Recruitment and retention in the financial services sector is a hot-button topic. In March 2024, the US Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) showed 533,000 job openings in the financial services sector, but only 185,000 hires. And with BLS predictions suggesting that the industry’s growth will see job openings rise to roughly 900,000 per year, HR leaders in this sector need a plan — fast.
The answer could be keeping a closer eye on employee satisfaction levels. That’s because satisfaction — how content each employee is in their job — is key to retaining talent. And with the right encouragement, satisfied employees become fully engaged, high-performing members of your workforce. Here’s why measuring employee satisfaction is crucial for financial services firms — and five ways to get it right.
Why Measuring Employee Satisfaction Is Important
Satisfaction is a precursor for employee engagement. And with research from Gallup showing that engaged employees are 18% more productive (which in turn drives better business outcomes), focusing on satisfaction and engagement can pay dividends.
But you can’t understand what you don’t measure. This is why Sarah Livnat, VP of HR, North America at JFrog, uses employee satisfaction as the key to understanding “why certain employees are less or more engaged.”
Measuring employee happiness, satisfaction, and engagement gives HR leaders the information they need to improve these metrics and create a more positive employee experience.
5 Effective Ways for Financial Services Companies to Measure Employee Satisfaction
Knowing you need to measure employee engagement is one thing, but it’s also crucial to decide how to measure this metric. After all, you want to gain the right insights — the ones needed to drive any improvements to engagement, satisfaction, and retention.
Here are five ways to effectively collect the data needed to start making those changes.
1. Engagement Surveys
Employee engagement — how productive, motivated, and willing an employee is to go the extra mile — can’t be achieved without establishing a baseline of satisfaction first. Engagement surveys can provide insights into how engaged and satisfied your workforce is, but also why they feel the way they do. Once you have this information, it’s possible to identify what needs to change to improve satisfaction and engagement.
Benefits of engagement surveys include:
- Identify areas for change
- Shape company culture
- Hold business leaders accountable
- Give employees a voice to share honest feedback
- Build employee trust by demonstrating you care
Engagement surveys are an effective way to collect quantitative data and a view of your overall employee satisfaction score, which can help identify issues that need your attention. But when teamed with open-ended questions, they’re also a great way to collect qualitative data that can add context to any issues, plus help HR craft a better strategy for addressing these issues in a meaningful way.
For example, Livnat recommends including an employee Net Promoter Score (eNPS) question to “help you understand how things are changing over time — and the specificity of comments will help leaders create action plans to address issues at the company.” Paying particular attention to the comments of employees identified as passives and detractors, and then resolving these issues, can help boost satisfaction.
Running an engagement survey once a year isn’t enough, either. “HR leaders in the finance space must…[start] truly listening to how the workforce feels on a more frequent basis,” said Jason Averbook, senior partner, global leader digital HR strategy at Mercer. “We don’t ask our kids once a year how they are doing; we don’t ask our partner once a year how they are. So why are we only asking our employees once per year?”
Running engagement surveys quarterly is a good cadence to aim for — but these should also be interspersed with more frequent pulse surveys. These short, one-to-five-question employee satisfaction surveys provide a real-time snapshot of engagement within the work environment. They’re also useful for collecting employee net promoter scores (eNPS), which helps identify issues before they become major problems. And because they’re so short, you can use pulse surveys more frequently, for example biweekly or monthly.
Need help creating effective engagement surveys? Download the Lattice Employee Engagement Survey Template.
2. Stay Interviews
Stay interviews are one-on-one meetings between an employee and an HR team member (or in some cases, their manager). Stay interview questions are designed to uncover how an employee feels about their job and the company. By gathering insights around how engaged and happy employees feel at work , stay interviews can help reduce organisations’ turnover rate by allowing HR teams and managers to make proactive changes before an employee starts looking for another opportunity elsewhere.
Benefits of stay interviews include:
- Boost employee retention rate
- Improve employee engagement and motivation
- Uncover valuable insights about company culture
Stay interviews often offer more detailed insights than surveys, even though the questions may be similar. That’s because the one-on-one nature of a stay interview can encourage more detailed answers, while additional information can be picked up from an employee’s tone, body language, and other nonverbal cues.
These detailed insights are a great source of data on potential issues across the broader organisation that may need attention — but it’s also crucial that any employee feedback about what needs to change is acted on. Erika Duncan, cofounder and human capital advisor of HR consultancy People On Point, noted that as a result, stay interviews are only effective “if the interviewer has the autonomy to change or react to the feedback given.” Otherwise, it can make employees feel unheard and discouraged, which can ultimately make them feel less engaged.
Unsure how to structure a stay interview? Use Lattice’s Stay Interview Template and get it right, the first time.
3. Exit Surveys
Exit surveys collect insights from departing employees. They’re a valuable way to identify issues that may have caused a drop in employee engagement and satisfaction.
Benefits of exit surveys include:
- Easy to administer quickly and at scale
- Standardized questions help reduce bias
- Provide standardized data that can be compared over time
- Promote honest answers that may not be mentioned in an in-person interview
- Identify broader trends and patterns that lead to high turnover
Exit surveys are often used in tandem with exit interviews, but the survey format does offer some advantages over a face-to-face interview. Some employees may feel uncomfortable sharing honest feedback about why they’re leaving. But because they can fill out an exit survey in their own time, often after they’ve left the company, many people feel more comfortable sharing the real reasons behind their departure.
