Employee Engagement VS Satisfaction
By: Ginni Agarwal
Tags: Employee Engagement, Employee Experience, Employee Satisfaction

Employee engagement and satisfaction might feel the same, but there is a big difference between them. Employers should make their priority to keep their workers engaged with their jobs. For a better workforce to work, you need to understand the differences between them.

Let us see the definitions first:

Employee Engagement means when workers are committed enough to help companies to achieve their goals. Engaged employees are motivated enough to show up for work daily and work for customer satisfaction.

Employee Satisfaction is known as the state of the worker who enjoys their job but not engaged with it. This kind of employee comes early to work and leaves without much contribution.

The companies should be concerned about employee’s satisfaction with the work they are doing. They should be worried more about measuring and improving employee engagement. As Steve Jobs said:

“The only way to do great work is to love what you do.”

Factors Affecting Employee Satisfaction

Mostly it is the monetary and other associated factors that determine how satisfied are employees with their job. The elements include:

Benefits provided to the employees

Supporting good pay with packages that take care of the mental and physical well-being of the employees is the right way to keep the employee satisfied. As a company, you do not need flashy perks like paid time off or giving them a vacation trip. It is a vital difference between employee engagement and satisfaction. Employees look for better basics than over the top perks.

Work-Life Balance of the employees

Around 60% of workers believe that work-life balance is necessary for a company culture that encourages success. The freedom to work from home, shorter commutes, paid leaves are among things that can ensure a positive work-life balance. The employees would have more time to spend with their family. It is one of the vital factors that certify satisfaction and contribute a level of employee engagement.

Recognition of the employees

No matter what you present your employee with bonuses and level of satisfaction, every employee wants their work to be recognized. For this, you can adopt a structure for recognition with annual reviews in which the achievements get acknowledged in time. This factor helps to work both to improve the engagement and satisfaction at the workplace.

Factors Affecting Employee Engagement

The factors for employee engagement is quite different. They focus on employee’s development and future needs.

Community

Satisfied employees mostly mind their business and are in their zone. Whereas, engaged employees stay connected with the people they work. They share a special bond with other employees and are friends with them outside the office. Engaged employees bring a feel-good factor to the company, and they know if they show their perspective they would get noticed. If they begin to produce less, it impacts the overall work of their team.

Growth

An engaged employee would get ample growth opportunities within the company. It means finding opportunities to attend conferences, meetings and fairs. There is also a chance to get promoted within the company and applying for a higher position. There would be numerous options for the professional development of the employee, a comparison to a satisfied employee who is just happy to get salary on time.

Contributions

Engaged employees contribute to the organization in n number of ways. They can do their job as well as motivate other employees by being a role model. The manager also understands that their employees look for growth shortly. To solve this issue, you need to ensure that employees get a chance for their professional growth.

Entitlements

Keeping employees need to be engaged, you need to tell them what to expect from them & what is their job responsibilities. They need to have appropriate tools at their disposal that helps them to work and perform their job well. Your employees won’t stay engaged if they are working on decade-old technology.

Employee Engagement Vs Satisfaction: Differences

Satisfaction is necessary & it is the part of the employee engagement process. Let’s see the differences:

Time

Employee satisfaction is a short-term process. An employee can stay happy when you provide them with perks and paid time off or some movie vouchers. But you cannot do it forever. And as soon as the perk stops the motivation also goes away. If you provide a bonus for a project and when the project gets over, then maintaining the same satisfaction could be difficult for an employer.

In the case of employee engagement, it’s a long term procedure and to drive perfect employee engagement you need to play the long game. It means making the employee believe in the long term goal.

Responsibility

When it’s about responsibility in employee engagement, it is divided equally between the employer and the employees. The managers also take the responsibility of their employees, and they take care of employees, about their development plan, their career growth and all. The organization controls the satisfaction. They decide whether the employee will get a perk or not, and they will choose other monetary factors.

Motivation

Satisfaction gets based on temporary factors. These factors taken away can be a reason to lose motivation. These include bonuses, paid holidays, time off from work and anytime approved leaves. That is not the case in employee engagement & it is more about self-motivation for the employees to do well for the company. An engaged employee always remain motivated to do the work for the company.

The Money Factor

For employee satisfaction to work, the employer needs to provide ample of benefits. And these benefits cost money. It includes raises for employees and a common way to make the employee feel satisfied. As your company grows, you want your employees to grow with it and pay raise can work effectively to retain employees.

The same case is with the perks. An employer can also offer office extras for employees, like in-house yoga sessions, free books, free food, etc. But in the end, it’s expensive and costs a lot of money. Whereas, employee engagement doesn’t cost anything, but it requires constant effort from the whole organization. It requires a systematic approach to the employees. Like a hiring manager making an effort, employees doing their bit, even the founder will make purposeful efforts.

Conclusion

Don’t forget that the success of your organization depends on the people. If you want to win over your competitors, you must win at your workplace by having an engaged workforce. And the important thing is don’t get confused between employee satisfaction and employee engagement, remember that someone might be happy at work, so that doesn’t mean they are working hard for the organization. Engaged employees do care about their company and job. They find the purpose for their jobs and engaged employees are likely to increase the customer satisfaction levels, productivity and more. Hope you liked the blog, were any insights provided of value to you? Do share, the feedback in the comments section.