TINYpulse surveyed 1,001 workers in the health care field to measure their job satisfaction in a variety of metrics, and compared their findings to workers in other industries. The main themes centered on overall happiness, administration issues, distrust of the organization and communication.

On a scale of one to ten, health care workers scored a 7.49, a level of workplace happiness similar to other industries. However, health care workers had a work-life balance below the other industries’ ratings, a 5.87 compared to a 7.02 – a 16 percent difference.

Despite over 50 percent of respondents attending to at least 21 patients per week, only 31 percent of the employees felt strongly valued.
It is easy to see why employees in this industry would be happy, given how important their work is and how many lives they touch, says TINYpulse, but they are also burning out and it does patients no good if these happy employees are driven out of their jobs by negative dynamics.

An organization’s ability to communicate, be transparent, and understand customer needs is essential, TINYpulse added. But health care employees gave their company’s communication rating a 6.17 out of 10.

When asked about difficulties with administration, health care workers had an average rating of 5.42 out of ten. However, when analyzed with those respondents who did give high responses, the company saw some correlations. Employees who reported being blocked by management were more likely to be burnt out and were 35 percent more likely to leave their job for a 10 percent raise.

Even with burnout and administrative problems, the respondents thought, when it came to job performance, they did well. For their own performance, the average was 8.47 and for how well they served the patients at their workplace, the average was 8.53.

The employees were 17 percent less likely than other industries to say that they would become a customer of their employer, which is troubling, TINYpulse believes, because despite feeling positive about their efforts and level of service to patients, they would not want to be patients at the facility themselves.

One potential factor for this problem could be company leadership, according to the survey, because health care employees rated a 6.64 on how in-touch their organization was with customers’ needs. Those who rated their company’s communication low also reported lower levels of happiness, lower levels of feeling valued, and higher levels of burnout.

TINYpulse proposes to close the communication gap between workers and company by having companies acknowledge and appreciate their workers’ job efforts. Other proposed solutions include bridging the gap between individual performance and organizational effectiveness by removing administrative roadblocks, mitigating attrition factors, and lessening the burnout felt by employees.

The full report can be read here.

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