1.

Employee satisfication:
Employee satisfaction has become a very important determinant of a company’s productivity.
Employees are demanding more and more from their organization in exchange for their services.
Employee turnover is very high in most industries, and retaining good talented employees has
become an arduous task for even the best companies across the world today.

Every company is faced with the challenge of understanding what drives employees most. Satisfied
employees not only remain with the company but are more productive. They are also loyal and are
most likely to recommend their company’s products and services whenever and wherever possible.
They would also help the company to attract the best talent for future recruitment.

Almost every company conducts employee satisfaction surveys now and then to feel the pulse of the
employees. The most relevant and important aspects that need to be covered in an employee
satisfaction survey questionnaire are: the employee’s understanding of the company’s mission and
long-term strategy; the employee’s confidence in the company’s leadership; the employee’s
understanding of his/her role in the company; the importance the employee gives to authority and
responsibility in his/her job and the extent to which these needs are satisfied; the employee’s trust
in the company’s culture; the employee’s idea about the system of communication within the
company; the morale, team spirit and professionalism in the company; the employee’s relations
with the supervisor/peers/management; the extent to which the company satisfies the employee’s
explicit as well as implicit needs such compensation, training and development, vacation and other
benefits, personal accomplishments, recognition, empowerment, job security, appreciation and
encouragement, and so on. Open-ended questions such as “what is the best thing about working for
this company” or “what do you dislike most in the company?” are very useful in understanding the
exact cause of satisfaction or dissatisfaction.

The questionnaires also generally contain other questions such as the employee’s annual income,
age, sex, personal details about the family, marital status, the department working in, previous
employment record and others. These are useful in analyzing the data more accurately.

However, most companies do not pressure employees to provide these details if the employee is not
comfortable with it. It is also very important that the answers are kept highly confidential so that
they are not used against the employee.

The questionnaire should be ideally small enough to take around 20-30 minutes of the employee’s
time, easy to understand and open enough to encourage additional comments or suggestions. The
surveys can be conducted on paper or online. Online surveys are faster, cheaper, and are found to
have a high response rate. They are also easy to interpret, as comments written by hand on paper
are sometimes difficult to decipher.

Generally, employee satisfacion surveys are conducted by the HR department, but these days,
companies are outsourcing them to third-party survey agencies which are able to provide unbiased
as well as expert advice on the survey results. There are many companies today that are offering
comprehensive employee satisfaction survey services professionally.

2.Assessing Team and Employee Satisfaction

Through Six Sigma
In today's fast paced and competitive marketplace, businesses who are aiming for their
greatest successes consider it vital to rethink their entire functioning strategies in order to
maximize the potential of those successes. Among this rethinking process is the effort to
satisfy employees. Naturally, employee satisfaction cannot be ensured unless it is first
measured and understood. By understanding employee satisfaction, your business has a much
better chance for delivering positive customer experiences, developing and producing
innovative products and services, and, of course, achieving a better bottom line.

As many businesses are currently using Six Sigma strategies to measure and function at
higher productivity and quality levels, they have discovered that the Six Sigma way of thinking
can also be applied to measuring the employee satisfaction within their own walls. It only falls
in line with the Six Sigma strategy that satisfied employees will lead to a process of better
productivity and quality throughout the organization.

Six Sigma is unique in its ability affect employee satisfaction because of its elements of
understanding and measurement of different levels of any given factor in a company. To
improve the employee satisfaction level in a company, it can be used to provide detailed
analysis of strengths and weaknesses.

With these areas identified, improvement initiatives can then be put into place. Within the Six
Sigma mindset, they are typically wide ranging and cross-functional restructuring, counseling,
and even the initiation of self-development and learning programs. These aren't just limited to
job-specific functions, but extend to cultural initiatives, and work-private life balance
management efforts.

For each effort, structured feedback and review programs are applied, to monitor and measure
the success of every employee satisfaction effort.

Companies that have used Six Sigma strategies to increase their employee mindset have
almost universally seen increases in the productive interaction among team members.
Furthermore, employees felt more welcome to provide day-to-day problem solving ideas.
Employees were also better utilized within the workplace, by allowing them to apply their
expertise to different projects, and being included in other projects where new levels of
expertise and capability enhancements may be achieved.

