The survey for Best Places to Work in Arkansas is one of the smartest investments our company makes, and the results have changed our workplace. By participating, we received right-from-the-employees data for a cost of about $645. The management value of this information is worth exponentially more.
Do we rank perfectly in every category? No. As the president of this organization that is the exact information I want to receive from our team, so I can respond.
Our mission at Arkansas Business Publishing Group is to be extraordinary. We want to deliver extraordinary information and extraordinary products to highly targeted and extraordinary audiences. The key to all of that is having an extraordinary workforce. The feedback from this survey gives me, our CEO and our management team insight into what our employees think of our company.
See what your employees are really feeling
My organization, Arkansas Business, hosts Best Places to Work in Arkansas for the state, but we contract with a firm that specializes in capturing this information — Best Companies Group.
Companies that participate in this survey receive a detailed view of aggregated responses to the 76-question employee survey and a full transcript of candid and anonymous employee comments to open-ended questions. Another key element of this report is the benchmarking that enables us to compare our employee responses to those of other participating organizations.
We have benefited immensely from this report package. Let me give you some specific examples:
In 2013, our team gave us low scores in the area of Training & Development. Because only 51% of our team was in agreement that we did well there, we began to focus on improving training for the following year. We listened to the needs of each department and we reshaped some of our existing programs. We also deployed new training initiatives. As a result, in the 2014 survey our scores improved to 79% agreement in Training & Development.
We saw a similar improvement with regard to the Pay & Benefits core focus area. In 2013, sixty-nine percent (69%) of our team affirmed that we had a good program. Our CEO took this on as a personal priority. We evaluated everyone’s compensation in our company and made immediate and targeted changes. We compiled a complete summary of every employee’s compensation and our CEO presented that to each person. This helped our score improve by 13 points to 82% in 2014.
Our overall ranking from our employees improved from 79% in 2013 to 89% in 2014. Because we host the program, we can’t participate or “win,” but it’s affirming that we continue to be on the right track with some of the state’s best places to work.
More than a contest
The data from this survey is helping us make decisions to improve our workplace; and that directly impacts our efforts to recruit and retain a top-notch staff. I encourage you to give Best Places to Work programs a review. I believe the information you will receive from this resource will be invaluable to your company, and the rewards will trump the cost many times over.
I’m out to build the best team of people in this region of the country, and Best Companies Group survey has proven to be one of our most effective tools to getting that done.
Mitch Bettis, president & publisher of Arkansas Business Publishing Group
