Date Published November 15, 2016 - Last Updated April 19, 2019
In the HDI 2015 Support Center Practices & Salary Report, we published findings on employee satisfaction in the industry. Not all of the 803 respondent organizations measure employee satisfaction, but the news is mostly good in those organizations that do measure:
- 465 organizations reported having satisfied or very satisfied staff
- Only 71 organizations reported dissatisfied or very dissatisfied staff
These stats include only the organizations that contributed answers to this section of our survey. About a quarter (24%) of these organizations measure employee satisfaction annually; 14% measure monthly and 12% measure weekly.
What Keeps Employees Satisfied?
In the organizations that have satisfied or very satisfied staff, the largest contributing factor named was relationships within the team (72% of these respondents), and the second largest (65%) was management.
The remaining three of the top five reasons for a satisfied staff were:
- Compensation including benefits (52%)
- Organizational culture (51%)
- Paid time off (49%)
Of the top five factors, then, three (team, management, and culture) are about people, not money or technology.
Ranking much farther down the list (tenth, fifteenth, and seventeenth, respectively) were:
- Rewards and recognition programs (31%)
- New technologies/devices (23%)
- Home office (13%)
What we can draw from this data is that the most important components of employee satisfaction are the relationships among team members along with the quality of their management. It’s the People part of the oft-used triad of People, Process, and Technology—not the newest widgets or even the ability to work from home—that makes the difficult work of support satisfying.
What Makes Employees Dissatisfied?
In the organizations with dissatisfied or very dissatisfied staff, compensation was the number one contributing factor, with two-thirds of the respondents (67%) citing it. There was a tie for second place between management and the amount of work (both at 53%). In simple terms, money doesn’t buy happiness, but inadequate compensation—coupled with a heavy workload and less- then-stellar management—can breed dissatisfaction.
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Roy Atkinson is HDI's senior writer/analyst, acting as in-house subject matter expert and chief writer for SupportWorld articles and white papers. In addition to being a member of the HDI International Certification Standards Committee and the HDI Desktop Support Advisory Board, Roy is a popular speaker at HDI conferences and is well known to HDI local chapter audiences. His background is in both service desk and desktop support as well as small-business consulting. Roy is highly rated on social media, especially on the topics of IT service management and customer service. He is a cohost of the very popular #custserv (customer service) chat on Twitter, which celebrated its fifth anniversary on December 9, 2014. He holds a master’s certificate in advanced management strategy from Tulane University’s Freeman School of Business, and he is a certified HDI Support Center Manager. Follow him on Twitter @HDI_Analyst and @RoyAtkinson.