How to Measure Employee Satisfaction: 6 Effective Methods

A survey has shown that only 45% of employees feel satisfied with their work. That means there might be more dissatisfied staff in your business than you thought.

If an employee isn’t satisfied with their job, chances are that their morale and performance will decrease significantly. This will lead both to a decrease in productivity and an increase of turnover rates.

That’s why you need to discover how to measure employee satisfaction. And we’re here to help you with that.

What is employee satisfaction? 

Employee satisfaction is how satisfied employees are towards their job. It’s the level of how happy they are knowing their expectation for the job is somehow fulfilled.

How does employee satisfaction affect your business?

Well, employee satisfaction won’t directly boost your business profit right away, but lacking it will be a downfall for your company. 

Happy employees equal a happy workplace. Dissatisfied employees tend to be disengaged, and they will leave the job whenever they get a chance. The more dissatisfied employees are, the higher the price your company must pay to recruit and onboard new members.

While its benefits tend to be similar to employee engagement, employee satisfaction brings a broader meaning to your business. Not only it’ll lower the turnover rate of your company, but it also fulfills employees’ expectations and motivates them to work harder. 

Not all satisfied employees highly engage with their job, but none of them can engage without high job satisfaction. So how can you know how high or low your employee satisfaction is? Easy, just measure it using the methods below! 

Here are 6 effective methods to measure your employee satisfaction level

You might wonder if you actually need these. Since you’ve never heard your employees complaining, they must be happy with their job. Well, in most cases, they say nothing just because they don’t feel comfortable enough doing so with their boss.

Employees are most likely to share their concerns with other team members instead of with management. You shouldn’t ignore your employees’ concerns and satisfaction just because they don’t tell.

Start applying these methods now.

1. Employee satisfaction surveys

This is by far one of the most effective methods. You only need a basic questionnaire to find out what your employees like/dislike about their job. It doesn’t need much besides a simple office tool to create your survey. 

However, there are 2 most important things you should keep in mind. First, you have to choose your questions smart, it can either be open-ended or rating questions. Second, the survey should have a length that is enough for you to collect enough data, but also doesn’t bore your employees to the point they might quit halfway through. 

It’s crucial to keep your questions clear and easy to understand. Here are some tips from Qualtrics to create your questionnaire: 

Be simple, direct, comprehensible

Be actionable 

Be specific and concrete

Avoid jargon

Avoid double-barreled questions

Avoid negations

Avoid leading questions

Avoid emotionally charged words

Be read smoothly out loud

Allow for all possible responses

While writing out the questions, you should try to read them out and answer them from your employee’s perspective to see if these questions are clear enough. Here are a few examples:

• Do you enjoy being a member of the organization? (Rate from 1 to 10)
• How often do you feel stressed out at work? (Open answer)
• If there are a few things you can change about the company process, what would they be? (Open answer)

Try to keep your survey as specific as possible to the topic you want to direct. A big survey with too many general questions would be overload and will not gather as much data as you need. You can consider a monthly survey on several topics such as teamwork, communication employee benefits, or growth opportunities.

These surveys should be anonymous so that your team members aren’t afraid to answer honestly!

2. Employee Net Promoter Score (eNPS)

Basically, an employee Net Promoter Score (eNPS) is a metric system that shows how your employee feels about your company through these 3 questions:

1. On a scale of zero to ten, how likely are you to recommend [your company] as a place to work?
2. What do you like about [your company]?
3. What do you dislike about [your company]?

Based on their answers, you can divide employees into these 3 groups:

• Promoters (9-10): those who responded to the rating question with a 9 or a 10 are considered promoters. These people can provide valuable insights into what your company is doing right.
• Neutrals (7-8): employees who responded with this range of scores are categorized as neutrals. They don’t feel strongly about your company either way. You should always look for ways to turn these employees into promoters and prevent them from becoming detractors.
• Detractors (0-6): those who responded with a score below 7 are called detractors. These people aren’t satisfied with their job and are likely to leave the company. Detractors can tell you a lot about your opportunities for improvement.

How to calculate eNPS? Here is the formula: 

This will give you a score between -100 and 100. Any score above 0 is considered positive. Scores below zero are a red flag that tells you need to improve your employee satisfaction.

You can use this method alongside other methods as well for a better result. It’s best to measure eNPS score every quarter or year to see how your employee satisfaction change and improve it. 

3. Employee Satisfaction Index (ESI)

The Employee Satisfaction Index (ESI) measures how satisfied your employees are with their job by using these 3 questions:

• How satisfied are you with your workplace? (Rate from 1 to 10)
• How well does your workplace meet your expectations? (Rate from 1 to 10)
• How close is your workplace to your ideal job? (Rate from 1 to 10)

Here’s the formula to calculate ESI:

You should get a number between 1 and 100, the higher the score, the higher the employee satisfaction in your company.

This method should also be used alongside other methods. For a more specific topic, you might want to adjust the above 3 questions to reflect that.

4. 1-on-1 conversations

Set up 1-on-1 conversations with your employees to understand their needs and concerns more. These private sessions encourage employees to share about their job and working environment—something they’ll never do if you expect them to come to you directly.

This approach is an absolute life-saving method since it helps leaders connect with their team, while measuring satisfaction levels individually. 

These are some questions you can ask during the meeting:

• What keep you motivated to do this job?
• Do you have any concerns about your growth opportunities? 
• Do you think the company is doing fine? Do you have any suggestions to improve that/these problem(s)?

5. Sharing sessions

A small sharing session can help you learn a lot about your team’s level of satisfaction as a whole. You can evaluate that via the way your team work and solve problems together, and how they behave towards each other.

This is also a time-saving way to measure how satisfied your employees are. It’s also an opportunity for you and your teams to look at matters from different perspectives. However, some staff may be afraid to speak up, so you might not get the true information you need.

6. Suggestion mailbox

Another way to gather truthful sharing is by installing an anonymous suggestion box at the company. Writing things down on paper is easier for some staff, and you can analyze problems more carefully.

Plus, no one is afraid of holding back their thoughts since it’s anonymous. Be careful, though. Some people can take advantage of anonymity and write dishonest stuff.

Start to keep an eye on your employee satisfaction level now!

Of course, there’s no one-size-fits-all method for measuring employee satisfaction. But that doesn’t mean you can’t adopt some methods that have worked for other companies.

Start noticing if your employees are doing fine and keeping an eye on their satisfaction level. Try out 6 methods above. It would never be a waste of time!