Emotional Intelligence Report 2022: Data & Insight job satisfaction and its impact on data projects

A new report from Brijj titled Emotional Intelligence Report 2022: Data & Insight job satisfaction and its impact on successful data projects finds misalignment between organisational data leaders and their teams.

The report based on responses gathered between October and December 2021 from 120 data professionals across the UK and Ireland, uncovered gaps in understanding within data teams across many sectors. Brijj found that what leadership think matters to their staff often does not mirror the reality. For example, data leaders turned out to seriously underestimate how much ‘work making an impact’ (20% of staff vs 7% of leaders) matters to staff.

The misalignment suggests that data leaders lack understanding of their employees’ values and motivations. With many studies proving employee satisfaction to be one of the most reliable predictions of long-term positive organisational performance, this could mean a negative effect on efficiency, attitude to work, and business outcomes.

“Building happy data teams isn’t just a moral imperative, it is essential in delivering better projects and adding value to your organisation. We must do everything we can to allow our data people to flourish. This means a laser focus on data strategy and ensuring the impact data teams make is understood and communicated. It means helping them work seamlessly with their business customers. It means providing them with the right tools and processes which reduce their daily frustrations and giving them inspirational leadership who truly understand them” – said Adrian Mitchell, Founder and CEO of Brijj.

Other interesting report findings include:

• 88% of data professionals are happy in their choice of career, but only 65% are happy in their current jobs
• Fulfilling careers in data depend on pay and learning opportunities available but happiness at current job for many depends on work culture
• 5 biggest day-to-day issues for data professionals are bad processes, lack of/bad strategy, unrealistic expectations, bad people management, and feeling unappreciated

The Emotional Intelligence report is a part of Brijj’s broader #Brijjthegap campaign aimed at closing gaps in understanding and collaboration between data teams and their business customers, as well as within data teams themselves. Its purpose is to elevate jobs across the data & insight industry and eliminate challenges standing on organisations’ way to truly harness the value of data, for happier teams and thriving businesses.

“Data people spend all day analysing businesses for the greater good of those organisations. I think it’s time we start analysing data people for the greater good of one-another. This research is our contribution” – added Adrian.

Brijj is a workflow management and collaboration tool created by and for data & insight teams and designed to give organisations of any size the means to help data creators and business users collaborate on data projects for meaningful business outcomes.