Longing to feel more engaged, happy and satisfied with your work? Consider applying for a job at LinkedIn. We uncovered some stats that seem to indicate that they’ve created an almost ideal workplace.
PayScale’s recently-released 2012 Top Tech Employer Comparison has some fascinating data showcasing how the biggest players in the tech world lure the industry’s best and brightest to play for their team. One of the most surprising stats we found was LinkedIn dominating several of the categories we compared, especially their reported 100 percent job satisfaction rate. What’s the secret ingredient to LinkedIn’s success when it comes to keeping their employees happy?
Every LinkedIn employee who completed PayScale's survey and answered the question about job satisfaction reported being extremely or highly satisfied at work. With roughly 2,500 employees, LinkedIn is much smaller than some of the other heavy hitters we compare them to- their size is a far cry from a behemoth like Microsoft, with over 90,000 employees worldwide. Usually, fewer employees means fewer resources, but in this case, their smaller number may make it easier to keep their sought-after talent satisfied.
How Does LinkedIn Do It?
Combing through the data in our Top Tech Employer Comparison provides some insight into LinkedIn’s secret. While they only rank 13th for starting pay, at $66,100 per year, they are in fourth place for mid-career pay (employees who have 10 years of experience). Typical earnings are a whopping $137,000 per year mid-career. That climb in pay seems to indicate that LinkedIn provides motivated techies fertile grounds for career development and growth.
Of course, it’s not all about money. Sixty-nine percent of LinkedIn employees reported feeling extremely or highly stressed at work, but that number seems to be balanced out by high marks for job schedule flexibility (92 percent of LinkedIn respondents reported having extremely or fairly flexible schedules) and job meaning (85 percent reported finding their job extremely or fairly meaningful – making LinkedIn the winner in this category as well).
A Culture of Innovation
LinkedIn’s corporate culture puts a lot of emphasis on keeping employees motivated and engaged. They regularly host “inDays” where meetings are banned and employees are encouraged to participate in hackdays, where they get to work on fun side projects, listen to world-class speakers in sessions styled after Ted Talks and dive deep into exciting charitable endeavors. In 2010, LinkedIn employee Alejandro Crosa won an internal hackday contest by building a mobile app for the charity DonorsChoose.org.
This combination of career growth, competitive pay and a corporate culture that keeps the emphasis on fun and learning seems to be the secret behind why LinkedIn employees report being excited to come to work every day. Looking at how they’ve grown in the past couple of years (according to their website, two new professionals join LinkedIn every second), this strategy seems to be paying off. Too see how the rest of the competition stacks up, check out PayScale’s 2012 Top Tech Employers Comparison.
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