Last summer, SAP and Oxford Economics conducted a study across 2,872 employees in 27 countries to find out what the future workforce wants. The responses were spread with about 40% being high performers, 40% average, and about 20% below average.
As you would expect, high performers as compared to low performers are more satisfied with their jobs and less likely to leave their jobs in the next six months. But mind that one in five high performers are likely to leave in the next six months (versus one in four of employees overall who are likely to leave in the near term), and less than half are satisfied with their jobs. High performers may not be getting what they need from their managers.
The figure below illustrates what employees value overall in their workplace.
The most important contributor to job satisfaction for all employees was base pay, followed by bonus pay. High performers cared significantly more about both of these factors than average or low performers.
A second contributing factor to job satisfaction was feedback: How often do managers sit down with employees to discuss their performance? Chances are, not enough. Fifty percent of high performers say they expect at least a monthly sit down with their managers, but only 53% say their manager delivers on their feedback expectations.
High performers also showed a stronger tendency to direct their own learning, which may be one of the ways to predict who will be a high performer.
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