{"id":128,"date":"2016-10-17T17:17:16","date_gmt":"2016-10-17T17:17:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/greensummit.co\/?p=128"},"modified":"2016-10-17T17:17:16","modified_gmt":"2016-10-17T17:17:16","slug":"java-with-joe-dont-let-your-organization-settle-for-high-employee-job-satisfaction-and-morale","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/greensummit.co\/?p=128","title":{"rendered":"Java with Joe: Don’t let your organization settle for high employee job satisfaction and morale."},"content":{"rendered":"

During my tenure\u00a0as Chief Human Resources Officer at Cleveland Clinic, I held regular “Java with Joe”\u00a0sessions with small groups of leaders\u00a0at every level of\u00a0the organization. These informal meetings usually\u00a0began by my asking: “What’s keeping you up at night?” and invariably questions came back\u00a0about the challenges of creating and man\"mugs\"<\/a>aging an engaged work environment. These days, when I speak to other organizations about their employee engagement and leadership issues, the Q&A session is again one of my favorite activities. So I thought I\u2019d bring back Java with Joe to answer questions about engagement that I\u2019m often asked.\u00a0<\/em>If you\u2019d like to join the conversation with a comment or a question of your own, something that\u2019s keeping you up at night, please jump in.<\/em><\/p>\n

OK…so\u00a0here’s today’s\u00a0question:<\/p>\n

Employee satisfaction. Employee morale. Employee engagement. What\u2019s the difference? Does it matter?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Let me start by saying that while these terms do overlap,\u00a0there are differences among them.<\/p>\n

Do those differences really matter? They do, if you\u2019re trying to build an organization that delivers extraordinary results.<\/p>\n

OK, so let\u2019s take a closer look at these concepts, starting with job satisfaction, which seems to me the most basic of the three because it refers simply to how content employees are with their work environment, benefits etc. It answers the question \u201cAre you comfortable?\u201d The problem is that a high level of job satisfaction doesn\u2019t necessarily mean that an organization is getting truly outstanding performance from its employees.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s definitely possible for an employee to be satisfied with his\/her job but not be a particularly high performer. People can get comfortable in their performance zone. They feel safe there, and not particularly challenged. For some people, though\u2014and in my experience, this includes your \u201chigh potentials\u201d and many \u201cmillennials\u201d\u2014this safe, secure feeling isn\u2019t enough. If these people don\u2019t feel challenged, they will eventually get bored and leave. They\u2019ll move to an organization where their leaders expect<\/em> them to be better than average and work hard to help them get there. For these people\u2014the people most likely to take your organization to new heights\u2014job satisfaction is nice, but it\u2019s not enough.<\/p>\n

Employee morale goes a step beyond job satisfaction, implying a greater sense of purpose and a more direct connection to performance. It\u2019s hard to imagine someone saying of their organization, \u201cOur employees have really high morale, but they don\u2019t perform especially well,\u201d or vice versa. Morale, however, can change quickly when difficult times set in, if the foundations to sustain it are not in place. \u00a0I hate to compare efforts to raise morale to “pep rallies,” but that\u2019s all too often what they resemble.<\/p>\n

If you\u2019re really trying to build a high performance organization, I think you need to go beyond thinking about employee morale. You need to be thinking about employee engagement. Why? Because employee engagement includes not only how comfortable your employees are and how they\u2019re feeling in the short term, but also whether or not they feel a strong emotional and intellectual connection with their work and their organization. And here\u2019s the really important thing: with highly engaged employees, that connection motivates them to put extra effort into what they do on the job.<\/p>\n

That discretionary effort is what employee engagement is all about. It\u2019s what takes you from ok performance, or even good performance, to great performance. It\u2019s what sees you through the difficult times\u2014and difficult times always come.<\/p>\n

So let\u2019s sum up. Job satisfaction and high morale are important, but they\u2019re not enough\u2014not in today\u2019s hyper competitive business environment. These days we can\u2019t afford to set the bar that low. We need to build that strong intellectual and emotional connection between our employees and our organization. We need them to feel that the organization\u2019s mission is their own personal cause, to the point where they do the ordinary things exceptionally well, and sometimes even do things that go beyond the ordinary.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s the goal we should all be setting for the organizations we lead, because organizations that have high levels of engagement consistently outperform their competition. (The research is rich with evidence on this.) But the other reason is that it\u2019s just so much more fun to come to work every day when you and the people around you feel connected to something bigger than yourselves, when you\u2019re all pushing yourselves and one another to be better.<\/p>\n

So don\u2019t settle for just job satisfaction or good morale. Don\u2019t sleep walk through your career as a leader and let your employees settle for OK performance. The people you serve are better than that and so are you.<\/p>\n

All my best and thanks for tuning into this edition of Java with Joe. And please, add your thoughts and reactions to the conversation, and let me know what\u2019s keeping you up at night.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

During my tenure as Chief Human Resources Officer at Cleveland Clinic, I held regular “Java with Joe” sessions with small groups of leaders at every level of the organization. These informal meetings usually began by my asking: “What’s keeping you up at night?” and invariably questions came back about the challenges of creating and managing an engaged work environment. These days, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-128","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/greensummit.co\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/128","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/greensummit.co\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/greensummit.co\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greensummit.co\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greensummit.co\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=128"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/greensummit.co\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/128\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":130,"href":"https:\/\/greensummit.co\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/128\/revisions\/130"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/greensummit.co\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=128"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greensummit.co\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=128"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greensummit.co\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=128"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}