Chris Fusco – How to Accurately Measure Your Employees’ Job Satisfaction

Connect with Chris:

• 

Connect with David:

• • 

• david.turetsky@salary.com

Connect with Dwight:

• • 

• dwight.brown@salary.com

Podcast Manager, Karissa Harris:

• HRDataLabs@salary.com

 

Production by Affogato Media

Resources:

• Salary.com Consulting practice
• HR Data Labs Season 8 Episode 7
• HR Data Labs Season 8 Episode 5

• “Sometimes organizations try to substitute money for satisfaction and wellbeing... not realizing it just doesn’t work that way.”
• “Transparency, growth potential, and workload are the sweet spots for organizations to focus on to improve job satisfaction in 2025.”

Announcer: 0:01

The world of business is more complex than ever. The world of human resources and compensation is also getting more complex. Welcome to the HR Data Labs podcast, your direct source for the latest trends from experts inside and outside the world of human resources. Listen as we explore the impact that compensation strategy, data and people analytics can have on your organization. This podcast is sponsored by salary.com Your source for data technology and consulting for compensation and beyond. Now here are your hosts, David Turetsky and Dwight Brown.

 

David Turetsky: 0:38

Hello and welcome to the HR Data Labs podcast! I'm your host, David Turetsky, alongside my friend, partner, co-host, BFF, Dwight Brown, from Salary.com, Dwight Brown!

 

Dwight Brown: 0:49

You hesitated long enough I wondered what was going to come out of your mouth next!

 

David Turetsky: 0:54

You know, every so often it's not bad to, like, keep people waiting.

 

Dwight Brown: 0:58

Yeah, that's exactly it. The suspense was killing me. Good to see you!

 

David Turetsky: 1:02

Hopefully it didn't kill you. You're okay. It's not like jumping out of a plane kill you.

 

Dwight Brown: 1:07

Yeah, exactly. I do other things that'll do that.

 

David Turetsky: 1:09

It's a lot safer for having me not say something than it is jumping out of a plane. But Dwight, you know, we have with us a really brilliant guest today. And I don't say that often, or I might say it often, but I mean it today, because the guy we have with us is Chris Fusco from Salary.com, Chris, how are you?

 

Chris Fusco: 1:33

I am excellent. Thank you.

 

David Turetsky: 1:34

I'm glad to hear it.

 

Chris Fusco: 1:35

Pleased to be here.

 

David Turetsky: 1:36

Excellent. Well, we're really happy to have you, because today we're going to be talking about a really fun topic, one we really don't talk about a lot! But before we get there, Chris, why don't you give people a little bit about your background?

 

Chris Fusco: 1:47

I am a career compensation professional. I've spent my career in both corporate and consulting environments, and I joined Salary.com back in 2002.

 

David Turetsky: 2:01

Wow!

 

Chris Fusco: 2:03

Where I could take my experience and my learnings and translate that into helping employers determine how much and how to pay their employees.

 

David Turetsky: 2:15

So we should blame you then for Salary.com, partly? No, I'm kidding, because actually, one of the wonderful things that is going on with Salary.com this year is it's our 25th anniversary, and so we will be probably spending the entire year celebrating 25 years of Salary.com. Isn't that amazing, Chris?

 

Chris Fusco: 2:37

That is amazing. Yeah, I've been here for most of those 25 years.

 

David Turetsky: 2:41

Wonderful! And when I call you brilliant, I don't mean that just in the context of, you know, you're a friend and you know I like working with you, but the fact that not only have you been so much at Salary.com and have spent so much time here, but the things you've affected, and we're going to be talking a little bit about one of them today, but why don't you tell people about a little bit about the skills products that you're working on today? Because that's really pretty fascinating.

 

Chris Fusco: 3:06

Yeah, I'm currently engaged in building the most comprehensive competency library that exists, and our library covers all of the jobs that you would find in our CompAnalyst Market data product that's over 6000 jobs. So for over 6000 jobs, we have built competency model, and those are complete with competency definitions and behavioral indicators, and we've added interview questions and learning and development guidance, and the database continues to grow as we work on each consecutive update of the frameworks.

