Easy for me to say, after all I co-founded our company and thus created the job that I have. What’s not to love? The same could be said for most business leaders that I have met. They love their jobs and their companies for various reasons that have little or nothing to do with compensation and benefits.

But what about your employees? If asked would they say that they love their jobs, the companies for which they work.


The Houston Chronicle recently published their first workplace survey ranking the Top Workplaces in Houston. The top 100 companies fell into three categories, Large (over 500 employees),

Midsize (150-499 employees) and Small (fewer than 150 employees). They represented private, public, non-profit,
government, partnership and co-operative type organizations and reflected the business landscape of Houston, energy, healthcare, financial services, legal, retail, education, insurance, construction, hotel/restaurant, consulting and banking just to name a few sectors.

Employees at all the participating companies were asked to anonymously rate their respective companies in the following six areas:


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• Direction – Assessment of the company’s values, leaders and future
• Execution – Assessment of how the company communicates, gets work done
• Conditions – Assessment of the working atmosphere and environment
• Career – Opportunity for training and progression
• Managers – Quality of the managers and their managerial skills
• Pay and Benefits – Assessment of employee compensation for the work done
  

Under each of these areas, employees were asked to respond to a series of statements using a seven point scale with seven representing strongly agree. An example statement under Direction was “I have confidence in the leader of this organization.” An example statement under Career was “I have many opportunities to learn and grow at this organization”.

Overall, the survey results indicated that of the six areas mentioned above, Direction was the most important while Pay and Benefits was the least important in determining how employees felt about their jobs and their companies. In other words, employees did not say they loved their jobs and companies because they were paid well. The company’s values and leaders were more important.

Over and over, the respondents indicated that they loved their jobs and their companies because their bosses listened to them, they felt respected for their opinions and they were encouraged to take risks.

In our business of helping business leaders succeed by helping them identify, hire and retain great talent we look for client’s who can claim to be an “employer of choice”. Having your employees provide feedback indicating how much they love their jobs and their company is the best way to lay claim to that title.

Every company on the Houston’s Top Workplace list should promote their listing and make it part of their recruiting strategy.

If you are a business leader how would your employees respond to such a survey? Would they sing your praises, tell you that they love their jobs and their company? What song are they singing when they come to work each day, Love is in the Air or Workin’ in a Coal Mine? Just in case you were wondering, the last time I walked
into our office, the song that I heard from all of our staff was “Good Morning Mister Sunshine”. Now that is love!