Chris Fusco - How to Accurately Measure Your Employees' Job Satisfaction

[00:00:00] The world of business is more complex than ever.

[00:00:04] The world of human resources and compensation is also getting more complex.

[00:00:09] Welcome to the HR Data Labs podcast, your direct source for the latest trends from experts

[00:00:14] inside and outside the world of human resources.

[00:00:18] Listen, as we explore the impact that compensation strategy, data, and people analytics

[00:00:23] can have on your organization.

[00:00:26] This podcast is sponsored by salary.com.

[00:00:28] Your source for data, technology, and consulting for compensation and beyond.

[00:00:34] Now, here are your hosts, David Turetsky and Dwight Brown.

[00:00:38] Hello and welcome to the HR Data Labs podcast.

[00:00:41] I'm your host, David Turetsky alongside my friend, partner, co-host, BFF.

[00:00:46] Dwight Brown from sour.com. Dwight Brown.

[00:00:49] You hesitated long enough where I wondered why I was going to come out of your mouth next.

[00:00:53] You know, every so often it's not bad to like keep people waiting.

[00:00:59] Yeah, exactly yet.

[00:01:00] This is Spencer's killing me.

[00:01:01] Good to see you.

[00:01:02] Hopefully it didn't kill you.

[00:01:04] You're a play.

[00:01:05] It's not like you've got out of a plane, kill you.

[00:01:07] Yeah, exactly.

[00:01:08] I do other things.

[00:01:08] It'll do that.

[00:01:09] So lots of say for having me, not say something that it is jumping out of a plane.

[00:01:16] But Dwight, you know, we have with us a really brilliant guest today.

[00:01:21] And I don't say that often or I might say it often, but I mean it today.

[00:01:27] Because the guy we have with us is Chris Busco from sour.com.

[00:01:31] Chris, how are you?

[00:01:33] I am excellent.

[00:01:34] Thank you.

[00:01:35] I'm glad to hear it.

[00:01:36] Please to be here.

[00:01:36] Excellent.

[00:01:37] We're really happy to have you because today we're going to be talking about a really fun topic.

[00:01:41] When we really don't talk about a lot, but before we get there, Chris, we're going to give people

[00:01:45] a little bit about your background.

[00:01:48] I am a career compensation professional.

[00:01:51] I've spent my career in both corporate and consulting environments.

[00:01:57] And I joined sour.com back in 2002.

[00:02:03] Where I could take my experience and my learnings and translate that into helping employers

[00:02:11] determine how much and how to pay their employees.

[00:02:15] So we should blame you for souring.com partly.

[00:02:21] No, I'm kidding because actually one of the wonderful things that is going on with sour.com this year

[00:02:27] is it's our 25th anniversary.

[00:02:30] And so we will be probably spending the entire year celebrating 25 years of sour.com.

[00:02:35] Isn't that amazing, Chris?

[00:02:37] That is amazing.

[00:02:38] Yeah, I've been here for most of those 25 years.

[00:02:41] Wonderful.

[00:02:41] And when I call you brilliant, I don't mean that just in the context of your friend and

[00:02:48] you know, I like working with you.

[00:02:49] But the fact that not only have you been so much at sour.com and have spent so much time here,

[00:02:56] but the things you've affected and we're going to be talking a little bit about one of them today.

[00:03:01] But why don't you tell people about a little bit about the skills products that you're working on today?

[00:03:04] Because that's really pretty fascinating.

[00:03:06] Yeah, I'm currently engaged in building the most comprehensive competency by Barry.

[00:03:12] That exists and our library covers all of the jobs that you would find in our

[00:03:20] Cobainless Market Data Project.

[00:03:23] That's over 6,000 jobs.

[00:03:25] So for over 6,000 jobs we had built competency model.

[00:03:29] And those are complete with competency definitions and behavioral indicators

[00:03:36] and we've added interview questions and learning and development guidance.

[00:03:42] And the database continues to grow as we work on each consecutive update of the frameworks.

[00:03:53] And it's an extremely comprehensive too, and so not trying to oversell it here.

[00:03:58] But you and a very small team are actually doing this pretty fascinating stuff.

