Employees love transparency, care more about co-workers than managers and don’t exactly know what their company’s mission is.
These are some of the findings from TINYpulse’s robust new study that provides an interesting look into employee happiness — or lack thereof.
It’s been one year since TINYpulse, which helps leaders get a pulse on how their employees are feeling, was founded. In that time, loads of data has come through via weekly surveys that ask customers to rate how they’re feeling in the workplace.
The Seattle startup analyzed those numbers and today unveiled the study, titled “7 Vital Trends Disrupting Today’s Workplace.” The company analyzed over 40,000 anonymous survey responses from over 300 organizations between September 1, 2012 and November 15, 2013.
Among the most interesting findings are those relating to what makes employees happy. Management transparency was the most important factor there, with a 0.94 correlation coefficient with employee happiness.
Also, happiness level seems to depend more on colleagues than bosses. Correlation between happiness and rating of co-workers was 23 percent higher than between happiness and rating of a direct supervisor.
“This shows that who you work with is becoming more important than who you work for,” TINYpulse founder David Niu said in a press release. “We often think of employee happiness and satisfaction as being manager-driven, but now as the workplace becomes more cross-matrixed, collaborative, and ‘bottom-up,’ the importance of co-worker relationships continues to grow.”
Another data point: Only 42 percent of employees know their organization’s vision, mission and value — an “alarmingly low number,” TINYpulse said.
Niu, who previously founded NetConversions and BuddyTV, started TINYpulse last year after going on a “careercation” with this family around the world.
You can see the full study here.
