An article is this month’s Talent Management caught my eye.  Probably because employee satisfaction is at the top of my mind right now since someone I recently sat down with to do some career coaching asked me, “I am 60% satisfied with my job.  Is that enough?”  First of all, being able to distill it to such an exact percentage was impressive to me.  But more importantly, was the fact that he was willing to settle…in other words being 40% dissatisfied is okay.  But is it really?  And how much can we change or put up with depending on what is truly important to us?  Granted, humans are adaptable creatures, but the ever elusive “happiness” can really make or break the experience, as well as, what we are willing to do to get it.

Taylor’s article states that “employees want to be informed about goals and expectations and how their roles fit within them.”  Obviously if employees feel like they know what they are “shooting for” and feel that the work they are required to get there uses their skills and abilities and is truly interesting to them, you bet they will help leadership get to the end goal!  Taylor suggests there are nine ways companies can boost career satisfaction:

• “Place people in the right roles according to strengths, skills and interests.
• Tap into talent in the cloud.
• Use a pool of pre-screened, reliable talent.
• Create an employee loan initiative.
• Cross-skill people so they can use different skills on demand.
• Create a dedicated pool of flexible, just-in-time talent.
• Create a demand-driven talent marketplace.
• Restructure work in terms of smaller, discrete, skill-based projects.
• Define jobs more broadly.”

Read the full article to get more detail on the bullet points and then drop me a line and tell me what you think.  I am pretty sure you will agree, if companies tried some of these strategies, 40% dissatisfaction wouldn’t even be in the picture!