 

David Turetsky: 3:53

And it's extremely comprehensive too. And so not trying to oversell it here, but you and a very small team are actually doing this. It's pretty fascinating stuff.

 

Chris Fusco: 4:02

Yeah, and it's it's also fascinating to me that the team is entirely remote, including myself, so we work effectively as a team, even though we've never met one another face to face.

 

David Turetsky: 4:18

We should have that changed. We should. We should definitely spend some time and money getting guys to be in the same room, unless that upsets the dynamic, in which case don't do it!

 

Dwight Brown: 4:27

Yeah, right!

 

David Turetsky: 4:29

So Chris, one thing that no one knows about Chris Fusco?

 

Chris Fusco: 4:33

I'm an avid sailor. I love to sail, and I have never capsized a boat.

 

David Turetsky: 4:40

But you jinxed it now!

 

Dwight Brown: 4:42

Yeah, you haven't sailed hard enough, apparently, Chris!

 

David Turetsky: 4:45

Right, you haven't done the North Sea, apparently.

 

Chris Fusco: 4:48

But when I was learning how to sail, I thought to myself, I never want to run aground.

 

David Turetsky: 4:56

Oh.

 

Chris Fusco: 4:56

And my instructor said, Oh, it'll happen someday. And sure enough, one day, I ran the boat aground and had to then deal with that.

 

David Turetsky: 5:08

Yeah, but that's not as bad as like being out in the middle of an ocean and having the capsize and then figure out how the heck you're gonna get home.

 

Dwight Brown: 5:14

Yeah, at least you got, at least you got some ground to stand on when you run aground!

 

David Turetsky: 5:19

Right! By the way, by the way, Dwight says that. And Dwight is one of these people who likes to jump out of perfectly good planes, or he likes to use these gliding mechanisms that are not part of a arm structure. They're actually things that he rents. So, so, you know, Dwight actually jumps off perfectly good cliffs and mountains!

 

Dwight Brown: 5:43

Right. I try to get off ground!

 

David Turetsky: 5:46

Off ground, and then in the air to then hit the ground again.

 

Dwight Brown: 5:51

Exactly. So running aground but no capsizing, never once? Even on a little sunfish boat or something?

 

Chris Fusco: 6:00

Well, I've sailed everything from a sunfish to a 39 foot cabin cruiser, but it makes me think that if, if I was able to run aground, then I'm able to capsize a boat. So, you know, I think that's going to happen some day.

 

Dwight Brown: 6:16

Yeah, never say never, right?

 

David Turetsky: 6:18

Knock on wood, please would you? We don't want to hear any reports of you capsizing now.

 

Dwight Brown: 6:26

Exactly.

 

David Turetsky: 6:27

We'll feel like we were culpable in that. So today, we have a fascinating conversation ahead of us, and it's a topic we haven't really covered here at all, which is kind of strange, and it's about how to measure job satisfaction. So why don't we get into it? So Chris, what is job satisfaction? And why does anybody care? What does it matter?

 

Chris Fusco: 6:57

It does matter because job satisfaction is a feeling of fulfillment or enjoyment that an employee derives from performing their job. And then, you know, think about fulfillment. That means things like positive feedback from performing your job, or feedback from your manager or teammates. If that feedback is positive, you're likely to be more satisfied with your job.

 

David Turetsky: 7:24

Sure.

 

Chris Fusco: 7:25

Than if the feedback was negative. And then, since it's a feeling of fulfillment and enjoyment, enjoyment means things like, Do you have a best friend at work? But basically, job satisfaction equates to retention. If you have satisfied employees, you're better. You have a better chance of retaining those employees.

 

David Turetsky: 7:47

But you said it's a feeling, and it's so I mean, we're complex organisms. It's very hard to consistently have that feeling, eight hours a day, 40 hours a week, 2080 a year, for as long as you know you've been working here for long, as long as anybody here, almost. How do we keep job satisfaction going? And is it something that a company should even try and achieve?

