HOW WE FOUND 'THE BEST EMPLOYERS'

Business Today (Edition: January25, 2009)

The approach… This is the fifth year that the BT-Mercer-TNS team has conducted the survey to identify the Best Companies to Work For in India. The response was overwhelming with strong participation from a cross-section of industries. The core of how the study was done remains the same: we invited companies to participate, gathered data, contacted various stakeholders for feedback, and finally, analysed and ranked the Top 10 companies to work for in the country.

The unique tripartite approach to the survey continues to work successfully. Mercer defines the selection criteria, provides knowledge management support and result analysis, and proposes the ranking order. TNS coordinates all front-end interfaces with the participants through the study web site as well as through regular interaction. All the company-specific information is communicated to Mercer in coded formats. This arrangement ensures that Mercer, at no point and time, gets to know the company names till the final rankings are proposed, thereby avoiding any possibility of conflict of interest and bias. There are four stages to the study:

Study launch and registration: Business Today announced the study for 2008 through an article in its May 2008 issue. Interested companies were asked to register through the survey site, keeping in mind the eligibility criteria of four years of operations in the country and 200 white-collar employees. The eligibility criteria ensured a threshold level of complexity in people management based on headcount, as well as a degree of stabilisation of the processes based on the age of the organisation.

Data collection: The methodology was the same as the previous year. The initial contact with registered companies was established through a company overview questionnaire, through which the participants provided financial information, manpower statistics, demographic data, and the contact details for its employees, alumni, campuses etc. In the next step, the HR representative of the company was contacted and a comprehensive HR process and policy review questionnaire was handed to them so as to gain an insight into their human resource management policies and practices.

Data analysis: The company information on each of the above was collected by TNS in predefined formats and given unique company codes. This coded information was then given to Mercer for analysis. The Mercer team carried out the analysis of the responses across the four quadrants based on the company data. This analysis was conducted only for the top quartile of companies which received the highest scores on the internal employee perception questionnaire.

Scores and proposed rankings: The analysis of the company information resulted in scores on a 100-point rating scale for the four quadrants of the study. HR metrics were evaluated based on the complexity of the people management agenda, nature of industry, investments in people processes, including training and development, attrition, robustness of the budgeting processes and career velocity.