When Trish Harsnappe, an accounts clerk at Express Data, was hospitalised with a minor heart attack, her superiors were at her bedside in a flash, telling her not to worry about her job and to focus on getting better. When she returned to work after three or four weeks, her colleagues watched her like a hawk and saw to it that she had all her follow-up medical checks. “They were thinking about me and my illness as much as I was.”

At Microsoft New Zealand, technical marketing group manager Terry Allen manages about 13 people. It’s a big, challenging job, but once a week without fail he switches off his mobile and takes his young son swimming. “It’s a no-go zone, and people understand that.” He, in turn, tells his staff if they need to take two or three hours off to watch their children in a school production or on the sports field, they can.

And what do the employers get in return for all this corporate compassion and largesse? Well, according to human resources consultancy John Robertson & Associates, which crunched the numbers for the Unlimited “Best places to work” survey, they get loyalty, commitment and pride in the company, and a willingness to seek solutions not problems, to be creative and innovative, to work hard. There’s no doubt about it, John Robertson says, being a good employer is simply good business.

“Creating a good work climate makes sense from every dimension,” says Microsoft New Zealand managing director Geoff Lawrie. “If you have satisfied staff, they are more productive and happier to work across teams. If you have a positive work environment, you produce better results and that in turn attracts better staff to the company.”

WEL Networks chief executive Mike Underhill reckons employers are waking up to the logic of getting the best from employees by treating them well. “It wasn’t so long ago that you were judged by how many people you made redundant this week. Things have swung away from that.” But while the old “sackings will continue until morale improves” school of management appears to be on the way out, redundancies and restructurings are still part of the corporate life cycle. The important thing is how the process of change is managed and how people are treated.

Take Toyota New Zealand. In the last five years it’s closed its Thames and Christchurch assembly plants and gone from a workforce of over 1000 to under 200, yet the message from staff is that it’s still a great company to work for. “We’ve been able to go through all that without creating bitterness because we’ve done it ethically and we’ve looked after people,” says managing director Bob Field. Staff were kept informed, the company spent 12 months helping workers in the plants to retrain, it advertised nationally to help place them in new jobs, and it set up a job centre in Thames for those who still didn’t have work when the plant shut down.

While there’s no blueprint for being a great employer, some strong themes come through in discussions with executives and staff of the top scoring companies in the 2001 Unlimited “Best places to work” survey. Top employers have clear corporate values and vision that give their staff focus; they allow staff to make decisions; they invest in training; they make work fun; they’re generous with praise and recognition; they genuinely care about their staff; they walk the talk.

Often it’s an assortment of factors that combine to make a happy workplace. Judyanne Lemmens scanned the job market carefully before deciding to join BT Funds Management as a business risk manager. She was swayed by the fact she can fit her work schedule around the needs of her two young children. She likes the weekly yoga classes for staff, the morning fruit bowl, the open-plan environment and the free flow of information that ensures everyone in the company is kept in the picture.

So, what are the things that make an organisation a great place to work, and what are the key differences between the top-ranking companies and the bottom? Judging by the results from the top 21 companies (there are 21 companies because two companies rank 20th equal), the things that matter most to employees relate not so much to individual job satisfaction, but to their perceptions of the organisation. People like the feeling their company is successful, they want to believe in its objectives and to be proud to be part of it. People also like to have good colleagues who they have confidence in, they like to feel respected and they like a bit of latitude to do their job well. As the table on page 40 shows, the top 20 outclass the bottom 20 by wide margins in these areas.

Analysis of the entire database of 6927 respondents gives insight into the issues that employees are less satisfied with. On two statements — “People get promoted on merit in this organisation” and “The pay and benefits I receive are fair for the work I do” — employees tended not to give their organisation the thumbs up. Other low-scoring questions related to opportunities for advancement, communication between management and staff, inter-team relationships, management responses to employee ideas, recognition, feedback and performance assessment.

Survey designer John Robertson believes one of the defining features of a great workplace is the strong sense of alignment to a unifying corporate vision.

“What you tend to find in the successful organisations is the leader working hard to define and articulate the vision. They are also very visible — it’s very easy for a chief executive to become totally office-bound, but the chief executives of organisations with high staff morale tend to be the ones that make a point of being visible, of meeting and communicating with staff. There’s a respect for their staff and almost a humility about them. Strategic human resources is about capturing the hearts and minds of your people so that you create an environment where people can achieve great things. People are not stupid. They are not easily fooled by superficial displays of management concern. What people look to are actions.”


Part 2: Big girls’ blouses

Part 3: Keeping them happy and healthy

Part 4: Open all hours

Part 5: If it don’t fit

How the finalists were selected

Top 20 companies compared to the lowest 20

Six tips for a better workplace

And the winners are ...

Find out more: Attend the seminar


Best places to work 2002

Do you know of a great place to work? Can’t see your company on the list? Enter the 2002 “Best places to work” awards.

Not sure you’ll win? Doesn’t matter. Completing the “Best places to work” survey allows you to benchmark yourself against your peers over a number of years. Even if you don’t make the top 20, you’ll receive a confidential report showing your company’s ranking, how you stacked up against your peers on a number of key criteria, and where the areas for improvement are. In fact, anecdotal evidence shows some companies are entering the awards purely as a means of benchmarking themselves and their annual progress in the talent war.

Enter our 2002 “Best places to work” awards