Wise company managers know that more than one factor is responsible for their company’s success. Among other priorities, managers must recognize and applaud the value of their employees. Therefore, managers must consider the degree to which their company’s standard job satisfaction metrics are satisfied. A review of these metrics can help managers discover where they may need to change their approach to their employees.
What Are Job Satisfaction Metrics?
When companies attempt to measure employee satisfaction, one of the criteria they often use is to survey their employees about whether they would recommend the company as a pleasing workplace. Another way to measure employee satisfaction is by the rate of employee turnover and the amount of employee absenteeism. If both those rates are relatively high, management can conclude that something about their company isn’t keeping their employees happy. If you want a more specific report of your employees’ satisfaction or discontent, an anonymous employee satisfaction survey may reveal the areas that most need to be corrected.
Offer Childcare Benefits
Once your employees begin working with you, you’ll want their total dedication to their duties. However, your employees are human, which means that their personal lives will influence the degree to which they can be emotionally present at work. Employees who have children must be sure their children are cared for while they’re at work. Therefore, many company managers arrange to help employees with children, including the availability of an on-site daycare center.
Having a childcare center in the same place as your office provides employees with the convenience of not driving to a separate place for childcare. Having their children in the same building also allows employees to visit their children during their lunch hours. Some employers make it easy for employees to pay for these centers by withdrawing the childcare fees from their checks.
Assisting employees with children to have a safe place for their children can be invaluable. It can meet one of the job satisfaction metrics by reducing absenteeism that might occur if the employee can’t find childcare. Some employers who don’t have on-site childcare are providing employee subsidies or discounts for childcare expenses. Other companies offer Flexible Spending options so that money paid to childcare providers can be taken from their checks before taxes are withdrawn – saving those employees a considerable amount on the taxes they must pay.
Offer Floor Protection
When selecting how your office is designed, you may choose materials based on what you like. However, you should pick the building materials for the office based on how durable and easily cleaned they are. You may not think your flooring material influences job satisfaction metrics, but your employees will walk on them daily and may notice the floor more than you believe.
There are several material types you could choose for your office floor. Some common flooring choices include tiles, wood, stone, concrete, and carpeting. Hardwood floors can be a wise choice for your office. Hardwood is easy to care for, durable and sustainable, and has a classic look. When your employees walk on a hardwood floor, they can feel a sense of pride as they move around the office.
If you are taking over the use of an existing office building, you must decide whether to use the existing flooring or rip out the current floor. However, if the office you are moving into already has hardwood floors, you may only need to refinish them. The durability of hardwood may allow you to select a hardwood floor refinisher and apply it to the existing floor. Refinishing a hardwood floor involves ripping out the floor, sanding down the surface, and finishing the bare surface of the wood.
Offer Finished Driveway
Many employees become frustrated by parking conditions at their jobs. Your employees will be even more upset if the parking lot at work has potholes. If getting to work frustrates employees, that frustration can influence their job satisfaction metrics. The commute to work shouldn’t make the employees feel frustrated before the day’s work begins.
If your parking lot has seen better days, it will be your responsibility to contact a paving contractor to resurface the parking lot. Although installing a driveway is expensive, consider it a long-term investment. Your initial outlay will help you to avoid paving endless parking lot potholes in the future. If the parking lot is easy to access and drive through, it can benefit your employees to start their day in a good mood.
Offer Great Insurance
One of the most frequent reasons for employee absenteeism is illness. As employee attendance is one of the priority job satisfaction metrics, management needs to be aware of their employees’ health status. Managers must acknowledge that their employees get sick, and that they don’t want them to go to work when ill. Those same managers want to minimize their employees’ sick days.
Preventive medical care is one of the best ways to minimize sick days. Companies must provide their employees with health insurance to take preventative health measures. Griffin Benefits states that employer-sponsored health insurance has been offered since the 1940s. With the rising cost of healthcare as a consideration, many of today’s employers assume some or all the costs of their employees’ health insurance.
Since the first health insurance policies were offered, employers have become increasingly aware of other health-related costs affecting their employees. For example, employers began to admit that dental health was a factor in overall health. Employers then began to offer dental insurance for expenses incurred at the employee’s dentist.
Offer Waste Removal
Everyone has to go to the bathroom, and it’s a manager’s responsibility to ensure the employees have clean, working restrooms. Sometimes, the building where you work has a bathroom located in the hallway; your office may need a restroom within the area of your office. If your office has a bathroom, the management will be responsible for operating the septic services on-site.
