Happiness in the workplace is determined by employees’ satisfaction with their work environment – and small to medium-sized businesses (SMBs) tend to have much happier employees than large companies. That’s according to a new report by Comparably, a leading job-monitoring website.

The report surveyed some 45,000 U.S. companies and found that employees at SMBs (firms with fewer than 500 people) had an average happiness score of 93/100, while the happiest employees at large companies (more than 500 employees) had an average happiness score of only 88/100.

When asked about employee satisfaction, SMB respondents ranked issues such as work environment and company attitude higher than employees from large companies.

The Comparably survey found that the list of large companies with the happiest workers was topped by HubSpot, Netflix, Google and Delta Airlines, while BranchMetrics of Redwood City, California had the happiest employees in the SMB category.

Decades of research have shown that making your staff happy also leads to a more productive workplace. A range of  experiments conducted by the University of Warwick’s Department of Economics found that greater happiness in the workplace encourages staff to put in more effort and can increase their productivity by as much as 12%.

By listening to employees and acting on their needs, the study found, companies can help make their workers happier, more productive and more likely to stay with the business for the long haul.

“Experimental laboratory studies and real-world evidence both validate gains to companies from paying attention to employees’ well-being,” said Dr Eugenio Proto of the University of Warwick. “Happiness seems to motivate greater effort, increasing output without affecting its quality and thus boosting productivity.”

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