Originally published July 25th 2022 on Medium

Most managers know that open communication is key to making sure employees stay motivated and happy. In the past, it was simple for employers to do a gut-check to gauge office morale based on consistent sounds of good-natured banter between colleagues, or frequent laughter around the water cooler. Recently, however — under the umbrella of remote work and all — it has become a bit more difficult to measure employee satisfaction.

And with the current job market so hot, skilled workers can more easily find jobs that not only pay the bills, but give them a deep sense of fulfillment. With that being said, it’s incredibly important to find ways to ensure your top talent is happy and committed to staying.

“Employee work happiness is increasingly dependent on excellent management-employee relations,” says David Farkas, CEO of The Upper Ranks, a company that helps brands increase their online presence.

In this day and age, if your employees don’t see a future with you, they’ll go, he adds.

Sincere Appreciation Fosters Loyalty

“To keep your staff satisfied, you must appreciate them. Workers value organizational cohesion and a strong relationship with their employer,” he says. “Appreciation boosts employee motivation, job satisfaction, self-esteem, and retention.”

Devon Fata, CEO of Pixoul, a digital product design consultancy and staffing firm that helps businesses deliver outstanding digital products, says this is where the significance of skilled business coaches and team leaders come in.

“These positions are more about helping employees with their work, growing their skills, building relationships with them, and expediting any issues they’re having,” he says. “This makes coaches and team leaders essential when it comes to accurately judging employee attitudes.”

Taking employees’ emotional temperature will always be a tricky proposition as employees don’t want to sound dissatisfied in most cases, but good team leaders get around this by building enough trust with their teams that workers feel comfortable being transparent with them, he notes.

Although delicate, it’s important to remember how necessary employee checks are in order to nurture morale, develop empathy, foster trust, and resolve any emergent issues, says Lisa Lazey, CEO of Lisa Buys Austin Homes.

Gauging Employee Morale is a Science

There are a number of effective methods for organizations to gauge employee morale.

An effective tool for gauging employee satisfaction is an app created by BluXinga. The company created a platform that allows for daily employee temperature checks so managers can always be tuned into how their team members are feeling.

More specifically, the application fosters real time communication with staff members, allowing managers to immediately converse with employees who can report on their daily energy levels through the platform. This can help supervisors kindle a more meaningful relationship with their employees regardless of whether they work in-person or remote.

The company’s app is designed to be the connective tissue to empower employees and management to increase performance, job satisfaction, and achieve company targets, and help managers and employees engage with personnel activities such as performance reviews and employee recognition.

In the case of Lisa Lazey’s company, she likes to use the employee satisfaction index, or ESI. You can ascertain this by surveying employees and asking them three questions on a scale of 1 to 10. These can include questions such as:

1. How pleased are you with your current work environment?
2. How well does your workplace perform in comparison to your expectations?
3. How near is your current place of employment to your ideal job?

“Then, using the ESI method, a score between 1 and 100 is calculated, with a higher value indicating better employee satisfaction,” she notes.

She has personally used this to measure her worker’s contentment with their employment as well as their satisfaction with specific components of their jobs such as salary or company culture.

Parting Thoughts:

While good communication remains king to making sure your employees stay motivated and happy, there are a number of methods and tools that can help managers automate the process of measuring their employees’ contentment and needs whether they work from home or the office.

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