[00:04:02] Yeah, and it's also fascinating to me that the team is entirely remote.

[00:04:09] Including myself so we work effectively as a team even though we've never met one another face to face.

[00:04:19] We should have that changed.

[00:04:20] We should definitely spend some time in money.

[00:04:22] Can you guys be in the same or unless that upset the dynamic in which case don't do it.

[00:04:29] So Chris, one thing that no one knows about Chris Fusco.

[00:04:33] I'm an avid sailor.

[00:04:35] I love to sail and I have never capsized a boat but you jinxed it now.

[00:04:43] Yeah, you haven't sailed hard in awkward apparently.

[00:04:45] Yeah, right.

[00:04:46] You haven't gotten the North Sea apparently.

[00:04:49] But when I was learning how to sail,

[00:04:53] I thought to myself, I never went around around.

[00:04:55] Oh, and my instructor said, oh it'll happen someday.

[00:05:00] Ensuring off.

[00:05:02] One day I ran the boat at ground and had to then deal with that.

[00:05:08] Yeah, but that's not as bad as like being out in the middle of an ocean and having the capsized and then

[00:05:13] figure out how the heck you're going to get home.

[00:05:14] Yeah, it's not that easy.

[00:05:15] At least you got, at least you got some ground to stand on when you're right.

[00:05:20] Right.

[00:05:20] Now by the way, Dwight says that and Dwight is one of these people who likes to jump

[00:05:25] out of perfectly good planes or he likes to use these gliding mechanisms that are not part of

[00:05:32] arm structure.

[00:05:34] There are actually things that he rents.

[00:05:37] So, you know, Dwight actually jumps off perfectly good cliffs and mountains.

[00:05:43] Right, I try to get lost ground and then in the air to then hit the ground again.

[00:05:52] Exactly.

[00:05:53] So running a ground but no capsizing.

[00:05:56] Never once, even on a little sun fish boat or something?

[00:06:01] Well, I've seen everything from a sunfish to a 39 foot cabin cruiser,

[00:06:07] but it may be think that if I was able to run a ground then I'm able to capsize a boat.

[00:06:14] So, you know, I'm looking about to map and see that.

[00:06:16] Yeah, never say never, right?

[00:06:18] Not one word can use would you?

[00:06:20] Come on.

[00:06:22] We definitely don't want to hear any reports of you

[00:06:25] capsizing now.

[00:06:26] Yeah, they will feel like we were culpable in that.

[00:06:30] So today we have a fascinating conversation ahead of us and it's a topic we haven't really covered

[00:06:36] here at all which is kind of strange and it's about how to measure job satisfaction.

[00:06:43] So what do we get into it?

[00:06:52] So Chris, what is job satisfaction and why does anybody care?

[00:06:56] What does it matter?

[00:06:57] It does matter because job satisfaction is a feeling of fulfillment or enjoyment.

[00:07:04] That employee derives from performing their job and you know, think about fulfillment.

[00:07:09] That means things like positive feedback from performing your job or feedback from your

[00:07:15] manager or teammates.

[00:07:18] If that feedback is positive, you're likely to be more satisfied with your job.

[00:07:24] Sure.

[00:07:25] Both the feedback was negative and then since it's a feeling of fulfillment and enjoyment

[00:07:31] and joy means things like do you have a best friend at work?

[00:07:36] But basically job satisfaction equates to retention.

[00:07:41] If you have satisfied employees, you're better, you have a better chance of retaining those employees.

[00:07:47] But you said it's a feeling and it's so I mean we're complex organisms.

[00:07:53] It's very hard to consistently have that feeling.

[00:07:58] Eight hours a day, 40 hours a week, 20, 80 a year.

[00:08:04] For as long as you've been working here for as long as anybody here, almost.

[00:08:09] How do we keep job satisfaction going?

[00:08:11] And is it something that a company should even try and achieve?

[00:08:16] Yeah, you've got two have interventions on factors that explain job satisfaction,

[00:08:25] things like relationships, commute, recognition, career growth.

[00:08:31] Employers can focus on those things.

[00:08:32] Like a focus on career growth by developing a career path for the employees to look at and aspire to.

