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Contrary to popular belief, employees who have do not have enough work to occupy their time are less satisfied with their jobs than those who are burdened with too much, according to a new study.
The most satisfied employees were those who said they had just the right amount of work, according to research by Sirota Consulting.
They rated their overall satisfaction with their jobs at a 73 on a 100-point scale.
Those with the second highest levels of satisfaction said they had ‘too much work’.
The least satisfied were those who sasaid they had ‘much too little work.’
They rated their job satisfaction at only 32 out of a 100 points.
"Although there is a cost to employers when their employees are over-worked, there may be an even bigger cost due to boredom from being under worked," said Nick Staritt, managing director, Europe, at Sirota Consulting.
"Companies need to consider employees’ expectations for having the proper amount of work in order to achieve the best productivity, morale and employee retention,” he said.
The study included more than 800,000 employees at 61 organisations worldwide.
It found that employees’ satisfaction with their job as it relates to their workload was:
- Workload is ‘about right’ – overall rating of 73 out of 100
- Too much work – 57 out of 100
- Too little work – 49 out of 100
- Much too much work – 42 out of 100
- Much too little work – 32 out of 100
