The list you can stop worrying about
Today’s post is by Martha I. Finney, president and CEO of Engagement Journeys and author of more than a dozen books about employee engagement and human resources. She joins SmartBrief on Workforce today as our editor at large and will be writing regularly for this blog.
I have a friend who used to work at one of those companies that always appears on Fortune’s 100 Best Companies to Work For list. Year after year. After a deeply disappointing experience there, she swears that should she ever be a candidate for a job with a new company that happens to be on the list, she’ll withdraw herself from consideration. Immediately. Another friend, who currently works for a frequent flyer on the list, shrugs and says, “Yeah, well, that’s just a pet project from one person here. It’s an ego thing.”
I have always admired the research organization behind the list, The Great Place To Work Institute. Its principals have contributed much to the body of knowledge around what it takes to create and sustain a thriving workplace culture. But it appears that making the list itself has become more important than actually deserving to be on the list. In fact, if your ambition is to be on the list, you have set the bar way too low.
Instead of competing to be on the list of great places to work, employers should shift their resources and focus to actually becoming the place where great employees want to work. Great employees don’t necessarily care about the extras that companies crow about. Sure, they appreciate them. But if the core culture of the company is completely inauthentic, if the leadership’s actions don’t match their grand pronouncements, you’re going to have disenchanted people.
Great employees don’t need fancy; they need authenticity. They need to believe in their company’s mission. They need to believe in their company’s leadership. They need to believe that their leadership respects them. Put those fundamental three elements in place, and all the other essentials will naturally follow.
You will have become a great place to work. And that’s the bar you should be aiming for.
Image credit, porcorex, via iStock
Posted by Brooke Howell on February 3rd, 2010 at 10:26 am
I couldn't have said it better myself, but check out my Sept. 21, 2009, SmartBlog on Workforce post on my not-so-hot experience working for a company that made one of those lists — http://tinyurl.com/yfdxmcz. Moral of that story, just because a company makes a magazine or newspaper's list, doesn't mean it will be a great place for you to work.
Posted by Leslie Caccamese on March 2nd, 2010 at 5:20 pm
While it is certainly true that many organizations spend an exceptional amount of time preparing the Culture Audit submission for the FORTUNE 100 Best competition, it should be noted that the majority of a company's score for the ranking depends on the responses to the employee survey.
The employee survey is administered to a sample population, the size of which varies depending on the size of the participating company. The checks and balances this process offers makes it really hard to "cheat" the system by spending inordinate time or money on the company's submission. At the end of the day, if your employees don't rate you highly enough in the areas the Institute measures, you don't really stand a chance of making it on the list.
If I were to ask to see changes in the Fortune 100 Best list, I'd want to see 2 things: more companies participating and putting themselves to this test and better coverage of the Best Companies by the editors of Fortune, putting emphasis on the truly important things that these companies do right, like how they develop people, foster collaboration, manage layoffs, and more.