The Companies With The Biggest Jumps In Employee Happiness

Mention "workplace happiness" these days and you'll probably conjure images of Silicon Valley tech companies with funky workspace designs, midday ping-pong, and stock option-incentivized scavenger hunts.

As it turns out, happy employees want much simpler things--good workplace relationships, fair compensation, the chance to grow, just to name a few--and often find them at mature companies.

To determine the companies with the greatest improvements in employee happiness over the year,  fulfillment-focused jobs search and review site CareerBliss considered factors including an employee's relationship with his or her boss as well as coworkers, work environment, available resources, compensation, opportunities for advancement, a company's culture and reputation, as well as daily responsibilities and the employee's personal agency over those tasks.

Company reviews are scored between one and five, and the companies that appear on this list received a minimum of 10 independent employee reviews throughout 2013 and 2014 on CareerBliss.

At the top of the list is Staples , experiencing the highest jump in employee happiness over the past year. The office supply giant saw a 28.33% increase in employee happiness, boosting its overall rating to a 2.73. DirecTV was next, with a nearly 20% increase in happiness and a 3.32 overall rating. Wipro Technologies rounds out the top three with 18.57% improvement in employee happiness over the last year and and overall rating of 3.37.

Retailers--not always home to the happiest employees--are strongly represented this year, with companies like the aforementioned Staples, as well as  Best Buy   joining the list. Household names Xerox and UPS also find themselves among the companies with the biggest jumps, as well as familiar technology names like Symantec and Cognizant.

CareerBliss representatives are quick to note that calling out the companies with the "biggest jumps" is more of a Most Improved award than a statement about an exceptionally happy workplace--the companies ranked highest for employee happiness usually have ratings closer to 3.5 or 4.

Many of the companies on this list don't yet have scores that would place them among the companies with the happiest employees--but they're moving in the right direction.

The 10 Companies With The Biggest Jumps In Employee Happiness

1. Staples - 28.33%

2. DirecTV - 19.40%

3. Wipro Technologies - 18.57%

4. CitiGroup - 18.27%

5. Xerox - 16.88%

6. Cognizant - 16.86%

7. Symantec - 14.10%

8. Raytheon - 13.22%

9. UPS - 12.99%

10. Best Buy - 11.35%

In pictures: The 10 Companies With The Biggest Jumps In Employee Happiness