I recently partnered with an internal team to submit content for a ‘best places’ entry. This blog post is to share ideas on distilling your organization’s interesting internal ideas and to engage employees along the way.
Most of us may be familiar with the following tag lines which organizations aim to place in their communication.
‘Employer of Choice’. ‘Best Place to Work In’. ‘Talent Attractor’. ‘Ranked among Best Employers’.
In India, company transport vehicles carry stickers and large banners across the sides to proudly display their latest wins at some of the leading employer awards.
Entering a ‘best places to work’ list has its known advantages including usage in different channels such as recruitment, company presentations, websites, annual reports and sales pitches. In a competitive world as companies clamor to get on the ‘A’ list of best employers and showcase themselves as excellent places to be in, it is important to step back and understand how to leverage your best content and practices. I recently came across Glassdoor and their employee’s choice awards, where employees decide the best and worst places to work. Interesting concept.
From what I understand most of these entries have a three pronged approach – a first level audit, a detailed report on initiatives and an employee survey. The report and survey are the most important with the latter directly handled by the administering agency to avoid bias.
Most questionnaires that shape the report ask for insights on the employee life cycle, the company’s people practices, culture, work environment and milestones. Each question requires strong supporting collateral which improves the chances of listing.
I have listed some of my personal insights after working on a similar exercise.
a)      Look for differentiators: Dig deep into your company’s values and history for unique features and qualities. Be is the way your company treats new hires to the special benefits employees get for high performance. Each organization is steeped in its own values and it makes sense to call them out across the document.
b)      Be consistent: revisit facts and figures after reviewing your press released information. While the numbers may have changed internally due to varied company factors, it is important to be consistent with publically available data. Also key messages that reflect in the company’s literature will be the best fit for this document.
c)      Include your internal communicator in the core team: Your internal communicator will be privy to most information required for completing the questionnaire – usually shared via the company’s portal or the newsletter. It helps to have a member of the internal communicator in the core team driving submission. Our team included the policies, HR and marketing leads as well.
d)Â Â Â Â Â Â Tap tacit knowledge: To enhance the quality of your answers seek information and collateral from long tenured employees. It will be a boon to include them in the review process as well.
e)      Promote the submission internally: I attended a leadership meeting and surprisingly one of the grouses was that we never featured in any of the ‘best practices’ entries! Share an update with the team early; get their buy-in and commitment to contribute content and resources to be successful. Usually the recruitment team is the key stakeholder considering how much a ranking means to their efforts in getting the best hires. My recommendation is to also run an internal promotion which invites employees to share their best moments and what they think are the company’s unique differentiators. I am aware of an organization that created a video contest involving its employees. You may want to create an e-card with the company’s people practices which can be leveraged an external marketing avenue.
f)        Presentation matters: While content is one key component, how you present improves your case. Be it a web page or an interactive CD the approach, consistency and design plays an important role in the submission’s success.
Surprisingly, even though I was close to the content and submission, my knowledge of all the company’s initiatives was limited only to a few sections. I am sure sharing these insights with your employees broadly can have a profound positive impact. My recommendation is to leverage this content as a campaign across the year highlighting key company practices and milestones to build awareness and commitment. It can also be converted into a docket as a read-through on your intranet and during your induction process.
