Employers: You Should Want to Work for You Too!

Coming up with ways to entice your employees to want to work for your company is a challenge. It means reviewing, and often revamping, your recruitment and retention policies, compensation packages, and diversity programs. But it also means asking yourself, as an employer, a question that is at once simple and complex: Do you want to work for your company?

Asking yourself this question (and answering honestly!) is the first step to becoming an Employer of Choice. After all, if you don’t want to work for your company how can you expect your employees to want to?

While some employers will answer the above question with a straightforward ‘yes’ or ‘no’, many will find themselves on the fence hemming and hawing. This invariably leads to more questions: Why do I like working for this company? Is it because of an excellent compensation package? Or is it a combination of benefits ranging from a health and wellness policy to flex hours, casual dress, and a year-end bonus?

Conversely, you may be asking yourself: What can be improved? What programs and policies are outdated? What are my competitors doing that I am not? How can I revamp my recruitment and retention policies?

Here’s the good news: Saskatchewan now has a program for tourism employers that will not only assist you in answering these questions, but also will provide you with the tools and resources you need to improve those areas in your organization that you may find lacking.

There are two major components to the Employer of Choice program, which is designed to assist tourism businesses across the province in attracting and retaining staff by providing employers with the tools and resources to engage in best practices, increase staff training, improve organizational human resources practices, and be recognized as a leader in the tourism sector.

The first is a comprehensive questionnaire that covers the seven functional areas of human resources: staffing; learning, training and development; compensation; employee and labour relations; professional practice; organizational effectiveness; and occupational health and safety.

The second is an employee opinion survey. All participating employers are asked to encourage a minimum of 25% frontline and 25% managerial staff to participate in an employee opinion survey. The survey allows for areas of excellence to be identified, shows which practices employees appreciate most, and enables employers to build on success.

Although the results of the employee opinion survey will not determine whether your business is successful in obtaining an Employer of Choice designation, the results will provide you with valuable feedback about how your recruitment and retention activities and training initiatives are perceived by employees.

In the 2010 program, four tourism operators in Saskatchewan were recognized as Employers of Choice, including the Days Inn, Regina; Gold Eagle Lodge, North Battleford; Prairieland Park, Saskatoon; and Radisson Hotel, Saskatoon.

Granted these are all larger organizations, participating employers from small businesses have said the program is not only providing direction on how to implement their own human resources plans, but also has reinforced their belief that human resources planning is essential.

Likewise, managers at larger organizations have indicated that the directional approach of the program is filling in the missing gaps in established human resources plans.

Regardless of business size, all participating employers expect that the program and the Employer of Choice designation will generate well-deserved recognition on their behalf as leaders in human resources development in the tourism sector.

How can your organization gain a competitive edge? Become a better employer. Become an Employer of Choice.

The 2011 program opened on May 1 and runs until November 30, 2010. To register, visit http://www.steceoc.com/.

To learn more about the Employer of Choice program, click here.