Bringing convergence between what HR thinks constitutes a good company to work for and what employees think

Posted by PeopleStrong under Thought Leadership

In general, what makes a ‘Good Company to Work for’ is a derivation from two sources:

a) The survey designed to evaluate the same by the organization/HR , and
b) The perception of the existing employee workforce

Organization however, exists in an ecosystem. Leavers and potential hires are as much a part of the ecosystem as existing employees are. The responses from only the existing employees would make the findings skewed, hence convergence is impractical. A holistic model is which is driven by the complete talent pool in market whether

• Working,
• has worked, OR
• will work

with the company will probably give us an accurate picture.

Also, an employee is driven from perception, whereas HR and company is on the other end of the spectrum. The convergence will happen only if individual perception and company aspiration converges, because that’s the focal point which can be benchmarked with reality. Hence, we should look at perceptions in light of aspirations and they put together will give us the reality. We can therefore call it perception -> aspiration -> reality (PAR). It’s time to challenge the status-quo and build new realities and if I may say so they should be at PAR!!!

Finally, the Best Companies to Work for 2010 has challenged some conventional and long standing wisdom. One of the most interesting findings when we analyzed the data from the study is how different groups of employees think. For instance:

• While creative people like the ones in Advertising/PR/Media seem to give least importance to their organization’s brand value, administration staffs seems to value it the most.
• Finance professionals does not attach importance to the stress at work, a staff at the manufacturing unit values it a lot.
• Similar differences are present across regions, salary brackets, education level and many other parameters.

Management guru, C.K. Prahalad talks about serving customers by treating them unique through his famous, n=1 strategy. Now, think if organizations treat its employee groups with n=1 strategy meaning treating every employee group as a unique entity. ‘One size does not fit all’ is something that HR professionals must realize and understand.

The more we bring things at PAR the better will be the convergence!!!

-Pankaj Bansal, Co-founder and CEO