Introduction Recap: 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 manages more than 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. This blog is part 4 of our feature series. To read part three, please click here.

This week, we will focus on Work Environment.

This is an area that many take for granted. After all, how much can a “good” physical work environment effect one’s connectedness to their employer? Probably not a lot, but if you have poor working conditions, that can have a huge impact. Consider air conditioning problems all summer long, poor lighting or filthy bathrooms. For prolonged periods of time, these can really wear people down and effect productivity. For manufacturing employees or others whose work is physical in nature, feeling safe is a necessity. If the employer does not care about the safety of their employees, the resulting feeling employees will have about their employer will be indifference, at best. That’s not what we are aiming for. In some instances, making physical changes to a place of employment can be expensive, so there are likely to be ignored. However, employers need to be aware of working conditions so they can be addressed to whatever extent the employer can. Safety programs and policies should not only be in place, but communicated regularly to the team.

Employees are asked to respond to various statements on a 6 option Likert scale (Disagree Strongly through Agree Strongly). Statements in this area include:

• My physical working conditions are good
• My general work area is adequately heated/cooled
• There is adequate noise control to allow me to focus on my work
• My workspace has adequate privacy for me to do my job
• I feel physically safe in my work environment

This “Core Focus Area” has employees looking inward to evaluate how they feel specifically about their working conditions and personal safety. The percentage below represents the national average percentage Positive Response (Agree or Strongly Agree) in the “Work Environment” Core Focus Area for all the winners of our “Best” programs.

In two weeks our blog series will continue with Relationship with Supervisor, the fifth of our 8 Core Focus Areas.