The Great Place to Work® Institute, with expertise through their 25 years old operations around the world, launched their study of best workplaces in the UAE in 2010 and brought forth some key findings about what companies are doing or ought to do to become a great place to work in the opinions of their employees.
Through the study across different sectors in the UAE, the Great Place to Work team asked employees questions around five key elements of Credibility – belief and faith in the management’s communication, competence and integrity, Respect – professional support, collaboration and care from the management, Fairness – fair treatment and justice irrespective of age, gender and religion, Pride for the job and the organisation and Camaraderie - enjoyment, celebrations at work and feeling of ‘family and team’. Employees from the organisations that featured in the top companies list did significantly well in most of these dimensions.
We glean from our analysis that 92% employees at Marriott UAE felt positively about the management keeping them informed about important issues and changes and around 89% employees felt the same at FedEx. Organisations today are reaching out to employees through a variety of different communication tools including e-mail, newsletters, internal web sites, blogs, podcasts, live web streaming of internal events, face-to-face meetings, site wide e-mail, physical notice boards, and audio visual presentations throughout buildings. There is a strong focus on face-to-face communication with monthly team meetings and one to one meeting with managers. At Microsoft, more than 90% employees feel that management trusts them to do a good job without watching over their shoulders, and 93% employees feel that they are given a lot of responsibility. This essentially makes employees think positively as they do get a sense of empowerment and freedom. Employees’ scores of 6 out of the top 10 organisations project strong belief in the management’s integrity and think that their management is honest and ethical in its business practices. At PepsiCo, Speak Up Line is an anonymous, free helpline and hotline available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, and is there for employees and external vendors or contractors, to ask questions or raise concerns about situations that may violate the code of conduct or values without fear of retaliation. Speak Up is part of PepsiCo’s commitment to live up to our PepsiCo Values of speaking with truth and is an integral part of the ethical culture.
Around 90% of Microsoft and PepsiCo’s employees have strong beliefs for their management’s integrity, honesty and ethics. In an economy facing the turmoil of recession, 90% employees at FedEx and 82% employees Marriott strongly felt that the management would lay people off only as a last resort. This is a genuine reflection of the credibility built at these workplaces.
90% of employees at PepsiCo say that they can take time off when necessary, and around 93% employees at Merck think that there is a family or team feeling here. At Merck, employees have flexible hours system to enable control of their work-life balance by working core hours, and choosing how the complete their normal working hours. Similarly, at THE One, employees can request some time off for family, medical or personal situations they need to attend in return for their flexibility at times when extra hours may be required for particular tasks or projects. Given the diverse workforce around, 7 companies have policies to combat discrimination on grounds of race and ethnicity. An employee at Bayt.com says in his answer to what makes his organisation a great place to work: “Flexibility: for any quick or immediate help or action, management is very flexible.”
Common strong themes that emerged out of the employee perceptions across these 10 organisations are pride for the organisation the work for, they believe that the organisation is fair in treatment towards employee irrespective of their race and ethnicity, employees have belief in management’s integrity, and competence to achieve organisation goals in line with the values that define the vision of the organisation.
Impartiality in terms of promotions going to the right people, communication in terms of approachability and accessibility of the management, equity in terms of fair pay and recognition, distribution of profits have shown up as areas of improvements. Perhaps, this points these organisations to initiate practices and policies in this direction to build positive employee perception.
Overall, 50% employees in our top 10 companies have more than 2 years of service and around 12% have more than 6 months of service. This leads us to understand that employees at best companies are driven to stay on board for at least 2 years or more compared to an average employee tenure of 8 months in any organisation in the UAE. In terms of benefits provided by companies, we conclude that the average best company employee receives 40 hours of training per year, 7 out of the 10 companies provide health care premiums to employees, and around 8 companies provide additional maternity leave above the statutory minimum.
While at work, employers today are trying to make the most of the employees in terms of productivity and performance. Employees want to have fun and friendly environment at their workplace. To quote an employee from Bayt.com, one of the top ten companies, “Bayt.com has a friendly environment. No stress. It makes you very comfortable to come to work every morning with a smile on your face for full day. Bayt.com staff is unique fun team. Bayt.com is a family”. An employee from Merck Serono which featured in our list says that “The unique point is the team spirit which lets me to enjoy my company too much.”
The Global Picture
In terms of global benchmarking, companies in UAE scored lowest in the area of fairness concerning distribution of fair share of profits and appropriate promotions to employees and is almost close to the US and EU benchmarks on pride dimension. An employee from Shuaa Capital - 7th ranker on our list, says “A great sense of pride in working here, in good and bad times.” Also, what organisations in the UAE need to work on is gender diversity of their workforce On an average, the ratio of men to women in an organisation’s workforce in UAE is 8:2.
In conclusion, we believe that through all our findings from these great workplaces, organisations in the UAE are inspired to become great workplaces and continue to inspire excellence in workplace cultures.