Six Sigma allows for a full work-culture improvement when applied to employee satisfaction
instead of the standard product quality function. Plans are already in the works to create
training programs that allow black belts and other "belts" to extend their Six Sigma expertise
to the task of employee satisfaction, and thus better overall quality that will impact the
organization's other Six Sigma strategies...and, of course, the bottom line.
 3.A review of preferred work culture contributing to
employee satisfaction in today’s organizations

The term “culture” by and large denotes the ideas, customs, and art of a particular society.
While referring to work culture or organization culture one would particularly mean the
customs, patterns, arts and beliefs followed in various organizations. Edgar Schein, one of the
most prominent theorists of organizational culture, gave the following definition: The culture
of a group can now be defined as a pattern of shared basic assumptions that the
group learned as it solved its problems of external adaptation and internal
integration, that has worked well enough to be considered valid and therefore, to be
taught to new members as the correct way to perceive, think, and feel in relation to
those problems.

Employee satisfaction on the other hand is a measure of how happy workers are with their job
and working environment. Keeping morale high among workers can be of tremendous benefit
to any company as quite rightly pointed out Jack Welch in his statement “Employee
satisfaction gets you productivity, quality, pride, and creativity”.

In today’s world of globalization organizations stress immensely to follow a culture which

encourages open channels of communication, a flat hierarchy, informal environment,
teamwork, and respect to new ideas and thoughts.

The following aspects can broadly define the likely preferred work culture in today’s
organizations which contribute to a satisfied workforce:
1. Work timings: Flexible work timings have gained immense popularity amongst today’s
organizations. Organizations have started giving their employees the leverage of entering the
office premises at anytime of their convenience and completing their designated tasks, though
a minimum hours have to be spent in the workplace

2. Work from Home: Another concept which is gaining importance, more amongst
female workers, is the concept of “work from home”. Organizations are largely investing in
equipments with the aid of which employees will have the benefit to stay at home and at the
same time stay connected to the office network

3. Business Attire: As opposed to formal business attire for day to day work,
organizations have now remodeled their policy on daily dress code to the widely preferred
business casuals which also includes denim on one day of work. A few organizations also have
a policy of Friday dressing where only casuals can be worn by their employees

4. Flat Hierarchy: The preferred organization structure is a flat organization structure

with few levels of hierarchy which enables fast decision making and easy accessibility to top
management. People who stay closer to customers know better the market needs and can
respond faster to rapidly changing customer requirements and such changes can be easily
highlighted and brought to the notice of the top management in a flat hierarchy. Another
emerging trend in today’s organization are meetings with supervisors supervisor which helps
in smooth interaction within different levels of management which is very effective within a
flat hierarchy

5. Decentralization: This is the process of dispersing decision-making governance to the

employee at the lowest level of the hierarchy and giving them the right to exercise a few
decisions all by themselves which acts as a great time saving and cost cutting mechanism

6. Employee Empowerment: Organizations are largely investing in employee

empowerment. The increasing use of Employee Self service Systems which allow employees to
maintain their own personal data is the biggest example. This also helps to reduce
unnecessary paper work and also aims at data accuracy

7. Innovation: As George S Patton says "Don't tell people how to do things, tell
them what to do and let them surprise you with their results." The increasing demand
of today’s workforce is acknowledgment and implementation of their ideas and thus
organizations have now started investing in employee innovation where young and fresh ideas
are being recognized as best practices

8. Rewards & Recognition: With the increase in stress levels, with long working hours
how does an organization aim to create contributing and motivated employees, how do
organizations maintain the high employee morale and the quality of life are some of the key
concerns of today’s organizations and one of the many answers to these question is an
effective reward and recognition system. Apart from the performance appraisal system
organizations today are investing a lot in reward and recognition programs where employees
are rewarded as Star employees and key achievers, long Service awards are announced for
employees who work with the organization for a long tenure, Employee referral programs
motivates an employee to bring their friends to work with them

9. Employee Recreation: Employee recreation programs have been shown to reduce

absenteeism, increase performance and productivity, reduce stress levels, and increase job
satisfaction. The new term coined to define employee recreation is associate engagement. A
few examples of employee recreational activities are office outings, invitation to employees
family to come and visit employees workplace, annual sports event, team outings, decoration
of employee workspace , organizing music clubs, dance clubs, drama clubs, arranging training
for special areas of interest of the employees

10. Employee Benefits: Benefits are forms of value, other than payment, that are provided
to the employee in return for their contribution to the organization. Employee benefits
typically refers to retirement plans, health life insurance, life insurance, disability insurance,
vacation, employee stock ownership plans, membership to clubs, special offers and discounts
on premium products and outlets, sponsorship for education of employees children, attractive
schemes from financial institutions on purchase of assets, subsidized food in canteen

To sum up culture is the acquired knowledge people use to interpret experience and generate
behavior and in today’s world organizations are going through a constant change in order to
maintain the best possible culture which sets an example and pave the way for enhanced
employee satisfaction.