Employees' Job Satisfaction in Finnish Startups

Abstract

The thesis’s objective was to analyze practices utilized by Finnish startups to keep their employees happy at work. As a matter of fact, Finland is undergoing a rising growth of startup culture. Startups are organizations established to seek “a repeatable and scalable business model”. Their products either challenge the whole industry, the existing companies or create for themselves a new market. With values which transcends the conventional belief as well as traditional products, startups experience development in such “extreme uncertainty” (Ries 2011). Apparently, people who have not touched the product yet would not utterly fathom its functions and this fact builds barrier to the motivation to devote to the preset visions in a startup. As startups are to achieve values of novelty, human resource is invariably deemed as the most valuable asset. Nonetheless, the uncertainty and inevitable hardship could prevent the employees from continuing their fates with the startups. Therefore, maintaining their fulfillment and satisfaction with their jobs is indispensable to persuade them to stay passionate and contributively grow the startup to reach the desired target.

Therefore, the thesis aims to clarify the questions regarding employees’ job satisfaction in Finnish startups, which are:

What is employees’ job satisfaction and why it is important for organizations, especially startups to take into consideration?

To what extent do employees in Finnish startups experience job satisfaction?

How Finnish startups keep their employees satisfied during times of changes and challenges when their organizations are more grown?

The research was completed with the assistance of mixed-methods approach, which combines qualitative and quantitative methods. The data collection process involved interviews with individuals in charge of either human resource or corporate operations in two studied startups (Snafu Oy and startup X) and an employee survey concerning their job satisfaction. The data was then analyzed with the support of the theory in the literature review part. Eventually, the research’s validity and reliability were discussed. Furthermore, the thesis also includes suggestions for future studies related to employees’ job satisfaction.