[00:08:41] Recognition is an opener in my mind.

[00:08:44] You know, just a manager giving a paddle the back to an employee for a job well done.

[00:08:51] So that's how you maintain it and if employee is living that definition,

[00:08:58] that job satisfaction is a little filmed in or enjoyment and employee derives from performing a better job.

[00:09:06] That can be self-sustaining as long as you have tuned the factors of job satisfaction

[00:09:13] within your organization, you can keep the coming for a duration.

[00:09:20] Until there's some major change within the organization and the marketplace where they compete.

[00:09:27] And then an employee needs to revisit those factors in job satisfaction.

[00:09:32] And I think you point out an important thing that I think a lot of companies struggle with and a lot

[00:09:38] of managers struggle with and that is the difference between extrinsic job satisfaction and intrinsic job satisfaction.

[00:09:49] And are they truly separate or, you know, based on what you just said extrinsic probably can help

[00:09:57] keep the entrance at going? Is it, would you agree with that?

[00:10:02] Yeah, I would. I guess intrinsic and extrinsic can be good to discern however

[00:10:10] they need to be combined into a package of job satisfaction factors in order to be effective

[00:10:18] increasing job satisfaction. For example, women report a lower job satisfaction in men.

[00:10:27] And a lot of that has to do with the gender wage gap and also other

[00:10:34] potential signs of discrimination such as being passed up for promotion or not having

[00:10:40] like the career development opportunities that maybe some men do. So when it comes to things like

[00:10:47] a like a gender wage gap, you know, the organization can dig into the data and conduct an

[00:10:52] terrible equity analysis to determine if there is a gap. And if there is a gap, then you know,

[00:10:58] look at, you know, adjust compensation for female employees, you know, offer them more flexibility

[00:11:07] because women's a day still carry the majority of household tasks,

[00:11:14] then their male counterparts do. We just need to, we didn't employers just need to be mindful

[00:11:20] of these factors that influence job satisfaction and use them to drive job satisfaction.

[00:11:30] Chris, if I might, is the context of a company trying to keep their employees satisfied?

[00:11:39] Maybe an older concept given the fact that there are so many signals we're getting from different

[00:11:45] generations, that employment at will isn't just a legal term anymore. It's really kind of the

[00:11:54] relationship they feel with their company, given that so many companies feel like or so many employees

[00:11:59] feel like everything's so transactional these days. Is satisfaction still something that's useful

[00:12:05] for a company? When I think about an answer to that question, I think about the idea that job

[00:12:13] satisfaction was the state of talent intelligence 20 or 30 years ago. And today, talent intelligence

[00:12:21] has brought into it through things like role-based onboarding and the process by which candidates

[00:12:30] are hired for the job opening they were selected for. But jobs satisfaction is still important

[00:12:37] today. You know, one of the most common tools that's used to measure job satisfaction is the

[00:12:44] employee survey and the employee survey is talkful of questions about, do you have a good relationship

[00:12:50] with your manager? Do you have a good relationship with your teammates? Are you happy with your

[00:12:54] compensation benefits? All those things that they're going to employ satisfaction survey often

[00:13:02] used the words satisfaction. I use satisfaction with your parents. I have a benefit. Right?

[00:13:09] Like what you hear so far, make sure you never miss a show by clicking subscribe. This podcast is

[00:13:14] made possible by salary.com. Now back to the show.

[00:13:19] That actually brings up the second question, which is how does an employee really know

[00:13:25] if employees are satisfied? Is it really the satisfaction survey or are there other

[00:13:31] elements that we have to take into consideration as well? Yeah, we just take this perspective

[00:13:38] a workplace is a social event sponsored by your employer. We're not talking about the Christmas

[00:13:48] party. Yeah, that socialization is the foundation of a big culture. And if your culture

[00:13:59] is amenable to the employees in an organization they'll be more satisfied working there.

[00:14:05] Is that really kind of believing in the mission or is that really liking the people you work with

[00:14:10] and liking the situation you're in? Or both? Or both? You know, one big indicator of job satisfaction

[00:14:16] is quality of leadership. You know, leadership is in that social arena of the company

[00:14:24] and it's employees. And you know, employees in my research of current job satisfaction statistics

[00:14:36] quality of leadership is relatively high on the list of factors that influence job satisfaction.

