In today’s market, employers strive to set themselves apart from each other to recruit, hire, and retain the best employees they can. Most employers deploy a multi-faceted approach: market-leading compensation, best-in-class benefits, free meals–the list goes on. But, one thing that sets many employers apart is the title of being a “Best Place to Work.”
iSeatz has had the privilege of being recognized by both regional and national employer recognition programs for well over a decade. These awards include:
- New Orleans CityBusiness Best Places to Work for 11 of the last 12 years, including a First Place Award for our company size category in 2020 at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic
- Nola.com Top Workplaces for four consecutive years beginning in 2020, again at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic
- And most recently, in 2023, iSeatz was recognized by Inc. Magazine as a national Best Workplace
The notoriety and recognition these awards give are remarkable, but understanding the basis for the award makes it truly invaluable. While it is true that employers complete a lengthy application process to even qualify, the bulk (and in some instances all) of the scoring for these awards is based on employee survey responses collected by the awarding organization.
Employers generally have little say in what is asked in these surveys and they do not receive the results until well after scoring is underway. The results of these surveys are packed with employee feedback on a variety of topics across multiple scoring formats. In order to best understand these insights, the iSeatz People Operations team aggregates the data from each of the separate surveys into a dashboard by the following categories:
- Ambassadorship
- Recognition & Growth
- Feedback & Transparency
- Organizational Efficiency & Excellence
- Total Rewards
Once we are able to effectively identify our strengths and areas of improvement, we take the time as an organization to recognize and celebrate our wins as well as initiate our action planning process.
As part of past action plans, we have hosted company-wide culture roundtables, expanded benefit offerings, as well as developed new policies and benefit offerings to address employees needs. For many organizations, action planning generally focuses only on the areas of improvement. At iSeatz, we also use this process to build upon our strengths. These enhancements have ranged from reconfiguring our robust professional development budget as a per employee training stipend to increase utilization, all the way to releasing our Culture Manifesto, a document drafted to define what “company culture” means at iSeatz for both existing employees and interested candidates.
While there is no “one size fits all” approach to employee engagement and retention, the fact stands that an organization absolutely cannot succeed in accomplishing either without listening to their internal customers–their employees. Often, the feedback is much more valuable than any award an organization could receive.
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You can also learn more about iSeatz by reaching out to marketing@iseatz.com.