About our benchmark variables

Country

Country effects in happiness are widely reported in academic literature. Our own analysis of happiness at work across eight countries revealed differences. For example, employees in the USA report feeling slightly happier than employees in Canada. Organizational pride was the number one driver of happiness in both countries.

Sector

The happiness of employees does vary by sector. For example, marketing and creative is the happiest field, followed by human resources and legal sectors. The drivers of happiness are also ranked differently according to sector. For example Organizational pride is number one for employees working in financial services, administrative, technology and human resources, whereas feeling appreciated is the biggest driver of happiness in the accounting sector. To take account of any country effects, Friday uses the country you have selected to calculate the sector benchmark for your results.

Company Size

The size of companies influences how happy employees are. The general rule is that smallness is good for happiness, but country effects are real. For example, in the US the happiest company size has fewer than 10 employees, but employees in Germany are just as happy in organizations over 1,000 employees as they are in organizations of less than ten. To take account of country effects, Friday uses the country you have selected to calculate the company size benchmark for your results.

Learn more:

• Selecting your benchmarks
• How to use your benchmark data
• How the benchmarks were calculated