[00:14:45] So I think the answer to your question is yes. And what that leadership works like differs from

[00:14:51] group to work through. Certainly because a good leader has to be able to discern

[00:14:58] what is it that that work group needs to feel satisfied in their job? Or if you're enamored with

[00:15:04] the job, you know, just satisfies that frame and that can be a frustrating thing I would imagine too

[00:15:11] is just trying to dial in on that and figure out what is the secret sauce for this particular work

[00:15:18] group. And then how can I bring myself as a leader to foster that? The fact is in, you're right

[00:15:25] about that, though, because the factors that influence job satisfaction and one organization

[00:15:30] can differ to the next flexibility is a top driver of employee satisfaction.

[00:15:37] It's not just satisfaction with their schedule but it's also satisfaction with benefit,

[00:15:45] the flexibility that's offered to a benefits program. The flexibility that's offered through

[00:15:52] the types of projects that you get to work on but in terms of flexibility,

[00:15:58] remote work continues to be a hot topic ever since the beginning of the pandemic. Compensation is also

[00:16:07] also in the top 10 but it's not up at the top. It's usually down, you know, like 10,

[00:16:14] 97 in a recent survey conducted by the conference board, they said that that factor was actually

[00:16:25] number 10 on their list. Yeah. I believe that because I mean, you look at there's some highly

[00:16:32] compensated people out there who are living absolute miserable lives. They're working 90

[00:16:37] hundred hours a week recently in the last couple, couple weeks we saw unfortunately a fatal

[00:16:43] implication of that and but I think sometimes organizations try to substitute money for

[00:16:52] satisfaction well-being and those sort of things and not realizing it just doesn't work that way.

[00:16:58] The upper managers are prone to throwing money at employer relations issues.

[00:17:05] Someone who is not satisfied is the greasy wheel that might get promotion or pay raise.

[00:17:15] But I guess this all comes down to the idea that transparency, growth potential and workload

[00:17:24] suggested to wait, are the sweet spots or organizations to focus on to improve job satisfaction

[00:17:31] in 2025? We see pay transparency which tries to create a level of trust from the beginning

[00:17:39] of someone's journey with a company. What about you mentioned the word transparency and I know

[00:17:45] you didn't use pay but transparency. Do you think that companies are going to be more

[00:17:52] open to being more open in the future? Because pay will now be open so will they

[00:18:00] kind of open up a little bit more about their policies and about how things happen

[00:18:04] and allow transparency to be more thorough across an organization? Yes, yes I'm currently writing a book

[00:18:12] which the National title might be fair transparent and aligned compensation management

[00:18:22] and transparency does go a long way to the success of a compensation system.

[00:18:27] I mean you and I both remember a time when we used to tell people never to talk about comp

[00:18:32] because if you talk about comp I'll fire you. Stop this water cooler talk. Transparency is

[00:18:39] using a broader definition when it comes to job satisfaction because it also might be

[00:18:45] the transparency employees need in their companies financials to understand how their bonuses determine.

[00:18:54] Well and how they are working toward their goals or not and that does lead to incentives but

[00:19:03] yeah it would be great to be more open and honest about what's going on in the market,

[00:19:08] what's going on in the company, how that translates to am I doing my job effectively?

[00:19:14] So there's a lot of transparency that would be useful in order to be able to make that relationship

[00:19:21] that employee relationship more mature instead of you can't handle the truth. Right right

[00:19:27] you want you want the adult to adult relationship with the ability to adults a child relationship.

[00:19:34] Exactly well it's always been that command to control right instead of being that

[00:19:38] honesty or the shared vision at least. And transparency and trust also go hand in hand with that.

[00:19:45] Exactly one one breeds the other and I think in trusting environments, the idea of

[00:19:53] transparency probably is less of an emphasis because people trust that they're going to

[00:19:59] be being paid the same in high trust environments and likewise in low trust environments

[00:20:05] they might not necessarily trust that but at the same time you can have those things

[00:20:11] paired up and have those beef big drivers in satisfaction. And when it comes to drivers of intent to

[00:20:19] stay that's an organization getting a picture of future retention by conducting stay interviews.

