The Best Company survey has been a Deloitte initiative in Namibia for almost a decade, continuously undergoing review and re-design to ensure best practice research methodology to gauge both employee attraction to and engagement with an organisation. This year conducted under the theme “maximising the power of your people”, the survey delivers strategic insights for increased organisational effectiveness centred around a company’s employees. It offers the ability to understand how employees perceive the current workplace environment in an effort to determine where improvements can be made and equally, what attributes can be celebrated.

According to Priscilla Husselmann, Human Capital Lead for Deloitte, traditional change management approaches have evolved into highly connected, personalised and dynamic experiences. The new approach to change allows for faster decision-making; it is dependent on information (data) and provides reliable and insightful trends and patterns as the change journey advances.

With a strong brand amongst HR professionals, the Best Company survey remains a reputable source of comparable data for companies and the competition remains an esteemed annual event attended by Managing Directors and HR professionals across sectors and industries.

In presenting the survey results, Deloitte Country Managing Partner Ramsay Mc Donald explained that the survey acknowledges that attraction and engagement are intrinsically linked and are necessary in gaining a complete picture of what attracts and retains an employee, versus how it impacts and affects levels of discretionary effort. Therefore, the survey is comprised of two parts:

1. The Attraction Index measures the overall attraction of employees to the organisation. It is an expression of the employees’ alignment to the brand and an indicator of retention.
Attraction is an important component and predisposition for employee engagement.

Overall the survey unpacks four dimensions through which organisational attractiveness can be assessed and managed.

Accomplishment and growth, which assesses how employees feel day-to-day and if they’ve had the opportunity to grow over the past year; it gauges their sense of purpose and accomplishment within the organisation, i.e. if there is a good fit between their talents, abilities and the job they do.

Fairness and integrity, which focuses on issues of trust and fairness in the workplace relating to remuneration, leadership, policies and procedures, performance management and the treatment and evaluation of their performance.

Values and culture touches on the vision and mission statement of the organisation. It looks at how leadership communicates and interacts with its employees, how it embraces the organisation’s values and whether the purpose of the organisation stretches beyond profit and business success.

Care and feedback investigates how employees respond to short and long-term career growth at the organisation and how they feel about their surroundings and the resources at their disposal in order to complete tasks.

2. The Engagement Index measures and reflects employees’ state of mind relating to behaviours and discretionary effort with their work. It is an indication of how employees think, act and feel in the workplace, separating those who are prepared to shoot the lights out on a daily basis, compared to those merely offering the bare minimum.

The survey provides comprehensive insight reports, with dynamic reporting through access to the Deloitte Portal, which allows participants to take immediate responsive action. The survey also includes 100% coverage of employees broken down in five demographics, including job role, tenure, age, race and gender. The survey is conducted in Afrikaans, English and Oshiwambo to ensure good comprehension levels.
Deloitte congratulates the above organisations on the significant recognition received from their employees.