What Makes India's Top 25 Workplaces Stand Out? Discover HR Practices That Set Them Apart

Great Place to Work (GPTW) Institute, India (www.greatplacetowork.in) and Economic Times conducted the Best Workplaces 2008 study in India, the fifth study in India. This Best Workplace study is the oldest and most widely used. The Institute has researched and promoted the concept of Great Places to work for over 25 years and is now present in 40 countries including the US and UK.

The study uses a unique employee-centric methodology and measures the levels of Trust, Pride, and Camaraderie prevalent in the organization. Workplaces are ranked on a point scale based on both quantitative and qualitative data, with 2/3 of the score stemming from an employee survey and the balance 1/3 of the score from a management survey and the supplementary material that organizations provide. The employee survey comprises 59 rating statements and two open-ended questions. The management survey comprises two parts. Part I requests detailed information about company structure, ownership, demographics of the employee population, and benefits offered, and Part II comprises open-ended questions on issues like internal communications, distinctive workplace practices, employee recognition programs, and workplace governance.

The 2008 study spanned over six months. It involved more than 200 participating firms, surveyed 36,000 employees, of which more than half gave additional written comments.

To avoid potential conflicts of interest, GPTW Institute, India, as a policy, does not engage in any consulting work with any of the companies that feature in our Best Workplaces List until they continue to feature in the List.

The attached file contains comprehensive information collected from the Edition published in The Economic Times on May 19, 2008.

I have compiled all the points which are the best practices followed in the top companies in India to work with.

These points will be a valuable guide to every HR professional.

Let us implement the same in our organization and make our organization the best place to work...

Kindly share your valuable feedback and thoughts.

Hi,

Thank you for sharing such a useful post. I appreciate it. I am interested in implementing some practices in my organization during the initial phase.

One practice I would like to prioritize is the concept of "Member not Employee."

Best regards,
Shree

Fantastic. Believe it or not, I was planning to send this article to my management so that we can work on the employer-employee relationship. I have the Economic Times article with me and was trying to condense the whole thing. Your article has helped me a lot. Thanks.

Thank you, Peer Saab!

From what I understand about HR, the points shared in the list are about the culture of an organization. While every organization will have its own unique culture, the article hints at traits that should be part of an organization's culture. I am working in an organization, of course having its own culture, traits, and practices. We want to have the traits and practices mentioned in the article in our organization. In my opinion, it is difficult to introduce them into an existing organization than in a new setup. I would appreciate it if someone could share how they introduced change in the culture and its traits in their respective organization.

- Hiten

Dear Mr. Sardhar,

The points listed out make for interesting reading, but how many MNCs actually implement the above? Is this the reason why these companies functioning in India are graded below those abroad? I feel that many of the points can be extended to the vendors as well - such as handling, maintenance, security, etc. I have noticed that they are often treated as the "OBCs" of the industry - please correct me if I am wrong.

Regards,
Col. Jude

Thanks, I am in an organization that is framing its HR policy. This post is a great resource. Can someone also send the ET article of 19th May? Thanks.

Sunil K

Hi Peer Mohammed,

Thank you for the detailed insight on the best-of-the-breed companies rated as Great Places to Work. It would be a really useful reference guide for HR professionals who are involved in HR policy framing and implementation for their companies.

Regards,
Aravind

Dear all,

Crores of employees work in millions of companies in India. Of this, if you take a sample of 200 firms and choose 36,000 employees, and take the rating of the top 50. Is it not ridiculous? The sample size is too small considering the immensity of India's workforce. As far as my limited knowledge is concerned, I can deduce that 99.99% of companies don't follow 75 standards out of the 108 mentioned in the list.

Dinesh V Divekar

Dear all,

Crores of employees work in millions of companies in India. Of this, if you take a sample of 200 firms and choose 36,000 employees, and take the rating of the top 50, is it not ridiculous? The sample size is too small considering the immensity of India's workforce. As far as my limited knowledge is concerned, I can deduce that 99.99% of companies don't follow 75 standards out of the 108 mentioned on the list.

- Dinesh V Divekar

Well, I found an HR person who thinks practically; otherwise, all other HR professionals became too happy with themselves after reading this post. The truth is the opposite.

Even I have observed that there is a significant difference between following a standard and merely stating in writing that we follow this standard. Most companies only claim that they follow some standards.

Hi,

I have been observing and reading your postings. You have great ideas. The activities mentioned are valuable to implement in order to keep the organization at greater heights. Only then will people love to work and contribute.

Suresh

Dear Peer,

Thx for the efforts that you have put in to capture the list of best practices from ET. This is really helpful for all the organizations who are struggling to figureout what can be done more for better work culture and employee moral apart from giving more money.. :)..

Per me, for retention any Top management will approve something which is not linked with compensation and I find there are few which can be implemented immediately by any organization. I didn't see this in ET, but I'm lucky to see in this forum.. Thx.. Peer.

Following are few, which we found to retain good employees:

- Supervisor's Leadership Skills
- Good compensation & benefits package
- Proper Performance Management System
- Clarity on reporting structure (Org Chart)
- Roles and Responsibility clarity
- Learning new skills and growth opportunity (Job rotation)
- Recognition for a job well done (Good Performers to be awarded)
- CEO vision on short and long term goals and objectives of Organization
- Organization's Business & Financial update
- Proper planning & process – Lots of uncertainty in daily task allocation
- Good Human Resource Policies
- Professional Workplace
- Employee Engagement Activities
- Employee support in tough time or personal crisis
- Provide an environment of trust


Cheerz,
Pradeep

Hi,

Thanks for the information. It's excellent research done by you. I will be implementing a few practices in my organization. Employees should not be treated as workers but as a part of the organization.

Hi, I am working with one of the Tata Group companies. We celebrated the months of May and November as Employee Engagement months. Some activities as part of the Employee Engagement Program are carried on throughout the whole year. One activity that was carried out only in these two months was a Quiz program. For the HR group, a question (puzzles, riddles, general awareness) is sent out daily in the morning to all the officers. Some humorous text is written along with the question. Then, we had prizes for all locations.

Trust me, we got a very good response. Everybody across all levels would eagerly wait for the question of the day. The purpose is just to divert everyone's mind for a few minutes from their routine work.

Peer,

I am new to this forum and found your article to be very useful. This would help me in my summer project for planning rewards and recognition for my company.

Thanks again,
Sangeetha

Dear All,

We too have an employee-friendly organization with a lot of focus on developing talent. We came out with a focused program for women to increase diversity - something which was replicated all across the company. However, despite all our efforts, we find that the female diversity in senior management is still very low. Can you suggest ways in which we can create focused interventions to help improve the diversity ratio, especially in senior management?

Hi, I have to take a seminar on corporate planning practices in India. Can you provide me with some information on that? It's a bit urgent. Thank you.

It is a really commendable effort on your part for compiling and posting. Please continue this for the benefit of the HR fraternity.

Regards,
B. Ravichandiran