 

Chris Fusco: 8:16

Yeah, you've got to have interventions on factors that explain job satisfaction, things like relationships, commute, recognition, career growth. You know, employers can focus on those things. They can focus on career growth by developing a career path for their employees to look at and aspire to. Recognition is a no brainer in my mind. You know, just a manager giving a pat on the back to an employee for a job well done. So that that's how you maintain it, and if the employee is living that definition, that job satisfaction is the fulfillment or enjoyment that an employee derives from performing their job. That's that can be self sustaining. As long as you have tuned the factors of job satisfaction within your organization, you can keep, you can keep it humming, you know, for a duration, until there's some major change within the organization or in the marketplace where they compete, and then an employer needs to revisit those, those factors of job satisfaction.

 

Dwight Brown: 9:32

And I think you point out an important thing that I think a lot of companies struggle with and a lot of managers struggle with, and that is the difference between extrinsic job satisfaction and intrinsic job satisfaction. And are they truly separate? Or, you know, based on what you just said, extrinsic probably can help keep the intrinsic going. Would you agree with that?

 

Chris Fusco: 10:01

Yeah, I would. I guess intrinsic and extrinsic can be good to discern however they need to be combined into a package of job satisfaction factors in order to be effective at increasing job satisfaction. For example, women report a lower job satisfaction than men, and a lot of that has to do with the gender wage gap and also other potential signs of discrimination, such as being passed up for a promotion or not having the career development opportunities that maybe some men do. So when it comes to things like, like a gender wage gap, you know, the organization can dig into the data and conduct an internal equity analysis to determine if there is a gap, and if there is a gap, then, you know, look at, you know, adjust compensation for female employees, you know, offer them more flexibility, because women today still carry the majority of household tasks than their male counterparts do. We just need to, employers just need to be mindful of these factors that influence job satisfaction and use them to drive job satisfaction.

 

David Turetsky: 11:30

Chris, if I might, is the context of a company trying to keep their employees satisfied maybe an older concept? Given the fact that there are so many signals we're getting from different generations that employment at will isn't just a isn't just a legal term anymore. It's really kind of the relationship they feel with their company, given that so many companies feel like or so many employees feel like, everything's so transactional these days, is satisfaction still something that's useful for a company?

 

Chris Fusco: 12:07

When I think about an an answer to that question, I think about the idea that job satisfaction was the state of talent intelligence 20 or 30 years ago, and today, talent intelligence has broadened to include things like role based onboarding and the process by which candidates are hired for the job opening they were selected for. But job satisfaction is still important today. You know, one of the most common tools that are that's used to measure job satisfaction is the employee survey. And the employee survey is chalk full of questions about, you know, do you have a good relationship with your manager? Do you have a good relationship with your teammates? Are you happy with your compensation, benefits? All those things that that go into an employee satisfaction survey often use the word satisfaction. Are you satisfied with your pay? Are you satisfied with your benefits?

 

David Turetsky: 13:07

Right.

 

Announcer: 13:08

Like what you hear so far? Make sure you never miss a show by clicking subscribe. This podcast is made possible by Salary.com. Now back to the show

 

David Turetsky: 13:19

That actually brings up the second question, which is, how does an employer really know if employees are satisfied? Is it really the satisfaction survey, or are there other elements that we have to take into consideration as well?

 

Chris Fusco: 13:34

Yeah. I mean, if you take this perspective that a workplace is a social event sponsored by your employer.

 

David Turetsky: 13:47

We're not talking about the Christmas party.

 

Dwight Brown: 13:49

Yeah, exactly.

 

Chris Fusco: 13:51

That that socialization is the foundation of a good culture.

 

David Turetsky: 13:57

Yep.

 

Chris Fusco: 13:58

And if your culture is amenable to the employees in that organization, they'll be more satisfied working there.

 

David Turetsky: 14:05

Is that really kind of believing in the mission? Or is that really liking the people you work with and liking the situation you're in?

 

Dwight Brown: 14:12

Or both!

 

David Turetsky: 14:12

Or both.

 

Chris Fusco: 14:13

You know, one, one big indicator of job satisfaction is quality of leadership. You know, leadership is in that social arena of the company and its employees, and you know, employees, in my research of current job satisfaction statistics, quality of leadership is is relatively high on the list of factors that influence job satisfaction. So I think the answer to your question is yes.

 

Dwight Brown: 14:48

And what that leadership looks like differs from work group to work group.

 

Chris Fusco: 14:53

Certainly.

