What employers need to know

A new report from FDS International is said to answer some vital questions for all employers.

The aim of the report is said to be about presenting "a more ‘balanced’ discussion of the important issues behind worker satisfaction and help employers in their quest to find and retain the best employees."

The questions the report claims to ask include:

– Which aspects of employees’ working lives are most important
for overall job satisfaction?
- How important is satisfaction with pay?
- How important is the working environment?
- And how important is work-life balance?

The results are quite extensive and not generally summarised in the report - there are four sections and four summaries as well as extensive comparison between workers from all over the world.

For more details download What workers want: A Worldwide Study of Attitudes to Work and Work-Life Balance here.

Happy at work hot and low spots

A survey by Badenoch & Clark in The Guardian the other day looked at worker satisfaction/dissatisfaction.

Some brief highlights from "The Happiness at Work" survey revealed:

- Almost one in four office workers are unhappy with their job
- Men working in IT and telecoms most likely to be disenchanted
- More men said they were unhappy at work than women
- The happiest worker in the UK is a female lawyer who drives to work in Bristol and has a female boss.

The survey also looked at which cities had the happiest and least happiest workers.

Workers who say they are happy in their jobs, by city:

Bristol 59%
London 56%
Birmingham 52%
Glasgow 51%
Edinburgh 48%
Cardiff 47%
Norwich 46%
Leeds 46%
Liverpool 43%
Newcastle 41%
Southampton 41%
Manchester 37%

For more details see Quarter of UK office staff 'unhappy' by Hilary Osborne.