The question our employees probably get asked the most is “Is Great Place To Work really a great place to work?”. As experts in workplace culture, we aspire to be a role model for what constitutes a great workplace. We constantly reflect what a great workplace culture means to us, experiment with novel approaches such as the salary pitching process and, to make sure we’re on the right track, regularly solicit employee feedback. Like every year, we conduct the Trust Index™ employee survey internally, discuss the results with the team, celebrate our strengths and work on our challenges.

So, are we a great place to work, then? Let’s find out!

For we have chosen to share our 2023 Trust Index™ results, insights, and next steps with you. Discover in this article where we have made the most improvements (incl. what we did to get there in the past year) and what areas for improvement we have uncovered in this year’s employee survey.

Why is Asking for Employee Feedback Important?

Asking for employee feedback is more than just a corporate gesture; it's a fundamental driver of organizational success. When employees have a safe space to give feedback, they tend to be more engaged and contribute more effectively to the organization.

Organizations that prioritize employee listening, measure employee experience through employee surveys, and act upon the insights, achieve significant business benefits:

• Insights into Employee Sentiment: Surveys provide a clear window into employee feelings, attitudes, and satisfaction levels, helping employers understand the pulse of their workforce to begin with (and with regular surveys, measuring progress over time).

• Continuous Improvement: Feedback opens lines of communication between management and employees, promoting transparency and trust-building by giving the chance to address concerns openly. Surveys pinpoint specific areas that require attention, helping organizations address pain points and work on processes, better communication and culture.

• Increased Employee Engagement and Retention: By allowing employees to voice their opinions, you foster a sense of ownership and involvement, boosting overall engagement and commitment. A positive workplace culture, driven by feedback-based improvements, enhances employee retention (and attracts top talent). Employees are more likely to stay with an organization that values their opinions and takes action to create a great work environment.

• Enhanced Organizational Culture: Establishing a culture of feedback signals a collaborative environment and fuels trust. Next to identifying areas for improvement, the feedback gathered also helps spotlighting positive aspects and reinforce achievements. 

We at Great Place To Work Switzerland are convinced: asking for employee feedback helps us becoming and remaining a great place to work for everyone. And we are proud that this commitment is also reflected in our results.

First things first: What is the Trust Index™ Survey?

(if you are familiar with our Trust Model, feel free to skip this part and jump directly to our results)

Our 30 years of research has shown that a great workplace is a place where employees trust the people they work for, take pride in their work and enjoy the people they work with. Our Trust Index™ Employee Survey measures trust with 60 questions on the experienced workplace culture around 5 dimensions.

• Fairness: Employees believe that management practices and policies are fair. Equality, impartiality and justice that employees experience in the workplace are assessed.

• Credibility: Employees consider management and their leaders to be credible. The employees’ perception of the communication practices as well as the competence and integrity of management are evaluated.

• Respect: Employees feel respected by the management. How is employees’ perceptions of professional support, collaboration and participation in decision-making.

• Pride: Measures how employees feel about their own impact through their work, their pride in the work of their team and their pride in the organization as a whole.

• Camaraderie: Measures whether staff believe that their organization forms a strong community where colleagues are supportive and where everyone is pulling in the same direction.

Our For All methodology builds on the trust model by ensuring that each and every employee, regardless of who they are and what they do for the organization, has a consistently positive experience at work. To make sure that the workplace culture is really great For All, the model measures the results around 5 demographic variables (managerial level, age, gender, years of service, work status).

At the end of the survey, there are two open-ended questions (“what do you like about our culture” and “where could we get better”) to gather additional feedback. The open comments are then discussed together with the survey results.

Internal Trust Index™ Survey 2023: Our Results

As we advise our clients, we too conduct our employee feedback survey on a regular basis: Once a year we run the Trust Index™ Survey on Emprising™, where all of our employees answer the 60 questions around 5 trust dimensions.

Our internal survey results were then presented to our team during our monthly All Hands Meeting by one of our client managers. There, we had a look at the general results and compared them to last year’s results as well as the Best Workplaces™ 2023 in our size category (Best Micro Workplaces™ with 10-19 employees). Afterwards, we had a look at the statements with the biggest improvements and the statements where we fall short compared to the benchmark.

General Overview

• Survey Period: 20^th June – 4^th July 2023

• Response Rate: 100% (18 employees invited, 18 employees responded)

• Trust Index™(average of all 60 statements, measures the overall culture): 94%

• Overall Statement (single statement at the end of the questionnaire, measures the overall satisfaction with the workplace): 100%

 

With a Trust Index™ of 94% and an Overall Statement of 100% we can proudly say, we are definitely a great place to work – and even improved ourselves by 8 percent points compared to last year.

Looking at the Trust Model, 98% of our employees are convinced that our practices and policies are fair (Fairness), 90% consider management to be credible and trustworthy (Credibility), 93% perceive a high level of support, collaboration and caring (Respect), 93% are proud of their own impact through their work, in the work of our team and our organization as a whole (Pride) and 98% are convinced that we form a strong community where we support each other and where everyone is pulling in the same direction (Camaraderie).

While this is great news, we are even more proud of the statements where we were able to improve ourselves compared to last year’s results.

Our Top 3 Biggest Improvements (compared to 2022)

The areas where we improved the most, compared to last year, were at the same time our lowest statements of the whole survey in 2022. And we all agreed: we need to do something about it.

