization.

Performance Within an Organizational Setting

An individual’s performance within an organizational setting has been linked to that particular individual’s satisfaction with his or her job.  Enhancing
employee satisfaction is a topic of considerable interest among organizations
and HRD practitioners. Both organizations and HRD practitioners should be
concerned about the job satisfaction of their employees. If employees are satisfied, they want to excel in their positions and meet the needs of the organization and its customers.  Satisfied employees cultivate satisfied customers, which in turn promotes profitability for the organization.

Satisfying the Needs of Employees

Satisfying the needs of its employees represents an enormous challenge for
organizations.  If organizations want to excel, they must first focus on satisfying the needs of their employees so that their employees want to do their jobs. For today’s employees, job satisfaction no longer takes on a materialistic connotation. Organizations can no longer buy employees’ commitment.  Since commitment comes from within the individual employee, the organizational climate in which that employee must function is very important. Work or people or organizations that deplete energy are likely to result, over the long run, in departure.

Organizational Climate

To the extent that the climate of an organization fosters employee enjoyment,
growth, and development, and to the extent that it invigorates its employees
into actions that serve both individual and organizational needs, it also fosters
a high level of employee commitment.

Employees have different views on job satisfaction. Some value task variety and partaking in decisions while others need to be confident about the organization’s future directions.  Still others value benefits and work/life balance.

Summary

Successful organizations need to consider the varying needs of their employees in developing effective human resource development and employee retention
strategy. It is expected that employees’ views on job satisfaction will
vary greatly from individual to individual and strategies that usually work for
one group of employees in a particular environment may not be effective for
other individuals. However, there are many characteristics related to job satisfaction that are common for the majority of employees. Successful organizations position their employees for success by providing the knowledge, education, training, resources, and opportunities necessary to foster a climate contributing to to employee satisfaction.

By Shirley J. Caruso, M.A., Human Resource Development