Small firms make workers feel 'valued'

Employees working at a small company are more likely to feel "valued and involved" than those employed by bigger organisations, the Institute of Employment Studies (IES) has suggested.

Dilys Robinson, a principal research fellow at the IES, says that small businesses have "higher levels of employee engagement" and suggests that the "formal" style of communication often adopted by larger companies "is not always clear to people".

"What drives positive views of work is things like relationship with colleagues, relationship with teams and feeling valued and involved," she comments.

Ms Robinson adds that job satisfaction for employees at smaller companies can also be more "immediate and obvious" because the effects of their actions are seen straightaway.

According to the Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform, small and medium-sized enterprises employ over half of the UK's workforce.