
Of the two human motivators, avoiding pain or gaining pleasure, we pay attention to the pain first. So from a management perspective, we need to focus on eliminating the pain points before we focus on job satisfaction opportunities. Not everyone can be perfectly suited for their jobs but if you work on eliminating the reasons for people to be dissatisfied and quit, sometimes they can find ways to develop some part of their lives and professional skills on their own. However, if people love what they do, are fascinated with it and well suited for it, they are still looking for the best company policies to work under since they can do it anywhere and if your company policies cause pain you can't keep them from leaving. What really matters most whether workers get to do what they love or not is if the work is in an environment of support, fairness and opportunity.
So, how do you know if your company policies are not working? Honest feedback can be hard to get from workers. Depending on your culture and management style, employees may be reluctant to express the negative for fear of some form of reprisal. If we are really honest with ourselves most of us would have to admit that we don't always like to hear negative things about procedures and policies we helped create. However, on that same score when we include workers in the design and or tweaking of company policy it makes the buy in, much stronger. (We like to feel our voice is heard before we will listen and comply.) The best policy applies to everyone, it is pretty hard for workers to believe in fairness when they have to swallow a policy that excludes senior management or other select groups. Remember how distasteful the affordable care act was to much of the population when the senate and congress excluded themselves from the mandate. And one last thing, policy shouldn’t have to be set in stone, there are always better ways for doing things and “that is the way we’ve always done it” isn’t an excuse for not changing.