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 7 of our feature series. To read part 6, please click here.

This week we will focus on, Pay & Benefits

It’s been several decades since the workplace experts started to declare that what someone is paid is not as important to them as the recognition they receive. The common theme was “They’ll get used to a raise, but a ‘thank you!’ and constant displays of appreciation will be remembered forever.”  We do believe this to be true, but it should not be seen as an either/or proposition.  Discovering that recognition is a real motivator launched the exploration to find other factors that may be important to the employee experience as well. Today, knowing and leveraging those ideas will create a more engaged workforce for sure. All that being said, the “pay and benefits” pendulum has swung back, at least a little bit, in the analysis of what makes a difference. When we look at the top 10 drivers of employee engagement, employees still put compensation and benefits satisfaction on that list. This is certainly a more realistic approach which does not completely dismiss the idea that what someone makes, or thinks they should be making, matters.

As a result, one of our core focus areas looks at the satisfaction with pay and the various benefits. In this section of the employee evaluation we ask the employees to respond to the following statements (Disagree Strongly, Disagree Somewhat, Neutral, Agree Somewhat, Agree strongly, N/A):

• My pay is fair for the work I perform
• Overall, I’m satisfied with this organization’s benefits package

Specifically, I’m satisfied with the:

• Amount of vacation (or Paid Time Off)
• Sick leave policy
• Amount of health care paid for
• Dental benefits
• Vision care benefits
• Retirement plan benefits
• Life insurance benefits
• Disability benefits
• Tuition reimbursement benefits

The percentage below represents the national average percentage Positive Response (Agree or Agree Strongly) in the “Pay & Benefits” Core Focus Area for all the winners of our “Best” programs.

In two weeks this blog series will conclude with Overall engagement, the 8th of our Core Focus Areas.