You’ll feel so much better if you understand employee satisfaction

What influences satisfaction levels among members of a legal department are numerous. To reel off some of them, they include amenities, client appreciation, the culture of the department, diversity, emotional intelligence, facilities, health, leadership, pro bono, quality of work, vacations, values, work-life balance, and workload? For many of these topics I have accumulated metaposts. The truth is, I am not sure where to draw the line about what to include in this post on employee satisfaction.

To start my effort to come to grips with this huge topic, I searched my posts to date for the term “employee satisfaction”: (See my post of March 23, 2007: open plan seating bothers employees; Jan. 19, 2008: use an online bulletin-board system; Aug. 26, 2006 #2: utility function of economists; March 8, 2006: happiness set point; Dec. 22, 2005: hedonic treadmills; April 1, 2005 employee morale and satisfaction; April 3, 2005 employee morale and satisfaction; April 8, 2005: response rates to employee satisfaction surveys; May 1, 2005: employee satisfaction surveys are more common than morale surveys; Feb. 19, 2007: Job Diagnostic Survey; and Jan. 10, 2008: employee engagement.).

Two metaposts cover directly related topics: happiness and morale (See my post of June 20, 2007: happiness with 10 references; and July 13, 2008: morale with 15 references.).

For now, references to a handful of the more direct and positive influencers will suffice: compensation, levels of pay, and career paths (See my post of Aug. 27, 2008: compensation by levels with 18 references; Aug. 21, 2008: compensation elements with 19 references; and May 4, 2009: in-house counsel career paths with 15 references.).

Many factors make employees unhappy, including stress, managerial misbehavior and managerial ineptitude (See my post of June 11, 2008: stress with 18 references; April 23, 2008: bad behavior by managers with 10 references; March 31, 2009: nine more posts on shortcomings; and March 31, 2009: six types of managerial ineptitude.)