Although the bathroom in your office will be inside the building, the septic system will begin outside. If you are responsible for planning a new building with a new bathroom, the bathroom will start with the septic system contractor who installs the septic system. The location of a septic system has to be approved in advance by the local municipality. Their approval will be based on whether there are any utility lines or other potential hazards underneath the ground at the location where your contractor wants to dig.
Your septic contractor will then place a septic tank inside the building. The septic tanks will process the wastewater and then remove the waste from the building through the outside septic system. Although the management will be responsible for ensuring the employees have a working bathroom, they must install or fix the system themselves.
Offer Modern Roofing
No one would want to go to work in a place where the roof was frequently leaking. Therefore, during the building process of an office, the management will want to ensure the roof will remain intact. Finding a reliable group of commercial roofing contractors will be invaluable during the building process and any future roof repairs.
Safety at work – including an intact roof – will be essential to your employees’ satisfaction metrics. Several types of high-quality materials would be ideal for commercial roofing. According to Apx Construction Group, metal is the most frequently chosen material for roofing.
If your roof contractor wants a material that is easy and inexpensive to use, they may choose MBR (modified bitumen roofing.) This type of roof takes sheets of asphalt-saturated felt embedded with fiberglass mesh and places them over existing asphalt roofs. If you and the contractor want a sustainable option, the roof may contain solar panels. Although solar panels require a significant initial monetary investment, companies who use them can save money continuously.
Offer Privacy Barriers
When your employees come to work, they may not rank the fence as one of the deciding factors in whether they value their job. Its appearance may give them pride as part in the appearance of the exterior of your company’s office. Therefore, you might assume that the fence surrounding your company property doesn’t have any impact on your employees’ job satisfaction metrics.
However, your company’s fence may be vital to you in your position as manager. Companies often decide to use fences due to a desire for privacy or security. In addition to those reasons, managers will be glad to learn that attractive fencing increases curb appeal.
If you want a fence around your building, you’ll need a professional fence installer to do the job. The most frequently chosen materials for commercial fences include wood, vinyl, and chain link metal. According to Hurricane Fence, vinyl fencing is often chosen because it needs less maintenance. You may include various security features in a gate when installing the fence.
Offer Fire Protection
Employee safety is one of the top priorities for job satisfaction metrics. Employees want to do their jobs without worrying about being safe. Installing fire alarms and smoke detectors in your office is not only a reassurance for your employees, but also a law. According to OSHA, your employees must be able to access your office’s fire extinguishers without putting themselves at risk.
In addition to fire extinguishers, your company has to have smoke detectors. As the manager, it’s your responsibility to install smoke detectors and fire extinguishers. It’s also your responsibility to ensure your employees know the location of those devices. The employees also must learn how to use the devices.
The same law that mandates the use of fire safety devices also mandates regular inspections of the devices. If the devices are shown to be defective, it will be the manager’s responsibility to contact a company that performs fire system repairs. The inspections and repairs must be documented.
Offer Telephone Privacy
One of the standard features of many office jobs is using a telephone for business purposes. The telephones in the office and the employees’ mobile phones will be instrumental in how well employees can do their jobs. If your employees need help with the quality of their phones or unmet expectations for internet access whenever needed, it will impact their job satisfaction metrics.
To meet these demands, many managers use a VOIP phone system for their office phone lines. VOIP stands for ‘voice over internet protocol’ and uses the internet to make phone calls – instead of traditional phone lines. Social media platforms like Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, and Skype use VOIP to facilitate phone calls directly from these platforms. Many of today’s businesses have adopted this technology to save money and provide convenience to their employees.
A VOIP network allows your employees to easily make calls from an internet-enabled smartphone. The employees can also use the VOIP features of their phones to answer voice mail, attend web conferences, and use a USB port to send and receive faxes. According to FBP Online, using VOIP can also help you save up to 50% on your phone bills.
Offer Pest-Free Offices
One of the many things your employees will notice in your office will be its cleanliness. If the office’s lack of cleanliness is evidenced by a pest problem (like mold, termites, bugs, or rodents), it will further influence their job satisfaction metrics – negatively. If management notices a pest problem in the office, it will be essential for management to contact a local pest control company.
Pest control is an essential consideration for your employees’ safety and satisfaction. Choosing professional pest control workers is wise for your company, since killing pests isn’t as simple as using discount pest control remedies. Professional pest control experts are best suited to use remedies specifically targeting your office’s pests. Choosing those remedies will kill the pests without using harmful pest-killer chemicals.
Employees need to feel supported by management, and they also need safe and clean office buildings. As a manager, you’ll want your employees to be happy at work, so following these guidelines may help you to be the best employer possible. When in doubt, treat your employee as you would want to be treated as an employee. Using that as your guide, your employee satisfaction will surely improve the quality of your company’s business.