 

Dwight Brown: 14:53

Because a good a good leader has to be able to discern what is it that that work group needs to feel satisfied in their job. Or to feel enamored with their job, you know, just satisfied, right? And that can be a frustrating thing, I would imagine, too, is just trying to dial in on that and figure out what is the secret sauce for this particular work group, and then how can I bring myself as a leader to foster that.

 

Chris Fusco: 15:23

Yeah, the factors, and you're right about that Dwight, because the factors that influence job satisfaction in one organization can differ to the next. Flexibility is is a top driver of employee satisfaction. It's not just satisfaction with their schedule, but it's also satisfaction with with benefit. You know, the flexibility that's offered through a Benefits Program.

 

Dwight Brown: 15:48

Oh yeah. Yeah, I believe it. Because, I mean, you look

 

Chris Fusco: 15:49

The flexibility that's offered through the types of projects that you get to work on. But, but in terms of flexibility, remote work continues to be a hot topic ever since the beginning of the pandemic. Compensation is also also in the top 10, but it's not up at the top. It's usually down like ten, nine, seven. In a recent survey conducted by the Conference Board, they said that that factor was actually number 10 on their list. at, there's some highly compensated people out there who are living absolute miserable lives. They're working 90 100 hours a week. Recently, in the last couple couple weeks we saw, unfortunately, a fatal implication of that and but I think sometimes organizations try to substitute money for satisfaction, well being and those sorts of things and not realizing it just doesn't work that way,

 

David Turetsky: 16:57

When we see pay transparency, which tries to

 

Chris Fusco: 16:57

Yep, managers are prone to throwing money at employee relations issues, someone who is not satisfied is create a level of trust from The beginning of someone's journey the greasy wheel that might get a promotion or a pay raise. But with a company. What about you mentioned the word transparency, I guess this all comes down to the idea that transparency, growth potential and workload, as you suggested, Dwight, are and I know you didn't use pay, but transparency. Do you think the sweet spots for organizations to focus on to improve job satisfaction in 2025. that companies are going to be more open to being more open in the future, because pay will now be open? So will they? Will they kind of open up a little bit more about their policies and about how things happen, and allow transparency to be more thorough across an organization? Yes, yes. I'm currently writing a book which the notional title might be, fair, transparent and aligned compensation management and transparency does go a long way to the success of a compensation system.

 

David Turetsky: 18:26

I mean, you and I both remember a time when we used to tell people never to talk about comp, because if you talk about comp, I'll fire you. Stop this water cooler talk!

 

Chris Fusco: 18:36

Transparency is used in a broader definition when it comes to job satisfaction, because it also might be the transparency employees need in their company's financials, right, to understand how their bonus is determined.

 

David Turetsky: 18:53

Right, well, and how they are working toward their goals, right? Or, you know or not. And, yeah, that does lead to incentives, but yeah, I mean, it would be great to be more open and more honest about what's going on in the market, what's going on in the company, how that translates to, am I doing my job effectively? So there's a lot of transparency that would be useful in order to be able to make that relationship, that employee relationship, more mature, instead of you can't handle the truth!

 

Chris Fusco: 19:26

Right, right, right. You want, you want the adult to adult relationship, as opposed to the adult to child relationship.

 

David Turetsky: 19:33

Exactly! Well, it's always been that command and control, right? Instead of being that honesty or the shared vision at least.

 

Dwight Brown: 19:41

And transparency and trust also go hand in hand with that.

 

David Turetsky: 19:44

Exactly.

 

Dwight Brown: 19:45

One, one breeds the other. And I think in trusting environments, the idea of transparency probably is less of an emphasis, because people trust that they're going to they're being paid the same in high trust environments, and likewise, in low trust environments, they might not necessarily trust that. But at the same time, you can have those things paired up and have those be big drivers of satisfaction.

 

Chris Fusco: 20:17

And when it comes to drivers of intent to stay, that's, you know, an organization getting a picture of future retention by conducting stay interviews. But drivers of intent to stay include quality of leadership and organizational culture, not pay. You know, it's more intrinsic than pay, which would be an extrinsic factor.

 

David Turetsky: 20:47

Right.

