What is the secret X Factor that gives some firms the star quality to become a best company? And what can those firms that missed out on our list this year do to join the ranks of those who have clearly done enough to impress the toughest of judges – their own staff?

The competition is fierce and getting into The Sunday Times 100 Best Companies to Work For list is harder than ever. This year 868 organisations entered, with the hope of gaining a coveted place on the list, and more than 180,000 employees were surveyed to establish how positive their relationship is with their organisations.

Analysis of the data from our methodology over the past six years, which now covers more than 500,000 staff surveys, has shown that employee engagement is influenced by eight specific factors. These are:

- Leadership: how employees feel about the head of a company and the senior management team and the values they encompass.

Turning up the Heat pays off

Strong training and a sense that work is to be enjoyed add up to Heat powering past its rivals into top spot this year

Background

• Hats off to great leadership

• Getting the message across loud and clear

• Fly high with the X Factor

• Why it pays to know what you’re doing

Background

• Charity wins top small company award

• Special awards for best practice

• Rules of engagement

• 100 Best SME's to work for 2008

Multimedia

• Best Small Companies to Work For 2008

• Highlights from the awards ceremony

- Wellbeing: how employees feel about stress, pressure and the balance between their work and home life.

- My Manager: people’s feelings concerning support, trust and the care of immediate managers.

- My Team: people’s relationships with their colleagues and the culture of the firm.

- My Company: perceived feeling towards the company that employees work for.

- Personal Growth: whether staff feel challenged by their job and the development of their skills, as well as opportunities for advancement.

- Giving Something Back: how much companies are thought of by their staff for helping society and the local community in particular.

- Fair Deal: how happy employees are with their pay and benefits.

So which factor is the most important? This is the question most commonly asked by the organisations that participate. However, what they are really asking is: to best improve employee engagement, which factor should we attend to first and be focusing our resources on?

No organisation is perfect and all companies on our list need improvement in some areas. For example, the top 10 mid-sized organisations, on average, need to attend to and improve in either one or two factors. For organisations ranking between 11-100 and for those that did not make the lists this increases to paying attention to at least four factors.

The table below shows the percentages of companies identified as needing to work on issues raised by each of the eight factors. Notably, none of the top 10 firms have concerns regarding the responses to the My Company factor, indicating that their staff are strongly connected with them. However, about half of companies ranked 11-100 need to focus on employees’ feelings about them, while Wellbeing is the area most in need of attention for 72% of the businesses outside the top 10.

People are willing to put the effort in for their company, even if this means sacrificing their home life, says Dr Pete Bradon, director of research for Best Companies Ltd, but employers are failing to acknowledge the long-term effects of this.

“I suspect employees are engaged enough to go the extra mile but, unlike in the top 10 companies, these organisations are not protecting their employees from the effects of the long hours,” Bradon says.

The most significant statistical result is that Giving Something Back (GSB) and Personal Growth are the factors most commonly in need of attention. Even among the top 10 best companies, three of them would benefit from focusing more on their employees’ personal growth. Four of them need to pay attention to giving something back.

In many instances, the low scores for GSB are not due to companies failing to give something back. Rather, it is that they are failing to communicate their successes in this area to staff. The survey returns from dozens of companies, across the big, mid-sized and small companies’ competitions, bear this out. So how can a firm prevent this happening?

“Any recommendation from me will always include employee involvement. Engaging people in giving something back has an amazing impact,” says Bradon. “It’s no good for a company to say we’re giving this amount of money to this charity if it doesn’t involve its people.”

One organisation where employees clearly are involved is Hydrock, which has won a special award this year for Giving Something Back (see pages 8-9). Hydrock staff sign up to the firm’s environmental policy from day one. Allowances are given towards the purchase of bicycles for commuting, car sharers are given priority in the staff car park and people are encouraged to bring in household plastic if domestic recycling is not available.

Bradon also recommends that companies focus on supporting local organisations. “Employees really value support going back into their own communities, it involves them personally,” he says.

Personal growth is another area of concern for most staff. Bradon warns, however, that this does not mean employers should simply force people to go on training courses because “it’s company policy”. Once again, engagement and communication are key. “Start a conversation about what people want to learn,” he advises. “Engage them and involve them in the choice. Employees can be trusted to know what new or enhanced skills will benefit them and their organisation the most.”

Wider training opportunities can also be great motivators. “Educated people work better,” Bradon says. “If employees want classes in meditation, or origami for that matter, and it gives them peace of mind and benefits the company, why not go beyond the remit?” Evidence accumulated over the past six years shows that all eight of our workplace factors have a key influence on workplace engagement. There is no one magic factor that guarantees success, and which factors demand attention will be different for each business.

To help organisations, Best Companies Ltd has produced benchmarked scores for each factor. A factor is only recommended for remedial attention by an organisation if: Its score in that factor falls beneath the benchmark for the factor among top organisations; and The factor score in question also falls beneath the individual company’s average score across all eight workplace factors.

So, the question: “Which factor is the most important?” is redundant. The only valid question is: “Which factor is the most important for my company?” And no two answers will be the same.

To help decide, Best Companies Ltd has a new free Workplace Insight Tool benchmark, available online for companies that have participated in the surveys, against which to compare scores.

“Aside from the Giving Something Back and Personal Growth factors, look at your own data, because the recommendations for your company are bound to be different from the one down the road,” Bradon says. “We’ve given companies a benchmark on each of the factors, along with their scores, so that they can identify which of the eight areas are most in need of development.”

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