Great Workplace

Great Workplace

Your company can be a great workplace — and more successful as a result.

Business leaders — and researchers — rely on Great Place to Work^® metrics to establish the standard that defines a great workplace. Great Place to Work’s annual research is based on data representing more than 10 million employees in 50 countries representing about 6,000 organisations of varying sizes, industries, maturity and structures.

 

Defining a Great Place to Work 

And what determines if a company gets recognized on the annual list that the Institute produces and FORTUNE publishes? Every company that participates in the process undertakes an employee survey that accounts for two-thirds of the result; a management questionnaire accounts for the other one-third. The employee survey is based on the Institute’s definition of a great place to work: 

• One where employees trust the people they work for
• One where employees take pride in what they do
• One where they enjoy working with co-workers  

And, there is the secret:  it is not the perks and extravagant benefits -- it’s the relationships at work that matter. As a business leader, you have an immediate impact on your employees’ experience of these relationships.

Why a Great Workplace Matters Now

While trusting relationships in the workplace have always mattered, business leaders would be wise to focus on company culture now for these three reasons:  

- Mitigate Employee Turnover:  As the economy begins to rebound, employees will have greater options to move to companies where they feel respected, their contributions recognized and have opportunities for career development. At SAS Institute, employees enjoy a respectful work environment that supports their development; SAS enjoys an average turnover rate of about 3%!  Voluntary turnover will likely see an increase in 2011, so focusing relationships with your people is a key way to shore up their commitment to your organization.

- Align Customer Service: Leaders know that their employees are in charge of the relationship between their customers and their organization. As consumer confidence increases, companies like Zappos, with excellent customer service, will move to the front of the line. While high-quality products are an important component of your company’s success, it’s your people that take care of the customer. As the economy rebounds, is your company positioned to take advantage of this market potential?

- Be Positioned for Growth: Finally, the economic recession has been instructive for businesses on a number of levels. The increasingly competitive landscape of our inter-connected economy has taken center stage in our post-recession business calculus. Companies like Qualcomm and W.L. Gore & Associates that invest in processes for innovation and development of their people will lead the way in solving tomorrow’s business problems with cutting-edge products and solutions. Is your organization ready to invest in increasing its creative capacity for developing new, innovative products and services?

The best companies are acutely aware of these workplace trends and opportunities and are actively pursuing a strategy to address all three. These tips will be of use as you create your own great workplace and a great company culture:

• It is not about doing “more.” It is about doing “different.” As a leader, you have to make decisions and communicate. The question to consider is how to make decisions (involve employees and ‘close the loop’ on outcomes) and communicate (transparency and accessibility) in a way that builds more trust. Focus on a few, vital things and begin from there.

• Take the long view. The creation of trust takes time, so have patience and keep focused on the end-goal:  more trust in the workplace. Best companies don’t happen overnight.  Like a garden, they take careful cultivation over time.

• Integrate rather than “action plan.” This is not to say you shouldn’t create a plan with employees, but developing trust is not about checking off a box, but integrating trust building behaviors and practices into your organization’s culture.

• Align to your values. One of the consistent things we see is how the best companies’ cultures are aligned to their respective values. Your company’s values are its “north star;” be sure they are reflected in your hiring process, as well as in your employee policies and guidelines including employee accountability, promotions and education.

As you consider how to grow your business, make creating and sustaining a great workplace an element of your overall strategy.

What is a Great Workplace? The Employee View

Great workplaces are built through the day-to-day relationships that employees experience — not a checklist of programmes and benefits.

The key factor in common in these relationships is TRUST. From the Employee’s perspective, a great workplace is one where they:

• TRUST the people they work for;
• Have PRIDE in what they do; and
• ENJOY the people they work with.

Trust is the defining principle of great workplaces — created through management’s credibility, the respect with which employees feel they are treated, and the extent to which employees expect to be treated fairly. The degree of pride and levels of authentic connection and camaraderie employees feel with one are additional essential components.

What is a Great Workplace? The Manager View

From the Manager’s perspective, a great workplace is one where they:

• ACHIEVE ORGANISATIONAL OBJECTIVES;
• With employees who GIVE THEIR PERSONAL BEST; and
• WORK TOGETHER AS A TEAM / FAMILY in an environment of TRUST

There are nine ways – or practice areas – where leaders and managers create an environment of trust. Great workplaces achieve organisational goals by inspiring, speaking and listening. They have employees who give their personal best by thanking, developing and caring. And they work together as a team / family by hiring, celebratingand sharing.

This fundamental model, confirmed by Great Place to Work through over 25 years worth of analysis of employees’ own opinions, is universal and consistent year-over-year, country-to-country. It applies not only to all organisations but to companies with diverse employee demographics.

How Can Trust Be Measured?

We look at TRUST through two lenses. We assess the culture of the organisation through answers provided on an employee survey, the Trust Index^© survey, which is modeled on the five dimensions found in the employee view of a great workplace. And we look at the workplace through a Culture Audit^©, organised by the nine practice areas in the management definition of a great workplace.

This survey precisely measures the behaviours and the environment that forms the underpinning of world’s most desirable workplaces and successful businesses.

Business leaders, academics and the media rely upon Great Place to Work metrics to establish an objective standard that defines a great workplace. These metrics – from the Trust Index and Culture Audit – form the basis of the methodology Great Place to Work uses to advise and train companies on how to transform themselves into great workplaces.

How the Great Place to Work Trust Index works

Firstly, perceptions of the organizations’ employees are assessed using the Great Place to Work Trust Index Model. We asked a representative sample of the organization’s employees to share their feedback on various variables, which, in our research, define a great workplace from the employees’ perspective.

What makes an organization a great place to work? For more than 20 years, and now across more than 54 countries, Great Place to Work Institute has been asking millions of employees from different kinds of organizations this very question. It was identified that great workplaces are characterized by three key relationships. We found that at great workplaces, employees trust (credibility, respect and fairness) the people they work for, have pride in the work they do and enjoy the company of people they work with.

We put together a list of variables that come together to make an organization a great place to work for its employees in a comprehensive model. It’s widely known as the Great Place to Work Trust Index Model, the world’s most well researched, accepted and sustainable definition of a great workplace, from an employee’s point of view. Great Place to Work Trust Index Employee Survey is one of the most comprehensive methods of measuring employees’ experience at their organization.

We get this information by getting employees of the participating organizations to fill a detailed employee survey questionnaire (see step 2).

Secondly, the strength of people-related management practices of the organization is assessed using the Great Place to Work Culture Audit Framework.

Based on our research, we rate various people-related practices followed at these organizations. We also found that organizations that are successful at creating and sustaining a great workplace culture follow specific practices in nine key areas. These key areas are outlined in the Great Place to Work People Practice Framework. Great practices in these areas can help a firm achieve its objectives with employees who give their personal best and work as a team. This is known as Great Place to Work Culture Audit Assessment—one of the best ways of assessing an organization’s people practices, mapping their impact on the employee perceptions, and outlining a clear set of actions for leaders and managers to improve results. We get this information by getting organizations to fill in a detailed Culture Audit questionnaire (see step 3).