Surveys also make it easier to quantify your data, so that trends can be identified and tracked over time. For example, an exit questionnaire might ask employees to list the top three reasons they’re leaving the company. If 90% identify a toxic workplace culture, you know you need to make significant culture changes to reduce employee turnover rates.
Averbook noted that exit surveys can also be used to pinpoint specific deficiencies in management, leadership, and overall culture. And once those weak points are identified, you can work to change them — and improve employee satisfaction and retention in the process.
Not sure what to ask employees on their exit survey? Download Lattice’s Employee Exit Survey Questions Template.
4. One-on-Ones
One-on-ones allow managers to meet with each employee on their team. The goal is to discuss how their direct reports are doing, whether they’re satisfied with their job, and if anything needs to change. Duncan uses one-on-ones for “intentional outreach, where [managers can celebrate] progress, listen to feedback, and follow through to remove hurdles.”
Benefits of one-on-ones for managers include:
- Building trust with team members
- Helping employees overcome challenges
- Uncovering opportunities for innovation or improvement
- Offering an informal opportunity to discuss an employee’s concerns
For employees, the benefits include:
- Discuss career progression
- Share ideas and feelings in a private setting
- Help employees clear any challenges or roadblocks
- Provide detailed feedback on performance management goals
One-on-ones are crucial for fostering a strong relationship between managers and their direct reports, but these check-ins are also a great way to discover more details about each employee’s job satisfaction. To achieve this successfully, Averbrook mentioned the key is for managers “to effectively ask questions [and] have remarkable listening skills.”
Not sure what this might look like in practice? Here are a couple of scenarios:
Scenario 1:
- During a regular one-on-one, a top-performing employee mentions they’re not feeling challenged or engaged with their current job responsibilities.
- Their manager listens to these concerns and suggests options for change. These might include assigning the employee to a different project or giving them new tasks to work on that better align with their goals.
- During the next regularly scheduled one-on-one, the manager and employee discuss whether things have improved, or what else could be changed.
Scenario 2:
- During their one-on-one, an employee mentions they’re unhappy and becoming frustrated with the lack of growth opportunities.
- Their manager suggests working together to create a development plan. This outlines exactly what support the employee will need, and the steps they need to take to land a promotion or grow within the company.
- At the next one-on-one, the manager and employee discuss career path progress and adjust or adapt goals as necessary.
To uncover these kinds of issues, coach your managers to ask deep questions about morale, teamwork, growth, productivity, well-being, working conditions, and more. Try asking:
- What were your work highlights this week?
- What aspects of your job are you finding frustrating?
- What could I, as your manager, change about my management style?
- Are there any issues or problems with the team that I might not know about?
- How do you feel you’re progressing towards your career development goals?
These questions can uncover why an employee is feeling dissatisfied, and what kind of support they need to get back on track. Remember that once an issue is uncovered, it’s crucial to take action. Otherwise, any dissatisfaction is likely to get progressively worse, to a point where an employee is far more likely to leave the company for another opportunity.
Need help maximizing your one-on-ones? Download Lattice’s Manager One-on-one Agenda Template.
5. Upward Reviews
Upward reviews are like an employee performance review — but in reverse. They allow employees to share feedback about the people above them, like their direct manager or department head. Importantly, these reviews should cover not just what they do well, but how they could improve.
Benefits of upward reviews include:
- Offer clarity around how managers are viewed by their team
- Allow employees to voice their opinions about their manager
- Provide honest and constructive feedback about a manager’s performance
Upward reviews are crucial for getting a full picture of employee satisfaction — because an employee’s experience with their manager, supervisor, or leadership team often has a significant impact on their overall satisfaction.
By giving employees the chance to provide honest feedback about any challenges they’re having with their higher-ups, HR can identify how and where those difficulties are contributing to employee dissatisfaction — and then take steps to address them.
Not sure what that process might look like in practice? Here’s one scenario:
- During the upward review process, anonymous feedback from 6 employees showed that the finance manager doesn’t respect their time and contacts them with work requests at night and on weekends.
- This lack of work-life balance is having a significant impact on the engagement and satisfaction of those employees. Some of them are at risk of burnout.
- HR discusses this issue with the finance manager’s supervisor, before working together to develop a solution and a strategy moving forward. This could include training around respecting their team’s free time and creating better work-life boundaries.
Need inspiration for the best questions to ask during upward reviews? Download Lattice’s Performance Review Question Bank Template.
Make Data-Driven Decisions About Employee Satisfaction With Lattice
The financial services sector isn’t the only industry facing challenges keeping employees engaged, satisfied, and committed to their jobs. But implementing some or all of these feedback mechanisms, together with data and prompt action will help you make the right decisions about how to boost employee satisfaction at your organization.
Using Lattice to track employee satisfaction metrics makes things even easier, meaning financial services organizations can seamlessly monitor and report on these crucial metrics — all in one place.
Turning employee feedback into change doesn’t have to be hard. Download the How to Turn Engagement Survey Results Into Action ebook for all the details.
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