Larger organisations set to receive a bigger slice of best employers pie

By Clare Costigan

Hewitt Associates Best Employers accreditation program, which sees entries received from companies all over Australia and New Zealand, has added a new research benchmark built specifically for large organisations.

The new additional research option will be open to organisations with 2500+ employees in Australia or 1000+ employees in New Zealand with participants to be benchmarked against four key themes—risk management, innovation, customer excellence and workforce performance.

Managing director of Hewitt Australia and New Zealand, Tim Powell, said, "Australian economic growth in 2010 has brought with it increased competition for business and talent - and the re-emergence of skills shortages."

Powell added that retention of high performers and employee productivity are again a key focus for organisations seeking to harness improved market confidence to build their client base, sales and revenue.

And with new challenges in the talent market comes new assessment criteria. The2010/11 Best Employers in ANZ accreditation program will also assess five other areas that impact the employment experience; Employment Brand, Managing Performance, Leadership Authenticity, Change Management and Effectiveness of Internal Communications.

"Organisations that participate in the 2010/11 program will gain an insight into the most critical challenges facing organisations post-GFC and how their organisations have performed against Best Employer and industry benchmarks," Powell said.

The 2009/10 ‘Best of the Best’ were Dimension Data Australia, Express Data and Microsoft Australia.
A total of 110 registered participants were involved in the 2009/10 program, with approximately 30,000 employees contributing to the employee opinion surveys.

Surveying for the 2010/11 Hewitt Best Employers program will run until 28 March 2011, and registration closes in December 2010.