Making employees happy is no easy task. Some processes and strategic moves that are done and implemented by various companies, in order to improve satisfaction, can very quickly and rather easily raise employee satisfaction. But making employees happy and satisfied every day throughout the year is an immensely difficult task. If you want to know how we managed to not only maintain high satisfaction of our employees at Cinnamon, but also improve satisfaction, keep reading. :)

In this blog, you can find out what the magic is behind keeping our employees satisfied. We transparently wrote about our employee satisfaction results and compared these results with last year’s. Also, you can gain insight into some of the processes and steps we’ve implemented to continue to make our employees satisfied and happy working at Cinnamon.

Employee satisfaction results

We already achieved a great result in 2020, which we described in our blog Cinnamon as the TOP 5 Employer. Of course, we wanted to improve these excellent results even more, which is why we worked hard last year on an Action plan in which we defined various activities to have even more satisfied employees. Back then we talked about Cinnamon’s growth and how we grew from 25 employees to 60 in that year. This year that number is even higher - we can happily share that we are preparing a welcome party for our 100th employee! Yes, we are still growing strongly and experiencing big changes, and the only thing we will never change is making sure that all our employees (however many of us there will be) are satisfied.

That is why we decided to, once again, participate in an anonymous survey conducted by MojPosao among 75 other companies in order to find out if Cinnamon employees are still satisfied and what can we do (again) to make them even more satisfied. The research was conducted for the purpose of obtaining general employee satisfaction ratings, degrees of engagement and employee loyalty, and comparisons with other companies in the industry and with the best Croatian employers. The survey explored 9 key dimensions of employee satisfaction that are considered important factors for employee engagement:

Last year we got a very high overall satisfaction and were ranked 5th in the category of mid-size companies. Although we also ranked 5th in the category of mid-size companies this year, our results improved. This year we got even higher overall satisfaction, higher satisfaction in almost all aspects and a higher percentage of engaged employees. All of that means that the Action plan and all the activities we did to improve employee satisfaction really did make an impact. Something we mainly focused on in the past year was improving our work organization, employee involvement in decision making, and working conditions.

In 2020 we also got a good result for the engagement of our employees (engaged employees put in the extra effort needed to succeed, they say positive things about the company, are more loyal to the company, and choose to stay in the long run). At that time we had 67.67% of engaged employees, 0% unmotivated employees, however, we had 33.33% of neutral employees. Throughout 2021, we tried various actions to motivate these 33.33% neutral employees and get them to be more engaged employees. We are happy to say that this year we have even more engaged employees, 76.47% of them, which means that our plan succeeded. Through 2022, we plan to further reduce the percentage of neutral employees because we strive to have as many engaged employees as possible.

How have we managed to maintain and improve the satisfaction of our employees?

When we got an insight into last year’s good results we didn’t pat ourselves on the shoulder saying a good job and thinking there’s nothing to do. No, we carefully planned strategic steps in order to maintain and improve the satisfaction of our employees. We are using a cyclical process, and what mainly guides us through that process is transparency, transparency, and transparency.

We held a presentation of these results for all Cinnamon employees so that everyone would be informed about the overall satisfaction, satisfaction with the certain dimensions, employee engagement… Basically, we informed them about all the results.

At Cinnamon, we see the importance of this step that many employers (unfortunately) skip thinking that the results are not important for employees and that only management should have access to them. We are always guided by the fact that employees have the right to know what the situation is at the company.

Already at the beginning of the year, we analyzed the data in great detail, studying each statement within the individual dimensions of employee satisfaction and all the other feedback received from our employees. We did all of that in order to locate as precisely as possible which areas of employee satisfaction and in what way we can further improve.

As part of a workshop attended by management, HR, Heads of Departments, and Team Leads, we identified 10 activities of our Action plan. The purpose was to work precisely in those areas where it is possible to make progress while maintaining and strengthening those areas with which employees are already satisfied.

It may be somewhat easy to see which areas need to be repaired, but the hardest part is implementing the necessary changes. This is because a lot of people are involved in the implementation process - Management must push new processes, employees need to embrace them, and all of this requires great commitment from all sides.

In the middle of the year, we conducted a Pulse check survey to check the progress of the implementation of activities from our Action plan. The purpose of this was to have both a checkpoint and a reality check on the progress of the whole process. Based on the results of the Pulse check, we got an insight into whether we are going in the right direction and whether the activities we defined in the Action plan make sense.

We continued to implement the necessary changes, which meant further strengthening some processes, but also abandoning processes that did not prove significant in increasing employee satisfaction.

Again we participated in the employee satisfaction survey so that the results from the previous year can be compared with this year’s results.

The final and very important step was to repeat all the steps and we plan to continue to do so. We value our employees and their feedback because their feedback is an inexhaustible source of ideas and motivation for progress and we strive to be 1% better every day. :)