Job Satisfaction…

I had the opportunity to have a meet and greet type breakfast with my company’s CEO today.  I’ll be honest I was kind of looking forward to it.  I can’t say that I know him well or he knows me well.  But we’ve been in enough meetings together and such that we both know who the other person is.  And I think he’s a good guy…I think he’s good for the company.

That said I was very disappointed with the breakfast/meeting.  I was expecting it to be more conversational-get to know you kind of stuff.  Where he would want to find out some stuff about me and vice versa.  Non-work related stuff like family, kids, hobbies interests.  Unfortunately that didn’t happen.  We got a 30 minute state of the company address with some bullet points and anecdotal stories of how he is different from our last CEO.  And how we’re headed in the right direction. And how change doesn’t happen over night.  Blah blah blah…yada yada yada.

There was a period opened up for questions/concerns, but with no relation basis established…who really wants to ask a tough question.  So most of us sat there, smiling and nodding.

So that experience just set my mind of thinking about workplace culture and things like job satisfaction today.  Here are some random thoughts…

I think one of fears of all employees is that they are just a name, just a number – that they are not known – and if they are not known they are expendable or at least not valued.

I think the workplace needs to be thought of in terms of a marriage – between employee and employer rather then a social contract.  I think a lot of employees are not satisfied with their jobs, with their companies because the job has lost it’s romance and has become a grind.

What can companies do to woo their employees and keep the romance alive?  I think successful companies understand this and actively seek out ways to “romance” (For lack of a better word) their employees.