Judging from the results of a Jobstreet survey, you’d imagine that Singaporeans are a scowling, sullen bunch as they trudge to and fro their workplaces everyday, eternally scurrying in the rat race.
Where job happiness is concerned, Singapore ranks the lowest among six other neighbouring countries, according to the poll conducted by Southeast Asia’s biggest job portal. Even we had no idea that Singaporeans were so morose — the city-state scored the lowest ratings in job happiness, job optimism in addition to being the most pessimistic as well.
On the other end of the spectrum, the Philippines rank highest in happiness, with Indonesia coming second and Thailand in third.
Conducted in June this year with a total of 67,764 participants from seven countries, the survey collated data from a variety of respondents including fresh graduates to the higher ups in managerial positions and the top brass.
In a testament to how all our joy and positivity erodes over time, fresh graduates are found to be the happiest employees in the Singapore workforce, scoring 5.3 on a 10-point scale. Corporate senior executives however fared lower — a miserable average of 4.4.
Jobstreet highlighted elements such as convenient work locations, having good colleagues and company reputation as the key factors affecting happiness. The dissatisfaction among workers here stem from a lack of training and career development, as well as poor leadership.
“Dissatisfaction with employee-development efforts usually stem from employees feeling that they are not getting much of what they value highly, such as the ability to grow in their jobs,” said Chook Yuh Yng, country manager of JobStreet.com Singapore.
How to be happy though? Singaporean respondents recommend getting a new job, desire higher salaries and receiving recognition from the company to feel fulfilled and increase job happiness.
Instead of being another cog in the machine, folks can also consider jobs in the sciences, hotels and restaurants as well as admin/human resources sectors — those are the industries found with the happiest personnel in Singapore.
