Organisations in search of a blueprint for success and improved all-round performance don't need to look very far. In fact, they can just study the practices and principles of the six companies adjudged the Best Employers in Hong Kong 2009.
'The results at the top level are quite consistent,' said Philip Wixon, practice leader at Hewitt Associates, which did extensive research to identify the leading candidates and analyse what separates the best from the rest.
'Any company of a reasonable size will have processes, but it's not the toys and tricks you have, it's the execution and consistency,' he said. 'No one has it 100 per cent right, but what we see is that the best employers reflect certain key practices far more and are able to stitch it all together.'
Hewitt's starting point for the biannual study is to gather information on participating companies from three main sources. There is a questionnaire completed by the most senior executive, focusing on staff management issues and the philosophies that drive the business.
The human resources (HR) department returns a people practices inventory detailing their programmes and overall approach. And an employee opinion survey gets feedback from the broader workforce.
By interpreting this data, Hewitt can determine how well each company measures up in terms of engagement and alignment. The former relates specifically to levels of employee commitment - what they say, why they stay and how hard they strive for the business. The latter concerns the degree to which leaders and staff understand each other and are working towards the same goals.
