Employee satisfaction is often used as a bit of a soft metric when it comes to business goals. While in general, given the choice between having high versus low employee satisfaction, we can assume that most companies would almost certainly choose the former, there may be other goals with more quantitatively measurable impacts that take priority.
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The Impact of Belonging
A new study by the Employee Experience Index (EXI) may change that calculus. The EXI study surveyed more than 23,000 workers across several countries and was conducted by human capital solutions management company Globoforce and information technology company IBM.
“After analyzing the data, the EXI teams found that they could measure employees’ personal experiences at work in terms of belonging, purpose, achievement, happiness and vigor,” says Aysha Ashley Househ.
If employees aren’t feeling appreciated, only 38% report having a positive experience, and when employees don’t feel their work lines up with their core values, only 30% report having a positive experience.
So where’s the concrete connection to the bottom line?
The Bottom-Line Implications
According to Greg Stevens, head of analytics of the WorkHuman Research Institute at Globoforce, “That’s two-thirds of your workforce that are not bringing their best selves to work, which shows up through lower performance, less discretionary effort and more turnover. When employers do have these human practices in place, the number of employees having a positive experience rises to 83 percent and 80 percent respectively. Our recent research shows this leads to a more positive bottom line.”
Organizations that scored in the top 25% on employee experience reported nearly three times the return on assets and over twice the return on sales as compared to companies in the bottom 25%.
Employee satisfaction has long been seen as something of a nice-to-have, but this recent research helps drive home the fact that there are real and measurable business benefits to keeping employees happy and satisfied.