The Three Things That Bother Employees Most About Their Jobs: Poll

What you think might be bothering your employees—or are the most important for retaining or recruiting them—may not be in sync with their frustrations or priorities and could create a crisis at your company or organization. That’s why business leaders should keep in mind the results of a new poll that was released today by Paro, an AI-powered finance and accounting platform.

Survey respondents said the things that bother them the most about their current jobs are:

• Stress (35%)
• Feeling unappreciated (28%)
• Too much bureaucracy (22%)

Younger respondents cited being unexcited by their work, with 26% of people ages 18-34 saying they feel bored completing the same tasks every day.

Full-time and self-employed knowledge workers said that work-life balance is more important to them than compensation. Balance beat out money 39%to 28%. Only 13% said opportunities for professional growth were most important to them.

Paula Conway, founder and president of Astonish Media Group, observed that, “You will always have someone who values money over all else, but most employees today want hard stops at the end of a workday, work-free weekends, and longer vacation time to spend with their families. 

“We have had many interviewees ask for unlimited vacation based on performance and hard stops to their workday at 5 PM. I've honestly never seen anything like this in my 22 years owning [this] business. These are tough asks for a media company, as we are beholden to the media, so we struggle with this constantly. Many won’t even respond to texts after hours, which confounds me, especially in this line of work,” she said.

The Lure

The study found that knowledge workers prioritized jobs that offer both flexibility and autonomy in 2022, with many choosing to explore freelance life.

• Nearly one in five (17%) knowledge workers who are not currently freelancing are considering joining the freelance economy in 2022.
• They said they are attracted to the freelance life because of the opportunity to be their own boss (79%), schedule flexibility (76%) and the ability to build their own business (60%).

The Frustrations

But freelance work comes with its own set of frustrations.

Nearly one-third (31%) of the survey respondents were working as freelancers. When asked about the most challenging aspects of their jobs, they cited:

• Managing their own finances (35%)
• Adapting to changes outside of their control (35%)
• Being the final decision maker (30%)
• Time management (23%)
• Acquiring customers (22%) 
  

Embrace New Ways

Anita Samojednik, CEO of Paro, said that, “My advice to business leaders is to embrace the ‘new ways of working,’, including hiring in non-traditional ways such as from within the freelance economy, and support workers in creating the lives they want to live, both in and outside of work.’’

Empathize

Sarah Johnson is vice president of enterprise surveys and analytics at Perceptyx. She said that ‘‘…the pandemic experience has reminded us that this is a time for empathy. If organizations want to understand employee happiness, then let’s ask them. Let’s have a conversation about what they need, and how the organization can support their needs. Organizations need to understand, more than ever, how employees are truly feeling. Employees want to know their managers are paying attention.

Listen

“Above all, they want to know that their employer is listening. You can't get that from reviewing statistics. If they want to show they care, employers need to start a conversation to understand what their employees' needs are, and how they can support them to be both productive and happy,’’ Johnson recommended.

Methodology

The Paro poll, with data collection by Ipsos, was conducted between December 20 and 28, 2021. A starting sample of roughly 2,042 adults age 18+ from the continental U.S., Alaska, and Hawaii was interviewed online in English. A sample of 962 knowledge workers completed the rest of the survey, including 299 freelance workers.

To qualify for the survey, respondents had to be knowledge workers, such as programmers, physicians, pharmacists, architects, engineers, scientists, design thinkers, public accountants, lawyers, editors, and academics, whose job is to "think for a living" versus those who are paid to perform manual tasks.

Margin Of Error

The precision of Ipsos online polls is measured using a credibility interval. This poll has a credibility interval of plus or minus 3.6% for all knowledge workers, and plus or minus 6.5% for freelance knowledge workers.