Employee Happiness Research
How to Improve Company Culture & Retain Employees

What makes employees feel good about coming to work?

We collaborated with the Industrial-Organizational Psychology department at Colorado State University to answer the question, “What makes employees feel good about coming to work and how should it be measured?”

The answers we arrived on, the 8 Factors below that help us measure workplace culture.

The 8 Factors We Measure:

When we evaluate the culture at an organization, we work to understand these 8 factors that we know, based on research, how happy employees truly feel.

  1. Supervisor – How do employees perceive their supervisor/boss?
  2. Coworkers – How do employees perceive their coworkers?
  3. Meaning/Job Fit – Do employees feel the work they do in their job is meaningful and worthwhile?
  4. Autonomy – Do employees feel satisfied with the level of decision-making authority they have in their work?
  5. Impact – Do employees feel the work they do has an important role in the organization?
  6. Organizational Support – Do employees feel the organization values, supports, and communicates appropriately with employees?
  7. Organizational Fit – Do employees feel connected to the organization and that the organization is a good match for them?
  8. Work-Family Climate – Do employees feel the organization is accommodating of family needs and encouraging of balance between work and family life?

But what about the money stuff?

Upon completion of the research, this one surprised us quite a bit.

Compensation, perks and benefits did not make it into the the top critical factors of having employees feel good about coming to work.

More on the research as defined by Colorado State University

Dr. Zinta Byrne, of Colorado State University, was contacted by Kris Boesch to construct and validate a measure designed to assess the extent to which employees feel good about coming to work. Four doctoral students, Paige Gardner, Christa Palmer, Stefanie Putter, and Natalie Wolfson, conducted the work under Dr. Byrne’s supervision.

The Employee Organizational Perceptions (EOP) survey was constructed based on a thorough review of the academic research literature, qualitative and quantitative pilot testing, and a final round of validation in which the EOP survey was administered to approximately 1000 employees across a multitude of organizations of various sizes and industries. After the final round of data collection, statistical analyses were conducted to eliminate redundant items or items that were not essential to capturing employees’ organizational perceptions.

The final EOP survey consists of 52 items and 8 subscales. A series of statistical analyses supported the validity of the internal structure of the survey and the connections between EOP scores and critical organizational outcomes (e.g., employee turnover intentions and burnout). The survey is designed and validated to be used as a single survey with scale scores on eight dimensions. All dimensions are required to produce a valid certification score.

According to the CSU research team, there is substantial, valid evidence to support the use of the EOP survey as the Choose People certification tool.

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