<How to Measure and Improve the Job Satisfaction of DevOps Engineers/>
According to an analysis by DevOps Research and Assessment (DORA), job satisfaction indicates how well a company is performing. When your employees are engaged, they are more likely to generate business value. Job satisfaction is all about doing work that is meaningful and challenging at the same time and having the support to exercise judgment and skills.
Ways to Measure Job Satisfaction of DevOps Engineers
You might think that your employees are satisfied with their jobs because they never complain, but reality can be deceiving. Here are some ways to measure the job satisfaction of your DevOps engineers.
Conduct Surveys
An employee satisfaction survey helps create a baseline measurement and identify what your DevOps engineers like or dislike. For this purpose, you can use Google Forms, a user-friendly tool that helps you choose a specialized program. Surveys help you assess satisfaction in areas like career progression, stress levels, co-worker relationships, and management expectations. While creating a survey, see to it that the questions included in it are easily understandable. Refrain from adding ambiguous questions. Have a colleague analyze the survey before giving it to your DevOps engineers. Here are some questions to ask:
- Do you enjoy being a member of your team?
- Are you happy with the growth opportunities (Rate from 1 to 10)
- How often do you feel stressed out during work?
Use the Employee Satisfaction Index (ESI)
The ESI is used to identify the extent to which your employees feel satisfied with their job. You can assess it by surveying employees with these questions:
- How close is your workplace to your job?
- How well does your workplace meet your expectations?
- How satisfied are you with your workplace?
ESI = * 100
The end result is a number that lies between 1 and 100, where a higher score indicates greater employee satisfaction. Add your ESI questions to an existing survey, or you can also send them separately. ESI is more useful when used with other in-depth job satisfaction surveys to offer plenty of insights about your DevOps engineers.
How to Improve Job Satisfaction
Here are some ways to improve the job satisfaction of DevOps engineers.
Empower Your Team to Make Choices But Make Sure They Are Not Opting for the Wrong Approach
Offering autonomy to your DevOps engineer works wonders. It allows your team members to test their abilities, increasing their self-belief. Instead of depending on others to automate a plugin or optimize a release cycle, it is essential to offer sufficient space, so your DevOps engineers can do it themselves. Excessive micro-management can cause people to turn off from the task at hand.
On the other hand, there are times as a leader when you see things holistically and realize that the project is going in the wrong direction. These are issues where you feel that your DevOps engineers will have to redo all their work of the last few months, or you feel that their work is not generating any value. Therefore, if your DevOps engineer is doing something wrong, try to look into what they have done. There could be some smart thinking that drove their decision-making, or they may not have understood the objective of the existing project. Even then, don’t think the DevOps engineer necessarily made the wrong decision. Remember, damaging the confidence of people can be detrimental to their performance. In addition, it would make them more dependent on you. This is why you should nurture engineers who are confident in making their own choices.
Remove Roadblocks
At times, DevOps engineers can become obsessed with the technical depth. They fail to understand the bigger picture as they are entangled in resolving low-level technical problems. This can cause DevOps engineers to get blocked, and it can be difficult for them to get unblocked. As a manager, you may find it easy, but it may be tricky for your team members to work with the technical areas of the project. What you can do is that you can provide them the tools, so they can unblock themselves. This way, they will feel motivated and move forward. This is extremely crucial when it comes to managing the DevOps team. Roadblocks can stop them from adding value to the projects and cause long-term damage. Consequently, they might be called for other projects or have to retrace their old steps – ones they implemented months before. All of this impedes job satisfaction.
Provide Learning Challenges and Coaching
One of the toughest things is to help experienced DevOps engineers improve through growth opportunities. Bear in mind that some engineers are not very receptive to learning. This happens when they have a lot on their plate. In many cases, a large part of the engineer’s day is to simply upgrade small parts of code here and there and resolve the occasional bug. This can be boring for certain engineers who are looking to learn more.
You can give your engineers the option to enroll in courses, but it might be inefficient if they can’t apply their newly learned skills. Provide them with real-world challenges. This includes fitting them into other teams where they can perform better, reviewing projects belonging to other teams that lack resources or having your team work on a small side project. Furthermore, consider getting coaches who can grow your team’s non-engineering skills. Some engineers have aspirations to join management in the latter part of their careers. Provide options so that they can hone their skills in these areas.