- Aon recently announced the 12 organisations that head their Best Employers in Malaysia list for 2018, with DHL Express coming out as the number one company.
- These companies were rated based on a number of factors including employee engagement, leadership, branding, and performance culture.
Just yesterday, London-based Aon—a professional services company dealing in risk, retirement, and health solutions—released the 2018 edition of their annual list of Best Employers in Malaysia, with 12 organisations singled out for high employee engagement, effective leadership, compelling employer branding, and high performance culture ratings.
The program began in the Asia Pacific region in 2001, and aside from Malaysia, also runs in nine other markets in the region including Australia, China, India, Japan, and Singapore among others. Additionally, industries included in the overall ratings are varied, ranging from finance to logistics all the way to F&B and pharmaceuticals.
In this year’s list, the 12 picked out were given the Best Employer rating, with the leader among them earning the Best Of The Best Employers. Here they are in order:
- DHL Express (Malaysia) Sdn Bhd – Best of The Best Employers
- Agilent Technologies LDA Malaysia Sdn Bhd
- American Express (Malaysia) Sdn Bhd
- Eco World Development Group Berhad
- Federal Express Services (M) Sdn Bhd
- Gerbang Alaf Restaurants Sdn Bhd
- Hartalega
- S P Setia Berhad
- SkyWorld Development Sdn Bhd
- Sunway Building Materials Group
- Sunway Hotel (Georgetown) Penang
- Sunway IT Shared Services Centre
Engagement Is Top Priority
For some further insight into how these companies managed to pull ahead of the rest, Aon revealed in a detailed score breakdown some of the metrics that were considered in the overall ratings.
According to Aon, these metrics represent key components of the overall employee lifecycle—all defining moments of the employee’s experience with an organisation, from before they join until the day they leave.
In the insight report, Aon highlighted engagement as the strongest measure of the employee experience, with their Best Employer winners scoring 87% compared to the industry average of 63%.
Here, it was also stated that 86% of those employed by these companies felt confident about their feedback being seriously considered and acted upon (compared to an industry average of 66%). 75% of them effectively held their leadership and management accountable for the outcomes of their decisions.
Next up, the report also pointed towards a compelling company vision, with 87% of employees within the list of Best Employers agreeing that their senior leadership provided them with a clear sense of direction, 30 points higher than the industry average.
This also complements the high levels of satisfaction from being appreciated, with 79% of employees acknowledging that they received appropriate recognition for their contributions in their workplace, 27 points higher than the average.
Finally, the report also noted that despite half of the list of Best Employers going through major corporate changes such as mergers and acquisitions or new leadership, they still managed strong fiscal performances, with a robust 15% on-average revenue increase (compared to the 3.88% overall market average), and a healthy 7.8% on-average profit hike (compared to the 1.08% overall market average).
Speaking on these findings, Prashant Chadha, Managing Direct of Talent, Rewards, and Performance for Aon in Malaysia and Philippines hinted that companies today would be wise to pay close attention to these facets of the employee experience, especially in this period of time.
“Changes in the economic and political landscape of the country have created additional complexity, requiring businesses to be agile and to focus on reduced time-to-market—agile businesses must be supported by agile HR,” he said.
“Best Employers harness these dynamic times by focusing on people practices that fuel collaboration, regular reflection, and rapid course correction, thereby driving business performance.”
Here’s a fleshed-out list of statistics from the report:
| Category | Details |
| External Employer Brand | 67% of Best Employers have documented value proposition for potential employees (market average, 44%)
86% of employees at Best Employers feel their organisation is attracting the right people (market average, 55%)
90% of employees at Best Employers believe their organisation has an excellent reputation among its community (market average, 71%) |
| Candidate Experience | 83% of Best Employers effectively include interviewing skills training for hiring managers as a part of their recruitment process (market average, 60%)
88% of employees at Best Employers consider their job to be a good fit (market average, 76%) |
| Onboarding | 92% of Best Employers include interaction and spending time with senior leaders and assigning a mentor/buddy as a part of their employee onboarding process (market average, 64%)
Average engagement score of new hires (<1 year tenure) at Best Employer organisations is 85% (market average, 64%)
92% of newly hired employees at Best Employers feel proud to be part of the organisation (market average, 80%) |
| Employer Brand Credibility | 67% of Best Employers have a formal documented Employee Value Proposition and implement it in all HR policies and programmes (market average, 48%)
88% of employees at Best Employers can clearly explain what makes working different in their organisation compared to anywhere else (market average, 68%)
84% of employees at Best Employers trust their organisation to deliver on its employee promise (market average, 56%) |
| Change Readiness | 92% of Best Employers consider managing change within the organisation critical to organisation’s strategy, plan and organisation design (market average, 80%)
85% of employees at Best Employers feel their senior leadership fills them with excitement for the future of the organisation (market average, 55%) |
| Culture | 92% of Best Employers define their organisation culture in alignment to their organisation’s strategic objectives (market average, 64%)
83% of Best Employers focus on measuring current state of organisation culture to ascertain the gap with required culture (market average, 68%) |
| Employee Engagement | Average engagement score for Best Employers is 87% (market average, 63%)
86% of employees at Best Employers feel confident about survey results being acted upon (market average, 66%)
75% of Best Employers effectively hold their leadership and people managers accountable for outcomes of action plans (market average, 48%) |
| Specific Pings | 58% of Best Employers regularly measure engagement improvement (market average, 44%) |
| Performance Management | 83% of Best Employers measure business and people impact of their performance management process (market average, 64%)
84% of employees at Best Employers trust their manager to provide regular feedback allowing them to improve their performance (market average, 65%)
85% of employees at Best Employers believe there is an effective process to help them identify their development needs (market average, 59%) |
| Rewards & Benefits | 75% of Best Employers ensure maximising the value of benefits for each individual, while minimising costs for the organisation (market average, 48%)
79% of employees at Best Employers trust for being paid fairly for their contributions towards the organisation’s success (market average, 52%)
86% of employees at Best Employers feel that their organisation’s benefit plan meets their needs well (market average, 61%) |
| Wellness | 67% of Best Employers evaluate health and wellbeing programmes through improvement in organisational employee health risk (market average, 44%)
89% of employees at Best Employers believe that their current state of health allows tthem to perform their job very effectively (market average, 77%) |
| Workspace | 92% of Best Employers include design considerations for the physical workspace in organisation’s strategy, plan and organisation design (market average, 60%)
90% of employees at Best Employers believe that their organisation is socially and environmentally responsible (market average, 72%) |
| Exit | 50% of Best Employers capture employee feedback through exit interviews (market average, 24%)
84% of employees at Best Employers believe their organisation is retaining the people they need to achieve their business goals (market average, 55%)
Employees at Best Employers are more willing to stay with their organisation as compared to market (Best Employer average 81% vs market average 57%) |
- You can find out more about Aon’s Best Employer programme and how to participate here.
Feature Image Credit: Retail News Asia