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Post briefing materials:
Summary:
Michael Bennett of Hewitt Associates presented their study on Best Employers in Asia. The 2003 Best Employers in Asia is a study that examines the people management practices in 305 Asia's leading companies. The companies are from 21 different industry sectors and the study was conducted in 8 markets in Asia.
Hewitt Associates deployed three study tools to evaluate the companies. The people practices inventory completed by Human Resources gathered information on practices and policies influencing the management of people in organizations. The Employee Engagement survey, completed by a representative sample of employees, was designed to measure the engagement score of employees, where engagement is a measure of employees’ emotional and intellectual commitment to their organizations. The CEO questionnaire was designed to gather information and explores the key strategic issues and major challenges.
But what makes a best employer? Bennett emphasized best employers should believe that people are central to their organization. People issues are always on their agenda. On the other hand, the employees of the best employers should feel strongly engaged. He quoted an example from Ritz-Carlton of Shanghai, where the shift staff was well informed of how they were going to share their work right from the very beginning. They were also asked what they want to know.
During the Question & Answer session, a guest asked Bennett if they had seen any meaningful changes in this second study in Asia. Bennett’s answer was yes. They collected more than 300 sets of data this time and only 80 were the same as before. This showed that the companies had taken this study serious and made significant improvement, he said. But he didn’t have any data on whether these companies have a better employee retention rate than before, or whether they have better sales results.
Another guest asked Bennett if he found any Asian value that affects the perspective of Asian employees. Bennett said that they found some very interesting difference in perspectives between employees in Asia and those in Europe and North America. The engagement of Asian employees was far higher than that of North America and Europe, he said. And also, the Asian employees are far more concerned about their organizations’ contribution to the society.
To sum up, engagement and alignment are the most important factors to measure the best employer.
Useful Links:
http://was.hewitt.com/bestemployersasia/english/index.htm
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