Academic Research Outlines Why You Should Monitor Employee Satisfaction

Employee Satisfaction Has Proven Impact on the Bottom Line

There is a direct link between employee satisfaction and customer satisfaction, and between customer satisfaction and improved financial performance.
The key organizational characteristic for explaining employee satisfaction is organizational communication (a measure of the downward and upward communication in an organization).
Employee satisfaction is a key antecedent to employee engagement.
Interaction between managers and employees with regards to supportiveness and goal setting, as well as job design were also key drivers of employee engagement.
Organizational culture was another significant driver of employee engagement, where employees must be expected to cooperate and work together, but also to take charge and provide a voice for the customer within the organization.
A fully cooperative culture feels the need to reach consensus on a single option, where a culture promoting healthy competition provides multiple choices which are then balanced against one another in an attempt to develop an optimal solution.
When individuals and teams are competing to implement the optimal behaviors oriented to the market and its customers, such competition can work to the advantage of both the organization and its customers.
Organizations with engaged employees have customers who use their products more, and increased customer usage leads to higher levels of customer satisfaction.
It is an organization’s employees who influence the behavior and attitudes of customers, and it is customers who drive an organization’s profitability through the purchase and use of its products.
In the end, customers who are more satisfied with an organization’s products are less expensive to serve, use the product more, and, hence, are more profitable customers.

(1) © 2005 Forum for People Performance Management and Measurement, Department of Integrated Marketing Communications, Northwestern University. All rights reserved.

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