Employer FAQ’s

The Local Employer Awards is an opportunity for medium size businesses to participate in a program that involves employees completing an employee engagement survey. The results of the survey will help employers to understand their employees, help employees to have a voice, and enable the community to recognise the Best Employers in the area.

What types of organisations can take part in the Awards?

The Awards are open to all organisations with a minimum of 20 employees, and is aimed primarily at medium sized organisations with less than 500 employees. To be eligible for an Award within a specific area, a minimum of 50% of the organisation’s employees must normally work in that area. A minimum of 15 people or 50% of employees (whichever is greater) must complete the survey for the organization to be eligible for an award.

What are the benefits to Employers?

By just participating, you will demonstrate to your employees that you are committed to making sure they are happy and engaged at work. Furthermore you will gain valuable insights into the key areas that influence employee commitment and engagement. Dedicated and engaged staff are more productive, and retaining key talent is vital in an environment where the cost and availability of suitable replacements can be a significant challenge.

Attaining a Best Local Employer Award will demonstrate to your employees and potential job candidates that you have created one of the most desirable workplaces in your area. Best Employers will also strengthen their brand with customers, who often prefer to deal with socially responsible organisations. Your organisation will also receive extensive media attention creating a significant opportunity for you to promote your brand throughout the local area.

Who is managing the process?

The process is being run by TalentDrain, employee engagement and retention specialists.

Why has TalentDrain been chosen to run this scheme?

TalentDrain is committed to establishing as much information as possible about employee engagement, and making this information available to the organisations that can benefit from this. Running these awards will establish a significant amount of data for benchmarking purposes and increase the levels of knowledge relating to employee engagement for medium sized organisations, contributing substantially to research in this area.

Is there a cost to participate in the Local Employer Awards?

The Local Employer Awards aims to bring the insights and focus on people related needs to medium sized organisations who would not typically be able to afford to pay the $5000 + to conduct this type of survey on their own. Participating in the awards programme costs between $250 and $1000 + GST depending on the size of your organisation.

All participating organisations will receive an engagement score and a comparison with benchmark data, as well as a summary report which lists the areas where the organisation is performing well, and areas that could be improved. For an additional $500+GST, you will also receive a detailed report with an analysis of all the data collected as part of the survey including the open ended comments. Paper based invitations will incur an additional administrative charge of $2.00 each, plus postage.

How is the initiative being funded?

The setup costs of the initiative are being funded by contributions from the sponsors and by TalentDrain who are providing their time and the survey tools. As the same survey is being used by all participants, the relative cost per organization is much lower than if surveyed separately. Typically, this kind of survey and analysis would cost an organisation $5,000 or more if they were doing it on their own, so even if several detailed reports are purchased, this still represents a significant saving.

Can we have reports broken down by organisational unit?

As the standard survey is the same for all participating organisations, a breakdown of the data by areas within a specific organisation is only possible if additional configuration is undertaken for that organisation. If this is required, an organisational specific version of the demographics section of survey can be provided, including customised email invitation, for $1500+ GST. Please discuss any special requirements when registering to participate.

Entry and Survey Process

How does our organisation enter the Local Employer Awards?

The first step is to register interest by filling in the registration form. This must be done by the organisations owner, Director or person with delegated authority to give us permission to work with the nominated point of contact to administer the process.

What happens after our organisation has registered interest?

Your nominated co-ordinator will be contacted by a member of the TalentDrain team who will explain the participation process in detail.

How is the survey managed and circulated?

The nominated co-ordinator at your organisation will need to provide TalentDrain with contact details of each employee; first name, last name and email address or postal address for those without access to email. Those without access to email must be able to access the internet to complete the survey online. Once the survey process has commenced in your area, TalentDrain will invite employees via email or post to participate. The survey will run for approximately three weeks at a time.

How long will the survey take to complete?

The survey will take approximately 10 minutes to complete

Are the responses treated in confidence?

The data we receive will remain absolutely confidential and no individual responses will be reported without the prior consent of the participant. Please refer to our website www.talentdrain.com.au/legal/privacy.asp

When is the deadline for entries?

See details for your area in the employers section of the website.

When does the survey close?

See details for your area in the employers section of the website.

Judging Process

What are the assessment criteria to determine how the awards are allocated?

There are ten key statements in the survey that employees agree or disagree to which relate to the following areas of engagement and commitment

The degree to which people are motivated to work hard for the organisation
The extent to which they are prepared to recommend the organisation to others
The extent to which the values of the organisation are aligned with the employees (ie whether they have a sense of belonging and how proud the employee is to work there)

The criteria for Best Local Employer is primarily based on a scoring system for the these statements.

In addition to the above, the Survey has 46 statements that the employees also agree or disagree to. These statements relate to the extent to which the organisation meets the needs of employees in areas known to influence engagement and commitment across five broad categories:

The job
The organisation
The people
The transaction (eg salary and rewards)
The working environment

Further details can be found on the Awards Categories page.

Who has access to the data to determine the winners?

Throughout the judging process the information contained in the survey data will only be accessible to TalentDrain consultants all of whom adhere to TalentDrain’s privacy statement. To protect your privacy throughout the judging process we will not provide any information whatsoever about your entry to anyone other than your nominated contact person as specified when registering for the Awards.

How will the organisation be notified if they have received an Award?

All organisations will be sent the summary report via their nominated contact person within 4 weeks of the survey closing. Each organisation will be informed at this time if they have been selected as a finalist in any of the award categories.

How is the information regarding Winners disclosed?

All winners will be notified at the Awards Evening.

What if your organisation does not receive any Awards?

We do not publish the names of organisations that have not been selected as finalists for an Award. Therefore if you enter the Awards and are not successful, this will remain confidential.

How and when will Winners receive their Awards?

There will be an Awards Evening held in August 2010 to honour the recipients of all the Awards.

Is the Awards Evening only open to Local Employer Award Finalists?

No, all organisations that participated in the scheme will be invited to attend and will have the opportunity to network with other local organisations and the Award Sponsors.

Is there a cost to attend the Awards Evening?

Yes, this will be a ticketed event for all organisations that participated in the Local Employer Awards, as well as press, sponsors and other business and community leaders.

Additional support following the survey

Can TalentDrain help us understand and act on the results?

Your results will be provided in an easy to read report, which summarises the main findings including areas of strength and areas to improve. Workshops and business support service will also be available through a range of service providers to help you understand where to focus and how and where to implement improvements.

Please review our FAQ’s carefully, but if you have any further questions please phone 02 9905 9735 and one of the TalentDrain consultants will be able to assist you. Alternatively send an email to info@localemployerawards.com.au