Happiness in the workplace - what our Salary Survey has to say

As you may or may not be aware already, we have recently released our 2022 eCommerce salary survey & insights report, focusing on topics ranging from salary increases to happiness in the eCommerce industry, with some other exciting new additions for this year!

Happiness and well-being are important topics that we were keen to capture this year due to the effects the pandemic has had on employee mental health and the increase in home and remote working compared to pre COVID-19.

We also wanted to support Mental Health Awareness Week and shed some light on what can affect happiness in the workplace by showcasing our results.

This is what we found…

We are pleased to see that there has been an improvement in the employee happiness score from the 2021 results. We asked our respondents to rate their happiness in their current role on a scale of one to 100, and found that the average number is 67/100, up from 63/100 in 2021.

We got this result from an accumulation of questions, including how much overtime our respondents undertake on a regular basis. The highest majority of people said that they usually work 2-3 hours of extra overtime per week, which seems like a fair number. 51% of people said that they don’t mind doing overtime, with 17% saying they are happy to do it, but 32% are unhappy to do overtime.

Interestingly we have seen a decrease in those who are happy to do overtime from 2021, and it appears that more people are prioritising a better work life balance and reducing their extra workload.

How happiness is monitored

We also looked into what employers could do to improve happiness in the eCommerce industry.

Priorities have changed amongst both employers and employees due to the shift in working habits. Our top five important factors include contributory pension at the very top with a whopping 71% of people in agreement, followed closely by the provision of company tech, work from home days, increase in holiday days and private medical insurance. We weren’t surprised to see ‘work from home days’ in the top five this year as hybrid working has been on the rise during 2022, and it is interesting to see that working professionals of all ages care dearly about their pension schemes.

Is company culture important in the eCommerce industry?

When asked, “what makes a good company culture?”, the highest factor was ‘honesty and transparency’, whilst 71% of respondents said that company culture is a priority in their companies. It seems like the sense of community, teamwork and even social interaction is still important to most, which makes us wonder how those working remotely manage to integrate this into their working lives.

Finally, the opportunity to progress is the number one priority for those working in the eCommerce and Digital industries, followed closely by home-working opportunities. It doesn’t surprise us that career progression remains important, however it was shocking to see that ‘Salary’ had a significant decrease from last year, from 8.8/10 in 2021, to 5.2/10 in 2022. As business owners, it is important to follow and consider new salary expectations, but also consider change in attitudes as well.

If you would like to get your paws on the in-depth copy of our 2022 annual salary survey report, you can easily download it by clicking the link below!