In order to truly understand what makes a company a great place to work, it is important to explore, evaluate and improve several different aspects of the employee experience. Best Companies Group (BCG) manages over 40 “Best Places to Work,” “Best Employers” or “Best Companies” programs. We use an employee survey that has 8 very distinct areas of evaluation. We call them our “8 Core Focus Areas” of employee engagement and satisfaction. We have created this blog series to explore each of those “8 Core Focus Areas”. Our goal is to help you understand these focus areas so the next time you conduct a survey or participate in one of BCG’s programs you have a better idea of how we go about identifying the best.

Before completing one of the BCG programs or surveys, many companies often ask questions such as, “What do other companies do to make the ‘Best Places to Work’ lists?” or, “What can the company do to encourage employees to be more engaged at work?” Unfortunately, there is no secret recipe when it comes to creating and maintaining an exceptional work environment. However, understanding and measuring the employee experience through the lens of the “8 Core Focus Areas” is a great start.

BCG’s 8 Core Focus Areas:

1) Leadership and Planning

2) Corporate Culture & Communications

3) Role Satisfaction

4) Work Environment

5) Relationship with Supervisor

6) Training and Development

7) Pay and Benefits

8) Overall Engagement

Over the next several months we will be breaking down each focus area and giving examples of what we ask on our employee engagement and satisfaction survey and what the results tell us. We will also be sharing some national employee satisfaction benchmarks from the great places to work we put on our lists every year.

This week we will explore Leadership and Planning.

This focus area provides insight into the employees’ confidence in their leadership and whether employees feel there is adequate planning and follow-through of corporate and departmental objectives. Employees are asked to respond to various statements on a 6 option Likert scale (Disagree Strongly through Agree Strongly).

Statements in this area include:

I understand the long-term strategy of this organization

I have confidence in the leadership of this organization

The leaders of this organization care about their employees’ well being

There is adequate planning of corporate objectives

There is adequate follow-through of corporate objectives

There is adequate planning of departmental objectives

There is adequate follow-through of departmental objectives

The leaders of this organization are open to input from employees

It turns out, “having confidence in the leadership of the organization” is one of the top “drivers” of employee engagement. In other words, there is a very high correlation between how employees respond to this statement and the level of attachment or engagement with the organization.

Does the leadership team care about employees’ well being? Are they open to input? This information can be very valuable as well. There is so often a disconnect between upper management and the rank and file. This is sometimes the information that management doesn’t want. But if you want to improve, management needs to be open to hearing it.

The organizations making the “best places to work” lists do very well in this category. They understand the importance of strong connections between all levels in the organization. The percentage below represents the average percentage of Positive Response (Agree or Strongly Agree) for the statements in the Leadership and Planning category for list-making employers. Participating in one of our employee surveys and knowing where you stand compared to the best of the best nationally will provide a baseline for improvements.

In two weeks our blog series will continue with Corporate Culture and Communication, the second of the 8 Core Focus Areas.