Satisfaction Might Not Matter

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INDUSTRIAL ENGINEER – Volume 46 No. 11

 Academic literature implies that solid employee satisfaction programs can keep your workers from leaving for greener pastures. But “Understanding the Drivers of Job Satisfaction of Frontline Service Employees, Learning from Lost Employees” in the Journal of Service Research found that satisfied and dissatisfied employees are equally likely to quit their company.

The research team from Texas Tech University, the University of Georgia and Eastern Illinois University made this discovery by surveying employees who recently quit as opposed to current workers at a particular company. According to the team, the “model of satisfaction formation” can vary from employee to employee.

“In other words, all aspects of the work environment do not affect every employee similarly,” Texas Tech’s Mayukh Dass said. “Therefore, the specific trigger that precipitates the employee’s exit varies substantially. I would encourage companies to move away from ‘one-size-fits-all’ retention programs to more multidimensional retention programs.”

The researchers suggest that organizations change their assumptions about why an employee leaves and step up their collection of data and analysis about such moves, as companies would do better to discover the motivation behind each employee’s decision to stay or go.