[00:20:29] Hmm but drivers of intent to stay include quality of leadership and organizational culture.

[00:20:39] Not not pay you know it's it's more intrinsic than pay which would be an extrinsic factor.

[00:20:48] Right that makes sense. Hey are you listening to this and thinking to yourself

[00:20:53] man I wish I could talk to David about this well you're in luck we have a special offer for

[00:20:58] listeners of the HR data website cast a free hour call with me about any of the topics we cover

[00:21:04] on the podcast or whatever is on your mind go to salary.com forward slash HR DL consulting

[00:21:12] to schedule your free 30 minute call today. Let's touch on the third question which I think a lot of

[00:21:19] people might be thinking now given our conversation which is so what should an employer do if they

[00:21:25] less than hope for job satisfaction scores what is the most important metric they should focus on.

[00:21:32] Well I mentioned before that transparency growth potential and workload of the sweet spots for

[00:21:38] organization still focus on to improve job satisfaction in 2025 I would add to that flexibility

[00:21:45] and growth potential and when you say flexibility you are talking a little bit before about

[00:21:52] flexibility as far as work arrangements are we also talking about flexibility in other ways or

[00:21:58] are you really trying to mean how how you get the job done get it done just we trust you we trust

[00:22:05] you're going to get it done. I think the conventional wisdom around that is that the best

[00:22:11] approach to flexibility is to offer a hybrid schedule for your employees where they come into the

[00:22:22] work from home the other two days that seems to be you know where the critical thinkers are

[00:22:28] are headed. So the era of work totally from home do you see that coming to a close?

[00:22:38] I don't I think that especially during the pandemic when organizations were having their employees

[00:22:50] worked from home organizations were hiring you know the the pandemic opened up the recruiting market

[00:22:58] from a local or regional recruiting market to a national recruiting market because hey you know we have

[00:23:04] normal remote employees now it's going pretty well so why not hire talented employees in other parts of

[00:23:15] or even internationally. Yes actually yeah so Chris I know that's not a specific formula and as you said

[00:23:24] there are different variations in those factors for different companies in different industries

[00:23:30] but if a company was interested in being able to look at those models and be able to at least talk

[00:23:39] about how to improve those metrics that you are describing what would you suggest their first step

[00:23:46] they would it be to make sure that their their surveys are completely up to date and that they

[00:23:52] are kind of more modeled around the more industry standard job satisfaction models?

[00:23:59] The first step is data gathering as with as with many initiatives data gathering is the first step

[00:24:07] for an organization that wanted to research job satisfaction there are a number of

[00:24:14] avenues they can take you know like class store and organization can see what

[00:24:22] active employees and former employees are saying about the organization is the feedback being given

[00:24:29] their positive or negative. In full conversations that managers have with their employees or

[00:24:36] HR has with employees can provide a lot of information especially when the person looking for

[00:24:45] that information is asking questions like what do you like about your job? But that unstructured

[00:24:51] data where does it go? Does it go into the ether or is there a place where that should live?

[00:24:57] I think that it's necessary to have a systematic approach together in the data

[00:25:04] and then to document all of the information that was gathered in the form of a position paper

[00:25:15] almost. So you know if you feel like a class store and you count you know five positive reviews

[00:25:23] and six negative views you know that the back can go into the documentation

[00:25:28] and you can even qualify positive and negative with with actual whips of the comments that were made

[00:25:37] for all those cutting out the four letter words though. Yeah, yeah all right now you got to leave

[00:25:44] man I mean well this is an HR system of record we're talking about white so

[00:25:51] and you have to at least obscure them a little bit. But I get your point Chris because what you're saying

[00:25:59] is don't let these things disappear keep them as a way of being able to tell a story.

[00:26:07] Yeah you need to draw conclusions from the data that you've gathered and I think the

[00:26:14] story approaches a good way to document those conclusions certainly the organization has

[00:26:21] collected data internally through professor views internal proportion rates

[00:26:31] successful higher rates exit interviews stay interviews some organizations are still using suggestion boxes.

