5.3 Employee Well-Being and Satisfaction

Purpose

This Item examines your organization’s work environment, your employee support climate, and how you determine employee satisfaction, with the aim of fostering the well-being, satisfaction, and motivation of all employees while recognizing their diverse needs. It also examines your organization’s capabilities for handling emergencies or disasters with the aim of employee protection and workplace safety.

 

Comments

- Most organizations, regardless of size, have many opportunities to contribute to employees’ well-being, satisfaction, and motivation. Some examples of services, facilities, activities, and other opportunities are personal and career counseling; career development and employability services; recreational or cultural activities; formal and informal recognition; non work-related education; day care; special leave for family responsibilities and community service; flexible work hours and benefits packages; outplacement services; and retiree benefits, including extended health care and access to employee services.

- All organizations, regardless of size, are required to meet minimum regulatory standards for workplace safety; however, high-performing organizations have processes in place to ensure that they not only meet these minimum standards but go beyond a compliance orientation. This includes designing proactive processes, with input from employees directly involved in the work, to ensure a safe working environment.

- Although satisfaction with pay and satisfaction with promotion are important, these two factors generally are not sufficient to ensure overall employee satisfaction, motivation, and high performance. Some examples of other factors to consider are effective employee problem and grievance resolution; employee development and career opportunities; work environment and management support; workplace safety and security; workload; effective communication, cooperation, and teamwork; job security; appreciation of the differing needs of diverse employee groups; and organizational support for serving customers.

- In addition to direct measures of employee satisfaction and well-being through formal or informal surveys, some other indicators include absenteeism, turnover, grievances, strikes, Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) reportables, and workers’ compensation claims.