Flashback to June 2022: After having discussed all the results, we went into action planning. Like we do with our clients, we held a results-to-action workshop. Here we discussed the lower results, agreed on what was most important to us and in smaller groups, we elaborated an action plan for each of the three statements.

And it paid off: We improved by 51 percent points on average in these three statements!

Let’s get specific:

Professional Development and Beyond

"I am offered training and development to further myself professionally (+ 70 percent points)"

Over a year ago, we didn’t really have an established “program” for training and development (and we still don’t). And in the past, this hadn’t seemed to be a priority for our employees. However, with new (and younger) people joining Great Place To Work Switzerland, this apparently gained significance. So, what did we do?

First of all, we acknowledged our aspiration for a culture of continuous learning, even if we were not fully there yet. We then defined objectives and measures:

Initiative 1: Carve out time for personal learning

• Idea: Allocating a defined number of days (5) for self-learning & development (via online videos, courses onsite workshops, etc.). Additionally, everyone is allocated a budget of CHF 1000.- per business year for personal and professional growth. Afterwards, there is a short presentation or mini workshop (if applicable) to share key take aways to bring back added value.

• Timeline: Immediate

• Responsible: Self-Empowerment -> everyone is responsible for pursuing courses, dedicating time, allocating resources and presenting outcomes

• Success Metric (How do we know we are there?): The 2023 Trust Index™ survey, where we expect higher satisfaction in this domain

Initiative 2: Foster knowledge, experience and skill sharing with the team

• Idea: Conduct workshops or learning "sessions", organized by team members about something they are skilled or passionate about a particular topic. (i.e. a 3-hour session on a specific Change Management tool)

• Timeline: When feasable, ideally once a year

• Responsible: Product Owner; skill owner, under the condition that there is mutual interest

• Success Metric: Knowledge transfer accross the team

To kickstart our journey, we initiated a 30-day learning challenge, encouraging everyone to partake in online courses and really dedicate resources to personal development. Afterwards everyone was empowered to utilize the newly allocated resources for their professional enrichment.

One year later, the initiatives are still in place. What we learned is that not everyone makes use of the allocated resources (5 days and a budget of CHF 1000.-) equally. But this is fine, too, as not everyone has the same needs. And we can see, that the endorsement rate has increased by over 950%!

Elevating Our Special Benefits (and Communicating them Effectively)

"We have special and unique benefits around here (+ 45 percent points)"

Even before COVID-19, we’ve been completely flexible in terms of working hours and location. Great Place To Work covers the Halbtax and mobile phone subscription, and we even have a flexible pension plan. Alongside these, each employee receives a little birthday suprise, organized by the person whose birthday preceded theirs. Further, we have an extra goodie for anniversaries, a team bonus, which is divided fairly among all employees, and during sick leave, 100% salary is ensured. Moreover, an annual home office allowance of CHF 200 is extended to acquire essential equipment.

So, what has changed?

Since then, we’ve introduced the Swibeco Lunch Card: every employee gets a lunch card, with a monthly allowance of CHF 100.- (100% pensum). I personally use it to buy lunch on the days I’m in the office, others grab their Starbucks coffee, again others choose to have dinner with friends. We conscientiously designed it to bear symbolic significance, opting for tangible benefits over a uniform salary increase. Also, we incorporated Learning & Development resources (5 days + CHF 1000 per business year) and instituted a 40-hour work week.

While these changes certainly contributed to heightened satisfaction, it was the clear and comprehensive communication of our benefits that really made an impact. Unveiling these perks cast a new light on our offerings, making us acutely aware of the unique benefits we have in place. 

Embracing Celebrations

"People celebrate special events around here (+ 38 percent points)"

In full transparency, this is probably one of the aspects that can not be linked to one single action, but rather grew with time and is a common effort. Team members regularly send out invites for Birthday Apéros, back-to-work gatherings, we have many people volunteering to plan the Christmas Dinner or Easter Brunch.

Next to celebrating birthdays and anniversaries, we have certainly put more focus into celebrating our successes. For example, after reaching our business goal only after 9 months, we decided to go to the European Best Workplaces™ Awards in Venice with the whole team, rather than sending two or three delegates.

Looking back at the past couple of years (remember: developing your workplace culture takes time and effort, but it definitely pays off), we are very proud how our culture has developed. And yet, there are always aspects, where we could be better.

Our Fields of Action for 2023

Looking at this year’s results, we have not much to complain about. Yet, there still are some aspects, where we fall short of the benchmark of the Best Workplaces™ Micro 2023:

• Management keeps me informed about important issues and changes

• Management makes its expectations clear

• I am offered training and development to further myself professionally

Something interesting happened when we looked at these statements. We automatically began to hypothesize as to why the results could be lower in these areas. It might have something to do with our agile structure without a traditional management framework. Or maybe role expectations are not clear enough. Or perhaps we still don’t have enough development opportunities, etc.

For a moment there, we were veering from our own advice: Don’t allow lower statements to overshadow your strengths. And, after looking at the results, give yourself and your team time to step back and let it sink in before diving into action planning. And this is also what our next step is going to look like.

Before launching our survey, we already set a date for our culture workshop, which will take place on 5^th & 6^th September. There we will have a look at the results in more detail, try to find out where certain unclarities come from, work in groups and formulate an action plan how we can further improve in these areas.

Soliciting our employees’ feedback and learning from the insights stand as a cornerstone of progress. As you navigate your own journey of organizational development, we invite you to encourage feedback and actively involve your employees. Start you own transformative journey today and uncover the invaluable rewards of cultivating an empowered and thriving workplace.

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