The 2018/19 Drewberry™ Employee Benefits Survey

Welcome to the first ever Drewberry Employee Benefits & Workplace Satisfaction Survey.

We’ve asked 1,000 workers in small- and medium-sized enterprises a raft of questions to determine how happy they are in their job, including what could be done to improve employee happiness in the workplace. If you want workplace statistics on stress, job satisfaction and sick leave absence in the UK’s huge SME sector, this is the survey for you.

Summary of Our Employee Benefits Statistics…

There is a lot to take from our findings and a lot more SMEs can be doing to support their most important asset, their employees.

The findings show that over 1 in 7 individuals surveyed were unhappy at work. According to the Federation of Small Businesses there are over 16 million people working for SMEs in the UK which would equate to over 2 million people being unhappy in their current role.

The top 3 factors which are contributing to their unhappiness are:

• Lack or recognition for their efforts
• Lack of general support from managers / coworkers
• Lack of career progression / development

With better internal communication and processes most of these issues can be addressed to some extent.

Another cause for concern is finding over 55% of the respondents agreeing or strongly agreeing that they regularly feel stressed. The main two reasons are:

• Money worries
• Work

Again both of which SMEs can help to manage by providing employee financial education and supporting employees with their work-related stress.

Unfortunately by not tackling these issues head on we end up with bigger problems which includes losing unhappy staff who you have spent time and money investing in.

To help stem this tide of potential leavers, we’ve put together a comprehensive stress-busting guide to help SMEs manage stress among their workforce.
Tom Conner
Director

Scarily, even though the majority of workers said they were happy at work, nearly half of SME workers were looking to move jobs in the next 12 months. Having a happy workforce isn’t enough – employers need to work hard to keep top talent.

With 60% of private sector employment being made up of SMEs there are some really fundamental things we can be doing to improve the wellbeing of our employees and make their time at work more rewarding and enjoyable. It will be better for businesses and better for the economy as a whole.

Press Releases

• 55% of SME Workers Regularly Feel Stressed (and It’s Even Worse for the Young)
• Abandoning Ship: Why 48% of SME Workers Are Looking for a New Job
• SME Workers Reveal Employee Benefits Wishlist
• We Are Young, We Are Stressed

Stress Risks Burning Out More Than Half of the SME Workforce

Nearly Half of People Consider Moving Jobs Over Next 12 Months

With a third of the unhappy workers saying this was partly down to a lack of employee benefits, maybe employers need to examine their offerings in this area to see if what they’re providing is conducive to retaining staff in such a tight labour market.

Top Stories From Our 2018 Employee Satisfaction Survey

• 55% of SME Workers Regularly Feel Stressed – Money Worries Top the List
• Top 10 Reasons People Are Unhappy in Their Jobs
• 47.7% of SME workers were looking to move jobs in the next 12 months
• Greener Grass: What Are You Looking for From Your Next Job?
• Employees Reveal Workplace Benefits Wishlist
• The Youngest Workers Face the Most Stress
• Money Causes the Most Stress, Especially for the Young
• Top Reasons People Are Happy in Their Jobs

More Than Half of UK SME Workers Admit to Regularly Feeling Stressed

55% of workers at UK SMEs said they agreed or strongly agreed with the statement ‘I regularly feel stressed’.

• 16.4% of people surveyed said they strongly agreed with the statement ‘I regularly feel stressed’, while 38.5% said they agreed with this statement.
• Just 6.2% strongly disagreed with this assertion.

The high levels of stress seen among the UK’s SME workforce is concerning, especially given that it’s such a big contributing factor to sickness absence. 16% of people surveyed said they’d had to take sick leave in the past 12 months due to stress, equivalent to 2.6 million people in total. Stress generally rose as the business got larger in terms of employee numbers.

Why Are You Stressed?

Money worries top the list, followed closely by work worries.

• Women were more worried about family responsibilities and money than men, but less stressed about work and physical health
• Money stresses out 73.5% of 18-24-year-olds but just 33.3% of 55-64-year-olds. The latter age group was more likely to be worried about their physical health than their younger counterparts
• Regionally, Wales is the most stressed out UK region – here 69.1% of people said they regularly felt stressed

With stress being so prolific, it’s no wonder that more than 2 in 5 SME workers said they would want to see employee benefits that helped improve health and wellbeing.

This can be done with group products such as Group Income Protection, which come with additional benefits such as employee assistance programs (EAPs), which are designed to support workers in and out of the workplace in many aspects of their lives.

Are You Happy at Work?

Even though the vast majority of people said they were happy at work, this wasn’t enough to stop half of SME workers looking for a new job in the next year.

