Why boost employee satisfaction?

The question that always bothered me. Even when I took ITIL a few years ago, the reasons were clear from the company's perspective - improve retention, make users happy, and make them more effective.

But as an individual, why is employee satisfaction so important?

It wasn’t until a few months ago that I had a conversation with a customer. I don't recall his exact words, but he said something along the lines of:

That's when I realized that boosting employee satisfaction is just as important for employee retention as it is for personal satisfaction.

It's knowing that all your hard work is appreciated.

Before diving in, let's discuss the concept of satisfaction to better understand the 3 strategies.

Employee Satisfaction is Simply Meeting Expectations.

The secret is underpromising but overdelivering.

It’s tempting to keep saying yes with your end-users. There’s the added pressure of helping them with their personal objectives.

But there’s no benefit behind saying yes. It’s a lose-lose situation for you.

(I enjoy diagrams because they help simplify and clarify information.)

If you look above, when you overpromise, delivering on time or late leads to disappointment. But when you underpromise, whether you're early, on time, or slightly late, you still meet expectations.

Underpromising gives you more flexibility, allowing room for any unexpected delays while still meeting or exceeding expectations.

Therefore it’s best you always underpromise and overdeliver.

Now that you see how satisfaction is linked to setting expectations, here are three ways to boost employee satisfaction:

Tip #1: Publish Your SLAs Often

Regularly share your SLAs; one email or orientation isn't enough. Employees forget because it's not part of their daily routine, and with staff turnover, the chances of remembering are low.

More than anything, make sure it's easy to digest. Anything complicated, they won't bother reading.

Where I suggest you can publish your SLAs:

• Initial Employee Orientation

• Employee Portal

• Quarterly Emails Reminders

• IT Department Bulletin Board

Tip #2: Include Target Completion Time within Canned Responses

The next point relates to publishing your SLAs.

Outside of their core responsibilities, it’s likely your team won’t remember each of your SLAs. That’s where the help-desk system comes in.

But your end-users don’t know that. So what you can do is include your SLAs in your canned responses, which are essentially pre-built templates.

This ensures they have clear expectations of when the task will be completed.

Tip #3: Provide Midpoint Update

Depending on the maturity of your IT organization, this is a step up.

If the incident will take longer than an hour to resolve, provide mid-point updates. Even if there are no major updates, keep your end-users informed. What's crucial is assuring them that someone is actively working on their tasks.

Tip: Utilize the current email thread within your ITSM solution so your end-users can instantly recognize the conversation.

A quick reminder: it's about fine-tuning and making sustainable improvements to your IT service management. Focus on progress, not perfection.

That’s it for this week. See you next Tuesday!