These days I'm on the mats less and in the office more, overseeing Ultimate Poker's Player Care team in Nevada and New Jersey. Our team has performed very well, earning high grades for customer service from media and our own players.
The praise for that is not mine; it belongs to the professional men and women who make up the team and who show up to work with great attitudes. My job, in part, is to manage the people and the processes surrounding this team. Thus I need to know things like: Are they happy with their work? Do they understand why we do things the way they were?
It wasn't enough to be told by my superiors (or the media) that I was doing a good job, though that's obviously important. I wanted to know from the people who work for me whether they think that I and the rest of my management team are doing a good job. So I created a fully anonymous survey for them to fill out, and it asked these questions:
I didn't know what to expect, but the results turned out to be extremely enlightening. My original goal was, of course, to see how well we were doing in these various categories. And as expected, we ended up discovering that we were great in some areas, and also identified improvement opportunities in others.I like my job.
I feel empowered to do my job.
When I do very good work, it is recognized.
I have confidence in my manager.
I feel that my manager treats me fairly.
I have confidence in the department leadership.
I get helpful feedback on a regular basis.
I feel that I have been put in a position to learn and develop skills.
I feel that information is easily accessible and available.
I feel that communication within the team is good.
I like the people I work with.
I am happy with my compensation (salary/benefits).
I am confident about the future of this company.
If I have a problem, I feel there is someone I can go to.
I feel that as a team, we are continuously improving.
I understand the reasons behind our policies and procedures.
I am happy with the shift management of the shift leader I work with most frequently.
I feel I have the opportunity to grow in this company.
But where the fun really started was when I started correlating the data. I decided I wanted to see how well "I like my job" correlated to all the other results. It was also the first question on the survey, so that the subsequent questions wouldn't bias that one. Here are the results of that correlation data (n=18):
I feel empowered to do my job. 0.95
When I do very good work, it is recognized. 0.54
I have confidence in my manager. 0.58
I feel that my manager treats me fairly. 0.62
I have confidence in the department leadership. 0.47
I get helpful feedback on a regular basis. 0.34
I feel that I have been put in a position to learn and develop skills. 0.79
I feel that information is easily accessible and available. 0.31
I feel that communication within the team is good. 0.46
I like the people I work with. 0.58
I am happy with my compensation (salary/benefits). 0.48
I am confident about the future of this company. 0.53
If I have a problem, I feel there is someone I can go to. 0.11
I feel that as a team, we are continuously improving. 0.45
I understand the reasons behind our policies and procedures. 0.82
I am happy with the shift management of the shift leader I work with most frequently. 0.34
I feel I have the opportunity to grow in this company. 0.66
All of the responses correlated positively, which at least suggests that I didn't ask any overly dumb questions. I was surprised that getting feedback and having confidence in management is not tremendously correlated with job happiness. On the other hand, I have always felt that empowerment was very important to job satisfaction, but never would have guessed a nearly 1-to-1 relationship. With the usual correlation =/= causation caveats in mind, it seems that it is at least conceivable that empowering employees -- or at least, my employees -- and doing a good job explaining our policies and procedures might go a long way towards improving job satisfaction.
That's of course if job satisfaction is a goal. Ironically, there is an indication that job satisfaction is not necessarily well correlated to job performance, especially for high-skill jobs. Nevertheless, I'm still of the opinion that it's good business, and simply the right thing, to have motivated, happy employees. This is far from rigourously scientific stuff and I'm sure many people much smarter and more experienced than me have dived into this more thoroughly, but it seems to me that companies who value employee satisfaction could still benefit from this sort of HR data analysis.
