Gaming Industry Must Boost Employee’s Job Satisfaction

Feb. 25, 2010 - PRLog -- Chicago, IL – Sports teams greatly rely on teamwork to become a successful and winning team.  Although the sports industry is different from the gaming industry, gaming organizations must consider employee teamwork and relationships to be as important to their organizations as sports teams do to their success.  An employee’s perception of his or her co-worker’s participation and cooperation greatly influences how employees perceive their job.  When employees are surveyed on co-worker satisfaction there are three factors that are measured which include:

•   The people I work with are friendly and helpful.

•   There is good cooperation among the members of my work group.

•   I am satisfied with the work performance of the people with whom I work.

Research by HR Solutions Inc., an International Human Capital Management Consulting Firm located in Chicago, IL, specializing in Employee Engagement and Exit Survey design, implementation, and results, can provide a normative benchmark for the gaming industry.  The normative score for employees who agreed with the statement “the people I work with are friendly and helpful” is 80 percent within the gaming industry.  Although this is one of the highest scoring norms for the gaming industry, among the rest of the industries within the HR Solutions Normative Database, the gaming industry has the lowest score.  The average normative score across the rest of the industries is just over 90 percent which puts gaming over 10 percentage points lower than the industry average.

Given this insightful research, the gaming industry can now take the initiative to improve their employees’ opinions of their co-workers.  Managers at gaming organizations can develop programs to improve the relationships between employees by following a few best practices.  Gaming organizations should consider implementing teambuilding activities.  A comfortable way to encourage employees to participate in teambuilding activities is by planning social gatherings for employees outside of their work environment.  Teambuilding activities and social gatherings allow for employees to put their work concerns to the side for a few hours and to get to know their co-workers in a relaxed atmosphere.

Another best practice to improve employee relations is to create a Standards of Behavior document.  This document outlines the expected behavior of employees which is signed by each new hire during his or her orientation.  When managers hold department meetings they can focus on examples that are in accordance with the Standards of Behavior.  This type of document clearly communicates how employees are expected to work and interact with each other.  The document gives employees the confidence that their organization is concerned about how employees work together.  For organizations that have recurring disagreements between employees, the organization can provide staff members the opportunity to attend conflict resolution classes to aide in how employees settle disagreements amongst themselves.  A benefit to this type of best practice is that employees take ownership for their relationships with their co-workers instead of solely relying on management.

Gaming organizations commonly have a large staff which may prevent many employees from understanding what each other’s responsibilities are within their team.  Managers should strategically pair up team members to allow them to see others’ strengths and develop cooperative relationships.  This type of initiative illustrates each team member’s value to his or her entire team, in turn, improving employees’ perceptions of one another.

“The support and cooperation of teammates is vital in a guest services industry such as gaming because a co-worker can choose to provide the support and coverage for each other, or offer the additional nugget of information which can be the difference between satisfying a customer and wowing them,” shares Murat Philippe, HR Solutions Inc. Principal Consultant.  Employee relationships are of great importance to an organization’s performance.  Similar to sports teams, if gaming organizations do not strive to improve their employees’ views of each other, they will limit their ability to perform at their best.




HR Solutions’ Normative Database is comprised of over 109,000 respondents from 78 organizations of the gaming industry, all surveyed by HR Solutions, Inc.

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About HR Solutions, Inc.: Noted for its comprehensive research and actionable data, HR Solutions, Inc. is an International Human Capital Management Consulting Firm located in Chicago, IL, specializing in Employee Engagement and Exit Survey design, implementation, and results. For more information, please visit www.hrsolutionsinc.com, or call 312-863-6131.