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Employee Satisfaction Benchmarks

In a 2008 survey Vovici conducted of 334 North American organizations (using a convenience sample), 33.6% were interested in benchmarking employee satisfaction and loyalty against that of other organizations, yet only 4.3% of those organizations reported that they actually did so.

In theory, what CEO or head of HR would say that they were not interested in seeing how satisfied and loyal their staff were compared to the staff of other organizations? Surely, if your organization has greater employee satisfaction in key areas, then that is something that your HR department or recruiting firm could use when interviewing new hires: it would help encourage others to join your organization. And, if your organization has lower satisfaction in certain areas, or overall, then that would go a long way to explaining retention problems; it could provide you a framework to use to prioritize the changes that your organization needs to make in order to improve employee loyalty.

So what are the common issues with employee benchmarking and how can they be addressed?

First, 77% of users of a benchmark reported being somewhat satisfied or very satisfied with that benchmark. Of those who were neutral or somewhat dissatisfied, it was because they wanted even more information than the benchmark currently provided: they wanted additional breakdowns (by industry subsectors, by geographic region), or they wanted more information (not just employee satisfaction, but comparable turnover and retention statistics as well).

Many of those organizations who wanted to but weren't doing employee benchmarks were simply not aware of the benchmarks that are available today. Three important benchmarks to consider are Employee Net Promoter Score, Gallup Q12 and Walker Loyalty (in order of least questions to most questions). Which is right for your organization will depend in part on which benchmark's paradigm of employee loyalty must closely matches your firm's understanding of its staff.

While many organizations have expressed an interest in benchmarking employee satisfaction and engagement, few organizations have done so. No single benchmarking system is right for all organizations, but ENPS, Q12 and Walker each offer different opportunities and strengths, covered in detail in these posts:

• Employee Net Promoter Score
• Gallup Q12
• Walker Employee Loyalty

If your organization, like the many firms surveyed, is interested in implementing employee benchmarks but hasn't yet, these are three of the alternatives for you to consider.