Ensuring employee satisfaction is one of the most important things that you can do to build a stronger and more productive company as a business owner.

Employee job satisfaction can be achieved in many ways. Managers can closely work with employees in order to develop better work processes, employees can be given a more significant say in how their job is done and managers can ensure that employees feel challenged at their job.

Understanding the positive impact of job satisfaction on employee retention will help to justify the time and expense involved with creating a satisfying workplace.

Here under are some of the elements that employees are looking for in a job.

A positive workplace

People want to wake up in the morning and head to a place with functioning teams,supportive bosses, well-defined projects, access to vital information concerning the company and synergy between various levels of the organisation.

They expect a conducive working space such as good lighting, ventilation and furniture. Employees perform at their best in an environment of trust, open communication channels and effective conflict-resolution strategies.

In short, employees stay longer and perform better at a job that offers them a positive work environment.

Effective Leadership

One of the primary reasons employees give for leaving their jobs has to do with the company’s leadership and not money. Ineffective leadership can destroy job satisfaction, lead to unnecessary turnover and, in turn, impose enormous costs in recruiting new employees.

Employers can improve employee job satisfaction through training supervisors and managers how to be leaders not just training them on management skills.

Increasing job satisfaction among your employee base is not only the right thing to do, but it positions your organisation to reap remarkable benefits

Career, personal growth

These including opportunities to develop leadership skills are indispensable in maintaining a low attrition rate and high productivity. Sponsoring academic programmes will ensure the continued education of a workforce and a prerequisite for innovation and creative problem solving.

Employees value a job that offers them avenues to improve upon their hard and soft skills. People thrive in a dynamic environment that is both challenging and nurturing.

Fair pay for work done

Employees expect to be adequately compensated for their contribution to the company. While compensation may not be a primary cause for job dissatisfaction, employers would do well to review their compensation structure to ensure they are paying competitive wages and that there exists internal equity among employees in comparable jobs.

You can increase job satisfaction through developing a compensation and benefits structure that corresponds to other businesses in your industry, and one that rewards employees for their contributions to organisational success.

Says an industrial and organisational psychologist

Nursery/kindergarten (duration: three years)

This is the pre-school level of education in Uganda. Children usually start at the age of three (or even two) and complete nursery school by the age of five. Until recently rural areas like Katine sub-county did not have nursery schools.


But more and more villagers, inspired by the early start in the education of children in towns, want nurseries for their children. Now, most sub-counties have at least one nursery, located within the premises of a charitable organization.

Initially, they gave the impression of being frightened and edgy in the middle of the competition; they repeated letters, got jammed and pronounced a number of letters in vernacular, as in ‘zee’ for ‘Z’.

The reality that they were on a raised stage, each with an identification number, didn’t help matters.

Sending a child to kindergarten is no longer optional. In this generation, parents want to leave no stone unturned to furnish their children for the future, even if it means spending gruesome amounts of money. Kindergartens, meanwhile, are tapping into this sentiment.


Michael Kaggwa pays Shs 800,000 for his three-year-old son at Kampala Parents’ School in day care each term. In contrast, Guma Simon, pursuing a Bachelors degree in Social Sciences at Kyambogo University, pays Shs 630,000 a semester.