How to become certified as a Great Place to Work

Competing in today’s fast-moving, challenging world involves a relentless focus on continuous improvement. Whether you are well ahead of your competitors or wish to build a greater sense of urgency in your organisation, a willingness to learn from best practice is essential. Why repeat the mistakes of others when there is an opportunity to use tried and tested solutions?

The Great Place To Work Certification Programme is a three-year framework designed to build and sustain a high-performance culture in any organisation. Learning from the Best Workplaces around the world, the methodology provides the tools and techniques which are known to deliver. A clear plan with defined milestones and priorities is essential to managing the change you wish to see in your organisation. The certification standard also provides many employer branding opportunities to compete for the best talent in the context of (almost) full employment.

An organisation wishing to achieve the standard is awarded marks for demonstrating how its human resource practices help (i) deliver on the organisation’s objectives, (ii) enable high performance, (iii) encourage efficient coordination of human effort. These principles are core to the standard and enable any organisation to get the best return on its investment in its people. The Great Place To Work Institute benchmark an organisation’s human-resource systems against best practice and survey all of their employees.

How to become Great Place To Work Certified

There are four steps involved:

1. Apply to the Institute, where a dedicated client-relationship manager will be appointed to guide you through the process and schedule key dates for the programme.

2. Submit a ‘stocktake’ of your HR practices, demonstrating how they help to deliver on your organisational objectives, enable people performance, and unite the organisation, using a Great Place to Work™ template. This stocktake will be benchmarked by the Institute against a predefined standard, which is the first criterion.

3. The Institute will survey all your people, using a robust and established methodology that captures employee sentiment across a number of business-critical categories. If seven out of 10 colleagues have a high-trust relationship with your organisation, the second criterion will be met.

4. The final criterion requires the organisation to demonstrate it is on a continuous improvement path by making a minimum three-year commitment to establishing a high-trust culture, listening to employee feedback, and embedding practices that enable all colleagues to do their best work.

The Institute will meet with your senior team and deliver insights that are critical to the performance of the organisation, including extensive benchmarking. If all criteria have been met, your organisation will be certified as a Great Place to Work™. This recognition includes publication on our website, and in partner media such as The Irish Times.

Jim Flynn is an occupational psychologist and partner at the Great Place To Work Institute

Certified organisations 2017-2018

Osborne

Bristol-Myers Squibb Biologics, Cruiserath

Regeneron

SAP

Zenith Technologies

Goodbody

AbbVie Ireland

LotusWorks

Electric Ireland

Radio Systems PetSafe Europe Ltd

Ibec

Tesco Ireland Ltd

Science Foundation Ireland