This week, Lisa Takeuchi Cullen over at the Time: Work in Progress blog talked to Pat Lencioni, author of the new book Three Signs of a Miserable Job.   Here are the goods:

• The first is anonymity, which is the feeling that employees get when they realize that their manager has little interest in them a human being and that they know little about their lives, their aspirations and their interests.
• The second sign is irrelevance, which takes root when employees cannot see how their job makes a difference in the lives of others. Every employee needs to know that the work they do impacts someone’s life – a customer, a co-worker, even a supervisor – in one way or another.
• The third sign is something called immeasurement, which is the inability of employees to assess for themselves their contribution or success. Employees ho have no means of measuring how well they are doing on a given day or in a given week, must rely on the subjective opinions of others, usually their managers, to gauge their progress or contribution.

According to Lencioni, managers can improve employee satisfaction by taking a genuine interest in their people, reminding them of the impact that their work has on others, and helping them establish creative ways to measure and assess their performance.  As a manager myself, I’ve also noted that it’s very effective to have career development meetings with reports once a quarter.  You can use these meetings as a forum to do all of the above, and also set concrete goals for advancement that are continually re-visited (i.e. not just at the annual performance review).  After all, it’s been shown in study after study that employees who have a strong, trusting relationship with their supervisor and believe they are progressing in their career are happier and more likely to stay with an organization over the long-term.