This is according to a study by AchieveGlobal, one of the world's largest providers of corporate soft-skills training.

The results of the study were announced today. This was a new Asia-wide study conducted to measure the extent to which employees are motivated in their jobs, and how often their managers and supervisors are engaged in motivating behaviours with them.

The study also investigated the state of employee motivation in Singapore, through a cross-section of the survey administered with 177 employees working here.

An interesting nugget from the study is this: respondents in small and medium enterprises (SMEs) with less than 1,000 employees in Singapore were significantly more likely to say their managers "usually" or "always" listen attentively (71 per cent), versus those from larger companies (60 per cent).