#PandaPounds: Employee insights review for 2018

Welcome back to our #PandaPounds 2018 employee insights review! Over the past few weeks, we have delved into insights from professionals across some of our ecommerce specialisms.

Looking at sentiments towards work-life balance, overtime & team challenges, you can find the employee insights by specialism below…

• Ecommerce employee insights
• Digital Marketing employee insights
• Web & Data Analytics employee insights
• Digital Design employee insights

There were some fascinating stats from these specialisms, but we thought it was time to compare them – who is happiest with work-life balance? Who does the most overtime? Do people in each of these teams share the same challenges? Let’s find out!

Work-life balance in the ecommerce industry

We asked the respondents of our 2018 ecommerce salary survey & insights report how they felt about their work-life balance. Were they unhappy, happy or not quite sure if they’ve got the balance right?

• Ecommerce management, online trading & merchandising: 65% of respondents who fell into this specialism stated they are happy with their work-life balance, while 25% are not happy. This leaves 10% who weren’t quite sure of their sentiments towards the balance between work and play.
• Digital Marketing: 66% of digital marketing respondents are happy with their work-life balance, while 21% are not, leaving 13% who aren’t sure.
• Web & Data Analytics: What a jump this is…78% of web & data analytics professionals are satisfied with their work-life balance! 13% are unhappy while 9% aren’t sure, so this is the most positive specialism when it comes to work-life balance.
• Digital Design: Not far behind the analysts are our digital design respondents – 74% are happy with their work-life balance, while 16% are unhappy with how their work and life collide. This leaves 10% who aren’t sure about how they feel towards work-life balance.

So, there we have it – web & data analytics professionals seem to have struck the best balance between work and play when we look at what our respondents had to say!

Overtime – how much is being done in ecommerce?

Next up is overtime in the ecommerce industry! Are digital marketers having to put in extra hours? Are digital designers in the office later than everyone else? Let’s have a look… (for this blog, we look at percentages of respondents who work overtime for 2 or more hours a week.)

• Ecommerce management, online trading & merchandising: 64% of our respondents within this specialism work 2+ hours of overtime a week.
• Digital Marketing: 53% of digital marketing respondents are completing two hours or more of overtime each week.
• Web & Data Analytics: 37% of Web & Data Analytics professionals are working overtime for two hours or more each week.
• Digital Design: Only 25% of digital design respondents are doing 2 or more hours of overtime every week…great news! In fact, the majority of these respondents (28%) stated they don’t do any overtime at all!

It looks like our digital design respondents are managing their workloads – is this because of the respondents themselves or is more pressure being put on other departments?

Team challenges for ecommerce companies

For the first time in the history of our ecommerce salary survey, we asked respondents what challenges they face within their teams. Are professionals across ecommerce companies/departments sharing the same challenges? Or, for example, would web analysts be more concerned with one challenge while ecommerce manager’s tackle another?

(Respondents were invited to select more than one team challenge, so totals will not equal 100%)

Customer acquisition is top priority for digital marketers and ecommerce management professionals – 49% (digital marketing) and 64% (ecommerce) selected this as a big challenge for their teams in 2018.

For web analysts however, customer retention was the biggest challenge with 48% choosing this. Customer acquisition wasn’t too far behind, but it’s not surprising to see retention as a high priority for web & data analysts.

Digital designers were not as customer focussed – their priority was all about the team itself. 49% believed staff retention and keeping the team engaged was number one priority. A close second, with 44%, was recruitment and hiring the right people.

Are you surprised these results?

These ecommerce employee insights are sure to spark debate – but what do you think? Let us know in the comments below! There are so many more insights to be found in our full report, so download a free copy today!