The report Well-being pays off – a study on the value of job satisfaction documents that employees’ job satisfaction plays a significant role in whether they choose to stay in their current job or look for a new one.
Facts about the report
Rapporten “Well-being pays off – a study on the value of job satisfaction”, examines three main themes:
- What is the monetary value of job satisfaction for Danish employees?
- What is the connection between job satisfaction and employers’ ability to retain their employees?
- What is the connection between job satisfaction and good health?
We are covering these three themes in a series of blog posts. This is blog post number two out of three.
Low job enthusiasm drives employees to seek other opportunities
The study, conducted by the think tank Kraka and the Job Satisfaction Knowledge Centre, clearly shows that employees who experience high job satisfaction are less likely to look for a new job.
Let’s look at an example that illustrates the point. Martin and Lotte work in different companies. They are both highly specialized and have been in their positions for a few years. Martin is thriving at his workplace and has a job satisfaction score of 80 out of 100. He’s not considering looking for another job at all.
Lotte, on the other hand, has started looking for a new job. Her salary is actually fine, but she often feels down when she comes home from work. She can’t quite put her finger on it, but it has something to do with the workplace culture. Lotte takes a GAIS survey. Her job satisfaction score is 64 out of 100.
The calculations behind the report show that if Lotte’s manager addresses the issues affecting her well-being and her job satisfaction increases by 10 points, the likelihood of her continuing to search for another job drops by 9 percentage points.
The figure below shows how much lower job satisfaction and the scores on the seven factors are among those who have searched for another job in the past six months compared to those who haven’t.
Work on job satisfaction – but how?
There are incredibly good reasons to work purposefully with job satisfaction if a company wants to retain its talented employees. It’s about building, and maintaining, a strong culture of well-being. The challenge is how? How do you make something as intangible as well-being concrete – and how do you make it a consistent and present part of everyday work life?
Establish and maintain a focus on well-being
GAIS, as a well-being platform, can help with both challenges. GAIS supports organizations in establishing a focus on workplace well-being. GAIS’ declared goal of accessibility makes it both easy and free to get started with well-being efforts. At the same time, GAIS helps maintain a steady rhythm, so that work on well-being isn’t a sporadic ad hoc initiative, but a part of everyday life and an integrated part of the culture.
Gain valuable Insights into well-being
Try the GAIS well-being survey for free
In just a few simple steps, you can start collecting important insights into the well-being and work environment at your workplace.
It’s free to create a profile and launch a small-scale well-being survey in GAIS.
Focus on the right things – and retain your employees
GAIS can also help prioritize initiatives, so that efforts are focused in the right areas rather than shooting in the dark. Calculations behind the report Well-being pays off show that employees are especially likely to start looking for another job when there are shortcomings in the areas of mastery, meaning, and leadership. While this is true on average, the key factors can of course vary from company to company. GAIS can help identify which factors are crucial in a specific organization – and in doing so, contribute to preventing valuable employees from seeking opportunities elsewhere.
The report: “Well-being pays off – a study on the value of job satisfaction” can be downloaded in full here.
Facts about the study behind the report
- The study was conducted among 4,500 Danish employees in 2019.
- The study is a collaboration between the think tank Kraka, Krifa’s Job Satisfaction Knowledge Centre, and Statistics Denmark.
- Participants were asked whether they had looked for another job within the past six months. 32.9% had searched for a new job. On average, these individuals had a work motivation score that was 16 points lower (on a 100-point scale) than those who had not looked for a new job.
- A regression analysis was conducted on job searching, examining the relationship between levels of work motivation and the seven factors influencing the likelihood of changing jobs.
