Best company deadline looms

There is only a week left before the cut-off date of 31 May for Namibian companies who wish to take part in the Deloitte and Touche“Best Company to Work For (BCTWF)”survey 2013.
According to Sven Thieme, Executive Chairman of the Ohlthaver& List (O&L) Group of Companies who walked away with the honours in the large business category in Namibia and the SADC region last year, the BCTWF is a strategic objective assisting the company to benchmark its employment practices against best people practices in the industry. It provides the company with an objective insight on how its employees perceive and experience the company, which gives the company the opportunity to improve and exceed employee expectations.
The competition aims to identify and celebrate the best companies to work for across southern Africa as rated by their employees.  It is based on internal perception surveys conducted by the auditing firm with employees to assess staff perceptions on whether the organisation’s working climate supports business performance. The competition was launched in 2001 and extended to the SADC region in 2011and has attracted great interest from companies who wanted to determine how their employees view their performance on a variety of criteria. O&L has been participating in the survey since 2008.
In the medium size category (companies with 50 to 500 employees), the MVA Fund scooped the top award in last year’s competition.
MVA Fund’s Chief of Corporate Affairs, Stephen Tjiuoro said its HR strategy is pinned on creating a working environment that enables systematic career development. To this end, substantial emphasis is placed on fostering outstanding leadership based on continuous talent and personal development. Ultimately, the focus is on investing in employees and assisting them to acquire the skills that enable personal growth and development. To this end the BCTWF survey has played an invaluable role in gaining insight into staff needs and opinions.
Deloitte and Touche believes that whilst traditional factors such as remuneration and work-life balance remain important, recent data shows a definite shift in the things employees really value. Factors such as confidence in the organisation, operational effectiveness and job satisfaction are coming to the fore as important indicators of employee motivation and commitment.
The survey will cover both the employer (defined as all executives, including the CEO) as well as employees (randomly selected across the entire organisation) and their responses will be captured according to the following dimensions: sense of confidence in the organisation, organisational ethics and integrity, operational effectiveness, relationship with manager/supervisor, sense of inclusion in the organisation, overall job satisfaction, career development, work-life balance, performance recognition and remuneration The closing date for entries is 31 May 2013. The winners will be announced at an Awards Ceremony on 26 September this year.