Small businesses have the happiest employees

The UK’s small businesses have the happiest employees, according to research from business social networking website LinkedIn.

The research, which surveyed 10,000 professionals, found that businesses with ten or fewer employees had the highest levels of job satisfaction.

Fulfilled

The survey showed that 45 per cent of employees working at companies with between two and nine employees feel fulfilled in their job, higher than the national average of 40 per cent, which decreased to 33 per cent in larger companies with 5,000 or more employees.

Over 50 per cent of workers said that relationships with colleagues was one of the main factors that contributed towards feeling fulfilled, followed by doing work that creates a positive impact at 44 per cent and having a better work-life balance at 38 per cent.

The survey also found that UK workers are more concerned about their happiness than how much they are earning, with over half saying that they would be prepared to take a pay cut in order to be fulfilled in their job.

Loyal

The research also looked at how loyal UK workers are to their job and found that the average worker plans to stay in their current job for 5.7 years. This is a year less than the average globally and the lowest out of all eight countries that participated in the survey.

UK workers aged 45 to 54 were found to be the most loyal, planning to stay an average of 6.9 years in their current job, whilst 16 to 24-year-olds are expected to stay 4.7 years.