 

Dwight Brown: 20:48

That makes sense.

 

David Turetsky: 20:50

Hey, are you listening to this and thinking to yourself, Man, I wish I could talk to David about this. Well, you're in luck. We have a special offer for listeners of the HR Data Labs podcast, a free half hour call with me about any of the topics we cover on the podcast, or whatever is on your mind. Go to salary.com/hrdlconsulting to schedule your free 30 minute call today. Let's touch on the third question, which I think a lot of people might be thinking now, given our conversation, which is So, what should an employer do if they have less than hope for job satisfaction scores? What is the most important metric they should focus on?

 

Chris Fusco: 21:31

Well, I mentioned before that transparency, growth potential and workload are the sweet spots for organizations to focus on to improve job satisfaction in 2025 I would add to that flexibility and growth potential.

 

David Turetsky: 21:48

And when you say flexibility, you were talking a little bit before about flexibility as far as work arrangements. Are we also talking about flexibility in other ways, or are you really trying to mean how you get the job done? Get it done. Just we trust you. We trust you're going to get it done.

 

Chris Fusco: 22:06

I think the conventional wisdom around that is that the best approach to flexibility is to offer a hybrid schedule for your employees, where they come into the office three days a week and work from home the other two days, that seems to be, you know, where the critical thinkers are are headed.

 

Dwight Brown: 22:29

So the era of work totally from home. Do you see that coming to a close?

 

Chris Fusco: 22:37

I don't. I think that especially during the pandemic, when organizations were having their employees work from home, organizations were hiring, you know, the pandemic opened up the recruiting market, right, from a local or regional recruiting market to a national recruiting market because, hey, you know we have remote, remote employees now it's going pretty well. So why not hire talented employees in other parts of the country?

 

Dwight Brown: 23:15

or even internationally?

 

Chris Fusco: 23:18

Yes!

 

David Turetsky: 23:18

Especially, yeah. So Chris, I know that's not a specific formula, and as you said, there are different variations in those factors for different companies and different industries, but if a company was interested in being able to look at those models and be able to at least talk about how to improve those metrics that you were describing, what would you suggest their first step be? Would it be to make sure that their their surveys are completely up to date and that they are kind of more modeled around the more industry standard job satisfaction models?

 

Chris Fusco: 23:58

The first step is, is data gathering. As with, as with many initiatives, data gathering is the first step. For an organization that wanted to research job satisfaction there are a number of avenues they can take. You know, like Glassdoor, an organization can can see what active employees and former employees are saying about the organization. Is the feedback being given there positive or negative? Informal conversations that managers have with their employees, or that HR has with employees, can provide a lot of information, especially when the person looking for that information is asking questions like, What do you like about your job?

 

David Turetsky: 24:50

But that unstructured data, where does it go? Does it go into the ether, or is there a place where that should live?

 

Chris Fusco: 24:57

I think that it's necessary to have a systematic approach to gathering the data, and then to document all of the information that was gathered in the form of a position paper, almost. So you know, if you look at Glassdoor and you count, you know, five positive reviews and six negative views. You know that can go into the documentation. And you can even qualify positive and negative with with actual quips of the comments that were made from those.

 

David Turetsky: 25:38

Cutting out the four letter words, though.

 

Chris Fusco: 25:41

Yeah, yeah!

 

Dwight Brown: 25:43

You gotta leave them in! I mean, it is a descriptor!

 

David Turetsky: 25:48

Well, this is an HR system of record we're talking about Dwight, so yeah, you have to at least obscure them a little bit. But I get your point, Chris, because what you're saying is, don't let these things disappear, keep them as a a way of being able to tell a story.

 

Chris Fusco: 26:07

Yeah, you need to draw conclusions from the data that you've gathered. And I think the the story approach is a good way to document those conclusions. Certainly, the organization has collected data internally through performance reviews, internal promotion rates, successful hire rates, exit interviews, stay interviews. Some organizations are still using suggestion boxes.

 

David Turetsky: 26:40

Wow, yeah!

 

Chris Fusco: 26:42

Yeah, which can provide information like that, but by far, the most popular means of collecting this information is through employee surveys. And if an organization is committed to understanding the feedback of their employees, they would conduct those surveys at some regular interval, typically annually. Then they can see that they can run demographic analyzes, question by questions, statistics, factor analysis, if we want to get really into it, see if one question is a predictor of another.

