By Jake Majerovic, Managing Director of Thinkless
Most of us can agree that successful companies are customer-centred. Companies like Uber, Spotify and Netflix have built their entire existence around what customers need – when they want it. They know the value of customer experience, how to solve their pain points, and how to turn feedback into value. While a customer focus is an ever-evolving imperative, the next wave of business success isn’t going to just be about the customer – it’s about our own people.
Being “workforce-centred” not only means understanding what truly matters to your people — it means having the traceability and proof that you’re doing better business, by being a better business. As it stands, a lot of companies are missing the mark. Instead of looking deeper, leaders and managers generally stop at the usual metrics like employee satisfaction scores, which show a narrow (and often biassed) view of reality. What’s often more telling (and accountable) is dissatisfaction.
When your workforce is dissatisfied, it’s usually because of a systemic issue that could, and should, be fixed before it takes a toll on morale, wellbeing, productivity, and ultimately your balance sheet. What most organisations don’t realise, is that dissatisfaction indicators are measurable, and when left unmanaged, can have financial impacts on productivity, absenteeism and turnover.
The Hidden Costs of Workforce Dissatisfaction
As we all know, perception is reality. According to a newly released report by SafetyCulture, 76% of Australian workers are dissatisfied with aspects of their jobs, with many citing unrealistic work expectations (37%), slow responses to resolving issues (36%) and pressure to cut corners for efficiency or cost savings (33%). Worse still, many workers feel like their dissatisfaction is going unheard and unnoticed.
If your workforce perceives, rightly or wrongly, that their needs aren’t being met by leaders or managers, they tend to feel that the organisation doesn’t care. Drawing on results from SafetyCulture’s report, whether it’s slow responses from management, unreasonable expectations, a lack of resources or conflicting priorities, when employees feel unheard or that their concerns are ignored, it impacts their morale, motivation and ultimately their engagement and performance. The impact to culture is material, difficult to reverse and can have adverse effects on customers and in turn shareholders. It’s time to link dissatisfaction indicators to the balance sheet.
So, what’s the cost? Well, research suggests dissatisfied Australian workers cost the economy AUD $15.8 billion every year. That’s by no means, small change. If your business could measure its share of this dissatisfaction, you might be in for a wake-up call. Thankfully, with the right tools and expertise it is now possible to quantify financial impacts, and in doing so, turn workforce dissatisfaction from a hidden liability into a powerful set of measurable indicators.
Beyond Satisfaction Metrics
Workforce metrics have traditionally focused on satisfaction—understandably, because it’s more comfortable to know what’s working well, and it’s an easier story to spin. But satisfaction is only part of the picture. When you measure dissatisfiers (as dissatisfaction indicators) and embed them into your BAU operating model, you are putting the ‘prove’ in ‘continuous improvement’.
As customer-centred organisations do with NPS (Net Promoter Score) detractors, workforce-centred organisations apply the same levels of rigour on workforce dissatisfiers. When you know what’s dissatisfying your workforce, you not only know what improvements to invest in, you can be confident in forecasting the returns on those investments. Treating workforce dissatisfaction as valuable feedback shifts the culture from avoiding problems to internal impact investing. It’s no longer good enough to hide or ignore negative sentiments —it’s about embracing them as indicators of value.
Putting Dissatisfaction on the Balance Sheet
One of the biggest challenges organisations face is figuring out how workforce dissatisfaction impacts the bottom line. The solution? Business leaders need to find ways to link workforce health directly to their balance sheet.
Although it’s not as black and white as looking at sales figures, with the right financial expertise and tools, it is not only achievable – it’s imperative. By looking at dissatisfaction indicators like “tools being unfit for purpose”, organisations can not only measure the financial impact internally, they can also compare against industry trends. Take those presented in the SafetyCulture report, where 31% of workers surveyed were dissatisfied by tools being unfit for purpose. How does your organisation fare against the dissatisfaction results in this report? When combined with other dissatisfaction indicators, the clues on what improvements to invest in, and why, become evident.
Transforming Workforce Dissatisfaction Into Opportunity
Traditionally, leaders may have seen dissatisfaction as a negative metric to minimise or, worse, ignore. Instead there needs to be an organisational culture shift that treats workforce dissatisfaction indicators as drivers to invest in, not negatives to ignore or avoid.
When leaders address dissatisfaction constructively, they’re not just fixing individual complaints; they’re strengthening the overall culture and performance of their organisation. Turning dissatisfaction into a positive force doesn’t mean “fixing” everything all at once. It’s about tackling core issues that have the most impact and listening openly to the workforce. Leaders who engage with these dissatisfiers are the ones who build trust and foster a culture of growth and resilience. And when employees see this commitment, engagement and loyalty go hand-in-hand with productivity and performance.
The Role of Finance in Workforce Leadership
For this approach to work, it can’t just sit with HR. Finance leaders need to be intimately involved to connect the dots between workforce metrics and financial outcomes. Your CFO and finance teams need to measure the financial impact of your workforce dissatisfaction, and this starts with a ledger of dissatisfaction indicators.
By treating dissatisfaction as debt, appropriate financial strategies can be implemented to reduce, or ideally eliminate, establishing a strong basis for impact measurement. With the right financial expertise and tools, this brings systemic benefits across the organisation both inside and out. From the board, through executive leadership to managers, your workforce, customers and shareholders — dissatisfaction goes from a conceptual sentiment, to black and white results.
The Bottom Line
Prioritising a workforce-centred approach is more than good leadership; it’s essential for staying commercially relevant, responsible and resilient. At Thinkless, we offer insights that align workforce wellbeing with commercial objectives—transforming dissatisfaction into measurable value. It’s time to know what financial impacts workforce dissatisfaction has on your balance sheet. If dissatisfied Aussie workers cause AUD $15.8bn loss yearly, what’s your company’s share of that?
