Employee satisfaction appears on a lot of companies’ balanced scorecards. Most of the ones I’ve seen have annual goals to increase this number by one percent or less, which doesn’t seem like much of a challenge until you realize that employee satisfaction in the U.S. has been spiraling downward for twenty years.

The Conference Board released a report today on a survey of 5,000 U.S. households conducted by TNS. Only 45% of those surveyed say they are satisfied with their jobs, down from 61.1% in 1987. You can read a summary of the report here.

According to the summary, “no age or income group is immune. In fact, the youngest cohort of employees (those currently under age 25) expresses the highest level of dissatisfaction ever recorded by the survey for that age group” (64%). Only 51% find their jobs interesting, 43% feel secure in their jobs, and 51% are satisfied with their boss.

Why is this important? Lynn Franco, one of the report’s authors, says, “What’s really disturbing about growing job dissatisfaction is the way it can play into the competitive nature of the U.S. workforce down the road and on the growth of the U.S. economy—all in a negative way.” (“Don’t love your job? You’re not alone,” Jeannine Aversa, Associated Press, January 5, 2010)

Jobs are tight, pay is stagnant, out-of-pocket healthcare costs are skyrocketing, and fewer and fewer workers consider their jobs interesting. It’s no wonder employees are dissatisfied.

Yet some companies are bucking the trend. Premier offers shared services and programs to the not-for-profit hospitals and health system organizations that own it. It received the Baldrige Award in 2006. This is its trend for employee satisfaction.

Its application summary, available here, describes how it analyzes information from numerous employee feedback and communication methods, surveys, and exit interviews to identify and validate the key drivers of employee satisfaction. Leadership uses this information to guide critical employee-related decisions. HR uses the key factors identified for specific groups to enhance workforce planning. Business units review the information annually with employees in focus groups to identify improvement opportunities and action plans. Premier also developed an index of 11 questions with high correlation to employee satisfaction that it measures and tracks on a quarterly basis.

A systematic approach to improving employee satisfaction begins with knowledge of what drives that satisfaction. Processes must be developed to capture and analyze the information that will identify key drivers of satisfaction, which must then be validated with employees and correlated with other organizational performance results to ensure that the right things are being measured and that resources are focused on the right areas.

Finally, the executive team must make employee satisfaction and engagement an organizational priority, a key measure on its balanced scorecard and one of the top performance measures it looks at on a regular basis. And they should do this because their organization’s present and future success depends on satisfied and engaged employees:

• Best Buy increases sales $100,000 annually at any location where employee engagement rises 2%.
• J.C. Penney raised its employee engagement scores from 67% in 2005 to 80% in 2009. Its earnings per share have grown five times the industry average since 2004.
• At Sears, a 5-point improvement on its employee attitude scale improved customer satisfaction by 1.3%, which boosted revenue by 0.5%, which meant $250 million more in sales each year.

To find out more about employee satisfaction and engagement, read:

• Bottom-Line Value of Employee Engagement
• 10 Steps to a Successful Workplace
• Best and Worst for Employees
• Effective Employee Communication
• Why HR Needs Baldrige

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