 

David Turetsky: 27:21

There's also the benchmarking you can get from some of the more popular employee satisfaction surveys that, to me, that really helps, especially given that when you're doing these analyzes, you have to take into consideration the the economy and other factors that are extrinsic, or that are external to your organization, and that could help you, given that benchmarking data could help you set the context for, you know, cross sections of populous or or even a trend analysis over time.

 

Chris Fusco: 27:56

That I agree with, that the factors that you choose to influence to increase job satisfaction need to be presented in such a way that they need to be aligned with the organization's goals and also externally, with industry standards, so that so there is context that needs to be put around the information that you gather.

 

Dwight Brown: 28:26

I think AI probably helps that. And to your point about actually building some sort of narrative or story format around that I was, I was in a large organization before I was at Salary.com, and we struggled, because we did biannual employee satisfaction surveys, and both as an employee and then when I was a leader, I really had a lot of difficulty with the survey process. The statistics were helpful. We had the benchmarking that you talked about, David, from the stats, but to your point, Chris, we lacked the context. Because what they would do all the written comments employees got to the point where they're like, I'm not even going to put a written comment, because it's never going to what's important is never going to get to the manager, because they had teams of people who would summarize the data. And it was, it was largely looked at as a joke. It was a big joke. The I mean, we took the statistics seriously, but the joke part was we just didn't have effective context, like you're talking about just and so, you know, having generative AI and some of those other tools to really help advance, I think is going to be a great tool for companies moving forward, not just the big companies. I think this goes for all companies, because you do have to have that contact, you do have to have that specific feedback, and you do have to marry that up with the statistics, and it tells a very robust story that can help.

 

David Turetsky: 30:00

Well, that's right.

 

Dwight Brown: 30:00

Help you figure out what the satisfaction level truly is and what those drivers are and aren't.

 

Chris Fusco: 30:05

Yeah, and when it comes to measuring job satisfaction, it's important to go into those factors that will have the best influence on your organization. So if the organizational goals were to be innovative, so if that's an organizational goal, so they would want to focus on factors such as recognition and growth potential, transparency, those factors that would go to understanding innovation, you know creativity, you know what, what drives creativity this organization, they could go through that exercise and then focus in on, on those that they selected would be would have the most impact on achieving that innovation goal.

 

David Turetsky: 31:02

I think from a statistical perspective, we could all geek out around what kind of methods, but we're going to save that for another podcast, because all three of us would love to have that conversation.

 

Dwight Brown: 31:14

Squirrel!

 

David Turetsky: 31:15

But I think,

 

Chris Fusco: 31:18

Yeah,

 

Dwight Brown: 31:19

We'll all squirrel out it's

 

David Turetsky: 31:21

Yeah, exactly. But I think we'll leave that for another day. I think in this one, I think we've, we've gotten to the goal of we understand satisfaction better now we understand what measures to use, and I think we've also talked about, where do we go if, if we don't feel like we have high enough scores. So Chris, thank you so much.

 

Chris Fusco: 31:51

You're welcome.

 

David Turetsky: 31:52

Dwight, thank you.

 

Dwight Brown: 31:53

Thank you, Chris, don't go out and capsize.

 

David Turetsky: 31:56

No, please don't need to test that one.

 

Dwight Brown: 31:59

You've already run aground, you've done your time. Yeah,

 

David Turetsky: 32:05

Put that sailor hat away! We're good. We're good. Thank you very much for being here. We really appreciate it. We're gonna have you back, and probably haven't you on also for another for a compensation topic as well, if you don't mind.

 

Chris Fusco: 32:17

Oh yeah, there's a lot of, a lot of compensation topics we can talk about!

 

David Turetsky: 32:21

We will definitely do that. So thank you very much. And everybody, thank you for listening. Take care and stay safe.

 

Announcer: 32:28

That was the HR Data Labs podcast. If you liked the episode, please subscribe. And if you know anyone that might like to hear it, please send it their way. Thank you for joining us this week, and stay tuned for our next episode. Stay safe.