Six out of 10 Qatar residents surveyed are actively looking to switch companies, according to a new regional job satisfaction report by Bayt.com and YouGov.

According to the poll, which questioned 5,774 people from 13 countries last month, Qatar employees are most likely to want to leave their current employers over low base salaries (67 percent), lack of career growth opportunities (63 percent) and lack of training opportunities (44 percent).

The percentage of people who said they are looking to change jobs is about on par with the rest of the MENA region, where respondents expressed little confidence in their superiors. Additionally, only three out of 10 said they believed company morale was high.

That said, some 45 percent of Qatar respondents said they enjoyed going to work every day, compared to 44 percent regionally.

And Qatar employees appeared to enjoy better benefit packages than many of their regional counterparts:

• Some 49 percent here have transportation to/from work, compared to 35 percent across the Middle East;
• About 61 percent have company-provided accommodation, versus 35 percent overall; and
• Some 12 percent have their children’s school fees covered, compared to 8 percent of respondents across the region.

However, only 50 percent of respondents in Qatar had company-provided health insurance, compared to 63 percent in the region, and 19 percent had insurance for their family members, compared to 30 percent overall.

What employees want

The latest Bayt survey also appears to show an increase in job dissatisfaction among Qatar residents.

It found that while 36 percent of respondents were somewhat or very satisfied with their present jobs (compared to 40 percent in the region), some 65 percent were somewhat or very dissatisfied (compared to 60 percent in the region).

In January, those figures seemed considerably lower, with 34 percent of Qatar residents polled saying they were somewhat or very unhappy with their jobs.

At that time, salary and benefits were the single biggest issue in choosing a job (84 percent), compared to job security, which was the key attraction for only just over a quarter of prospective job hunters in Qatar.

Besides boosting pay, Bayt.com said that companies here could help increase job satisfaction and retain their employees by offering more training opportunities.

In a statement, the company’s vice president of sales Suhail Masri said:

“It is interesting to see that only 31% of respondents are happy with training in their company, when the most important factor related to job satisfaction in the region is learning and personal growth.

Companies should thus invest more time and effort in training their employees, ensuring that they have a clear career path, satisfying pay, and a job that gives them a sense of achievement and the opportunity to give back to their community.”

Here’s the full survey:

Thoughts?