Global Connections

On a scale of 1 to 10 for workplace satisfaction, the KL Taipan office is probably an eight and a half.

How did we arrive at that conclusion? In August 2010, Asia Media Monitors launched the Media Influencers Survey (MIS), which considers perceptions of PR practitioners and media professionals on the media landscape and their media preferences. But our survey capability is not limited to only media influencers, as in the case of this workplace survey, geared at surveying staff perceptions of the Kuala Lumpur (KL) Taipan office.

The response rate was a remarkable 53% (85 out of 160 employees) considering there were no rewards offered. I simply asked for my colleagues’ support in completing the survey and sent in two e-mail reminders following the initial appeal for respondents.

Here are some key findings:

• 84.7% said they enjoyed working at Asia Media Monitors.
• 84.7% said they were able to work in a relaxed manner.
• 83.5% felt free to express and receive care from others while at work.
• 83.1% felt the workplace allowed them to make work-related suggestions.
• 76.2% had colleagues they considered friends outside of work.

Another interesting finding was that 90.6% of staff considered the ability to surf the internet and visit social media websites during breaks, significant in enhancing their overall work experience at Asia Media Monitors. This plainly suggests that our workplace satisfaction is closely connected to freedom of the net at the office.

Here’s a breakdown of websites and applications frequently used during breaks at work:

Besides access to the internet for individual browsing and social purposes, staff respondents were generally more satisfied than unsatisfied with the environment at the office. On a satisfaction scale of ‘Very Satisfied’, ‘Somewhat Satisfied’, ‘Neither Satisfied nor Dissatisfied’, ‘Somewhat Dissatisfied’ and ‘Very Dissatisfied’, the majority of respondents were:

• Very satisfied with the lighting (47.6%)
• Very satisfied with the office décor such as wall colours and furniture (37.6%)
• Divided between very satisfied and somewhat satisfied with the beverage options (24.7% each)
• Somewhat satisfied with the office ventilation (40.5%)
• Somewhat satisfied with the temperature (41.2%)
• Somewhat satisfied with the overall cleanliness (39.5%)

The office pantry areas turned out to be a popular social area during meal times. Of the 85 respondents, 27.1% had meals at the pantry or cafeteria five days a week while the majority of respondents (50.6%) had meals at the pantry once or twice a week.

Considering the fact that there are food courts, hawker stalls, mamak places (popular and cheap local food hangouts), cafés and restaurants surrounding the office and offer food at various price levels, eating in may suggest three possibilities - firstly, that packing food from home is commonplace at the KL office; second, that staff choose the office over the eateries for atmosphere (understandably – lunch hour can get very noisy as eating out is the primary social activity in the country, not to mention the office may be more appealing than dining al fresco in scorching heat); and third and most likely, that among the food choices available, the majority prefers cheaper food options, which means that we may get our food from stalls where seating areas are not available or if seating is in fact available, the environment is not ideal.

When we eat in on Level 15, the food and company is probably more interesting seeing as 87.1% of respondents said they never played the games provided in the Level 15 cafeteria. The games currently available for staff at the Level 15 cafeteria are Boggle and UNO Stacko (pic).

Games provided for staff at the Level 15 cafeteria at the Taipan office

Similarly, the KL Learning Library was under-used. 85.7% of responding staff had never borrowed books from the learning library although the reasons for this varied. 36.9% said they knew about its existence but did not know how to go about borrowing books from the library; 33.3% admitted they knew about it but were uninterested while 15.5% did not know of its existence.

 
Screen grab of the Learning Library site on The Source

Titles from the KL Learning Library can be booked online on the Source, the internal website for Media Monitors staff, and collected at the reception for a loan of 4 weeks at a time, at no charge. The internal site for the Learning Library can be accessed at Media Monitors offices here (this link can only be viewed from within Media Monitors).

Top hits for the KL Taipan office were definitely access to the internet and social media during breaks, the pantry areas – this being Malaysia, where food is serious business - and perhaps most telling, professed enjoyment and comfort with working at Asia Media Monitors.

Many thanks to all who participated in the survey!

Image provided by lululemon athletica on Flickr under CC Attributions Licensing