Best Company Survey Results

BDO put a stake in the ground this year when it benchmarked itself as an employer of choice by participating in the Deloitte "Best Company to Work For" survey for the first time.

BDO can be extremely proud of the achievement of being ranked 15th out of 38 participants in the medium-sized company category.

Head of the BDO national HR committee, Jaco Nel, says only 15 of the 38 medium sized participants operate in the Business and Professional Services industry. "BDO was ranked 7th amongst these companies and it was, in fact, the only auditing firm to take part in the survey," he says.

An even closer inspection of the companies showed that only four in the medium category were pure Professional Services Companies, out of which BDO was placed second.

Significantly, BDO had a high response rate for the survey with 72% of BDO employees giving their input. "This is an exceptionally high response rate, which gives us a pretty accurate insight into staff perceptions of our workplace practices," says Jaco.

The survey has given BDO insight into what employees feel the company is doing well and where they feel it needs to do better. "This information is invaluable to us because it helps us better understand what our employee engagement drivers are and what they want in an employer. This enables us to find ways to enhance our brand in order to retain employees and make the company more attractive for future employees," says Jaco.

The survey measured small, medium and large size companies across several dimensions (criteria) and BDO scored highest in the values and culture (4.04), management style (3.87), job satisfaction (3.82), change management (3.78) and leadership (3.74) dimensions. "Areas that scored lower and need our attention are performance management (3.53) and rewards (3.41). Interestingly, all medium-size companies scored low on rewards and performance management, a factor that may be attributed to a lack of communication relating to these areas," he says.

Where it has scored high, BDO will leverage the opportunity to improve on its strengths and where is scored low, with the help of our employees, the company will endeavour to improve. Your comments have not fallen of deaf ears! The HR team look forward to exploring different options to improve on our employee perception and welcome any further suggestions from those who were not able to participate in the survey.

"This process has definitely provided an internal benchmark for HR in terms of how we are doing with regard to delivering our value proposition to our employees and in enabling us to align our proposition to build our employer brand. Quite frankly, I believe it is better to know how you are doing and how strong your brand is, than not to know," says Jaco.