[00:26:41] Wow yeah yeah what's going to provide information like that but by far the most popular means

[00:26:47] of collecting this information is through employee surveys and the visualization is committed to

[00:26:55] understanding the feedback of their employees they were conducted those surveys at some regular

[00:27:02] interval typically annually then they can see they can run demographic analyses

[00:27:11] question by questions statistics factor analysis is we want to get really into it and see if

[00:27:19] one question is a predictor of another. There's also the benchmarking you can get from some

[00:27:25] of the more popular employee satisfaction surveys that to me that really helps especially given

[00:27:31] that when you're doing these analyses you have to take into consideration the the economy and

[00:27:38] other factors that are extrinsic or that are external to your organization and that could help you

[00:27:46] given that benchmarking data could help you set the context for cross sections of populists or

[00:27:54] or even trend analysis over time. I really think the factors that you choose to

[00:28:03] influence to increase job satisfaction need to be presented in such a way that they need to be aligned

[00:28:11] with the organization's goals and also externally with industry standards. So the so there is

[00:28:21] context that needs to be put around the information that you gather I think AI probably helps that

[00:28:29] into your point about actually building some sort of narrative or story format around it. I was

[00:28:36] an a large organization before I was at salary.com and we struggled because we did buy annual

[00:28:43] employees had as faxion surveys and both as an employee and then when I was a leader I really

[00:28:50] had a lot of difficulty with the survey process. The statistics were helpful we had the benchmarking

[00:28:56] you talked about David from the stats but to your point Chris we lacked the context because what

[00:29:04] they would do all the written comments employees got to the point where they were like I'm not even

[00:29:09] going to put a written comment because it's never going to what's important is never going to get

[00:29:13] to the manager because they had teams of people who would summarize the data and it was largely

[00:29:22] looked at as a joke it was a big joke. I mean we took the statistics seriously but the joke

[00:29:30] part was we just didn't have the fact of context like you're talking about and so having

[00:29:38] generally of AI and some of those other tools to really help advance I think there's going to be a

[00:29:44] great tool for companies moving forward not just the big companies I think the skills for

[00:29:49] companies because you do have to have that context you do have to have that specific feedback

[00:29:54] and you do have to marry it up with the statistics and it tells a very robust story that can help

[00:30:00] I'm sorry the help you figure out what the satisfaction level truly is and what those drivers are

[00:30:05] aren't. Yeah then when it comes to measuring job satisfaction it's important to go into those

[00:30:15] factors that will have the best influence on your organization so if the organizational goals were

[00:30:24] to be innovative so that's the organizational goal so they would want to focus on factors such as

[00:30:32] recognition and growth potential transparency those factors that we go to understanding

[00:30:43] innovation you know creativity you know what drives creativity the organization

[00:30:49] they go to that exercise and then focus in on those that they selected would be

[00:30:56] we don't we're we're after most impact on achieving that innovation goal. I think from

[00:31:02] as statistical perspective we could all geek out around what kind of methods but we're going to save

[00:31:07] that for another podcast because all three of us would love to have that conversation but I think

[00:31:16] we're going to leave it yeah well all score allowed it's yeah exactly but I think we'll leave

[00:31:31] that for another day I think in this one I think we've gotten to the goal of we understand satisfaction

[00:31:39] better now understand what measures to use and I think we've also talked about where do we go if

[00:31:45] if we don't feel like we have high enough scores so Chris thank you so much you're welcome

[00:31:52] Dwight thank you. Thank you Chris don't go out and capsize. No please don't need to test that one

[00:31:58] no because let's get your money running around you've done your time. Yeah. Yeah

[00:32:04] look that sailor had away we're we're good we're good. Thank you very much for being here

[00:32:10] we really appreciate it we're going to have you back and probably you want also for another

[00:32:14] for compensation topic as well if you don't mind oh yeah there's a lot of a lot of

[00:32:19] compensation topics we can talk about we will definitely do that so thank you very much

[00:32:25] and everybody thank you for listening take care and stay safe. That was the HR Data Labs podcast

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