On 19 April, a meeting of the Council for Social and Infrastructure Projects for the Development of JINR was held. Tatyana Balueva, an employee of the Department of Sociology and Humanities of the State University “Dubna”, presented to the Council members the main results of a sociological survey on social satisfaction of JINR employees. The sociologist based her conclusions on the results of the survey among the JINR staff, in which slightly more than 500 employees agreed to participate at the end of December 2021 mainly through an online form.

Employee satisfaction in an organization is a complex multifactorial indicator, including satisfaction with various elements of the organization’s social environment (Diagram 2). At the same time, social satisfaction is one of the most important components of the quality of life, an indicator of social well-being. Overall, the level of social satisfaction of the JINR staff can be characterised as average: the total index, calculated as the shares of “rather” and “quite satisfied” respondents, equals 64.1%. Respondents note that over past years there have been improvements in many fields touched upon in the survey.

Satisfaction Index: I=∑w _n I _n
w_n – the evaluation of the satisfaction indicator, determined in accordance with the importance of this indicator for respondents; I_n – average satisfaction for a specific indicator, defined as the average of the share of satisfaction across the indicators used to measure the indicator.
The job satisfaction index is the sum of evaluated averages: staff satisfaction with organization and working conditions; labour nature and content satisfaction; prospects for career growth satisfaction; satisfaction with the organization of scientific activities; satisfaction with financial situation; living conditions satisfaction; Institute’s social infrastructure satisfaction; urban social infrastructure satisfaction. The shares of “rather” and “quite satisfied” for the 8 above indicators were summarised.

However, the analysis has also discovered problems in the social satisfaction of the Institute’s staff. Such a “pain point” is the indicator of financial satisfaction: with a high value of its importance for respondents, the share of satisfied employees is less than 50%. There is a significant gap between real and desired income for most categories of employees. The housing issue remains the topic issue for the staff, especially for young scientists and specialists: 56% of all respondents and 70% of those who are under 35 years say that they need to improve their living conditions.

A comparative analysis of the current results of social satisfaction of young scientists and specialists with the results of the previous study has been also conducted. The previous study was organized by AYSS in 2018. A positive trend has been identified for most of the comparable indicators. Thus, the proportion of rather and quite satisfied employees with the current living conditions rose from 58% to 65.5%. Moreover, 40% of respondents under 35 have reported an improvement in their financial situation over the past year. The decrease is observed mainly by indicators of organization and working conditions.

The survey have revealed problems in internal communication. Respondents note that it is impossible or difficult to obtain relevant, reliable, and complete information for many questions. Employees have reported that they often receive information about some special programmes of material and non-material support accidentally, by «word-of-mouth», «through third parties» or even from the survey itself.

In addition, respondents note some shortcomings in the social infrastructure of JINR. Despite the fact that this is not the most important indicator in comparison with others, the role of the social infrastructure in job satisfaction is quite significant. First, it aims to ensure the normal life of people, their comfortable existence in the organization and beyond. It is very important to pay due attention to the development of the social infrastructure, its correspondence to the needs of the staff, modern standards and, in general, the international status of JINR.

Participants of the meeting got acquainted with the results of the survey with great enthusiasm, noted the high professionalism of the researcher-sociologist. They expressed an interest to make such a survey regular, if possible annually, which would provide information support to the social and infrastructure projects of JINR.

The level of employee social satisfaction demonstrates the effectiveness of corporate social policy and is one of the indicator for monitoring the implementation of the Development Strategy of JINR until 2023 and beyond. Knowledge of problems allows management to provide effective short- and long-term social policy within the organization. The organizers of this survey hope that in the future more JINR staff will participate in opinion polls, including for the purpose of bringing their messages and opinions to the management of the Institute.

  Full analytical report on survey results