Pick your favourite company. You know, the one that makes you feel like a cherished customer. Talk to their employees and you will probably find a bunch of people going about their business with effortless enthusiasm.
Wavelength is such a place, and we are proud to say that we have been publicly celebrated as such through our top 20 placement on the "Best Places to Work in Australia 2015" list by the Great Place to Work Institute - to be published in BRW this week.
GPTW put entrants under significant scrutiny and the backbone of their selection process is a rigorously controlled engagement survey of employees. This makes sense - employees are the ultimate arbiters of whether their place of work is 'great'... or not!
Here are a few of our employee comments that GPTW shared with us:
“Working at Wavelength and having wonderful colleagues who are passionate about their work ... is like a dream, and probably one of the best things that has ever happened to me. It’s like I’ve gained a new family.”
“Wavelength offers an exceptional environment in which to learn new skills and enable personal progression within a niche industry. Everyone is encouraging and wants you to succeed.”
“I feel like Wave does truly have the best interests of employees at heart. You can see this just by looking around at how many Wavies have been working here for years and throughout that time have progressed in their careers.
"For me personally, I appreciate that my skills have been recognised and developed to help me progress. I know that Wavelength cares about, and invests in its employees focussing on what will best suit the individual.”
“Wavelength is a great recruitment family that’s supportive and fun.”
“Wavelength is a unique workplace with a modern outlook on how staff should be treated and managed. The business always feels like it’s moving in the right direction and you really feel included in the bigger picture.”
It makes me personally proud to read comments like this. At Wavelength, we have always put the welfare of our employees first and we do so because we know that this ultimately translates into a positive customer experience.
It's not rocket science. Happy workers inject their positivity into everything they do. They love their jobs, so they put in extra time and effort. They take pride in the quality of their work. Fundamentally, they care about their customers, which all makes good business sense. It's that simple!
Actually, it's not that simple. It takes a lot of effort to keep a workforce happy. Everyone has different needs, skill gaps, aspirations and support they require to function effectively in their role.
To look after the needs of our staff we have invested in two HR professionals in our People & Culture team - that's 1 for every 33 employees.
Most companies have no HR presence until they get to 100 staff at least and this is particularly true in the recruitment industry. Notably, we are the only recruitment firm to appear on the "Best Places To Work" list this year.
Our managers and People & Culture team hire carefully, onboard comprehensively, performance manage thoroughly, develop proactively and uphold the values and goals of the business passionately. They are busy - all the time!
We think it's worth the investment. The "Best Place to Work in Australia 2015 Award" is nice to receive, and we will have a few drinks to celebrate, but the process of creating a 'Great Place to Work' is never-ending.
Tune in next year to see if we can maintain our game...
P.S. - If you are in the recruitment business and you don't work for a GPTW perhaps it's time to give us a call.
Written by Dr John Bethell, Director Wavelength International