Retaining top talent isn’t always straightforward, so we’ve looked at what makes people happy and unhappy in the workplace to see if there’s anything employers can do to address workers’ issues.

Top Reasons People Are Happy in Their Jobs

The top five reasons people gave for being happy in their jobs were:

• Colleagues (61.8%)
• Challenging and stimulating job role (41%)
• Income and bonuses (36.7%)
• Work / life balance (33.2%)
• Recognition for my efforts (32.7%)

Why Are You Unhappy in Your Job?

The top five reasons people gave for being unhappy in their job were:

• Lack of recognition for your effort (56.7%)
• Lack of options for career progression / development (55.1%)
• Lack of general support from managers / coworkers (52%)
• Underpaid (51.2%)
• Lack of a voice / Are not listened to (34.7%)

Nearly 1 in 3 UK workers said a lack of employee benefits was making them unhappy in their job. The smaller the business, the less likely the company is to offer any employee benefits at all.

Half of UK SME Workers Are Looking for a New Job, So What’s Tempting Them to Move?

With nearly half of UK SME workers looking to move jobs over the next 12 months, it’s important to consider what these workers will be looking for from a new job. The top five most important things individuals considered were:

• Salary (67%)
• Work hours (59.6%)
• Location (56.7%)
• Work environment (43.1%)
• Potential job satisfaction (31.9%)

The youngest workers were most likely to be considering upping sticks over the next 12 months, with 73.5% saying this was the case.

I Am Looking for a New Job Over the Next 12 Months

Workers Reveal Employee Benefits Wishlist

• Flexible hours – 42.3%
• Group Private Medical Insurance – 31.3%
• Work-from-home options – 29.2%
• Group Life Insurance – 29%
• Free snacks – 24.1%

What Employee Benefits Would You Like Your Employer to Offer?

What Employee Benefits Does Your Employer Currently Offer?

The top benefits on offer from UK SMEs were:

• Auto-enrolment workplace pension – 72.1%
• Flexible hours – 24.6%
• Life Insurance – 13.7%
• Work-from-home options – 13%
• Private Medical Insurance – 12.6%

While it’s good news to see that 72.1% of SME workers are being offered a corporate pension, by now auto-enrolment should have extended a pension to every eligible UK worker aged 22–State Pension Age and earning at least £10,000. Others older or younger than this or earning between £6,032 and £10,000 have the right to opt in, also.

Flexible hours and work-from-home options were among the top five benefits offered by UK SMEs. The smaller the business in terms of number of employees, the less likely they were to offer paid benefits, such as business health insurance, and the more likely they were to offer low cost perks like flexible working.

We Are Young, We Are Stressed

While stress among the baseline population of the survey was already high, at 55%, it was even higher among young people.

What’s more, this was starting to impact on young people’s mental health and productivity at work. 18-24-year-olds had needed the most time off sick in the past 12 months to deal with their mental health, with this being the case for 1 in 4 such workers.

Why Are You Stressed?

• Money worries stressed out young people the most, an issue that became less of a stressor as people got older.
• Worries about physical health increased with age, but worries about mental health declined as people aged.

Causes of Absenteeism

• Unsurprisingly, minor illnesses were the major cause of taking time off sick over the past 12 months. This includes coughs, colds, headaches, stomach upsets etc. and accounted for 58.9% of sickness absences
• Mental health and stress were the next most common reasons to be off sick, with 17.7% of SME workers having to take time off with a mental health condition and 16% taking time off due to stress

People were also using their sick pay to care for family members, something that may not be so necessary if more workplaces introduced flexible working. With ageing parents and young children both now needing care, many more people are likely to struggle with this going forward.

More than a third of UK SME workers had taken time off work in the past 12 months due to stress or a mental health condition, almost three times as many who had needed time off for a musculoskeletal condition such as a bad back.

Of course, sick leave was also taken for other reasons, including hangovers and job interviews!

How long have you been off sick?

Pension Findings…

Although the majority of the SME workforce is now being offered a pension, not everyone is clear on how much they’re saving..

A Fifth of UK SME Workers Have No Idea How Much Goes Into Their Pension

How much are you paying into your pension?

How much is your employer paying into your pension?

• 22% of people ‘didn’t know’ how much their employer was paying into their pension
• A further 7.3% thought it was less than 2% of their salary, when 2% is the minimum contribution under auto-enrolment
• 6.3% had opted out of valuable employer contributions entirely
• 21.2% of people had no idea how much of their salary THEY put into their pension
• A further 10.8% thought it was less than 3% when the minimum contribution under auto-enrolment is 3%
• 7.7% had opted out of contributing altogether