adminsector company category.
Plan International Zimbabwe, however, took the award for overall best employer for 2011.
Another non-governmental organisation, World Vision Zimbabwe, was third in the overall category, followed by Quton (Pvt) Ltd.
Ernst & Young Chartered Accountants took fifth position, while Schweppes Ltd was number six.
Securico Security Services came in at seventh place, Pearl Properties at eighth and Trust Bank Ltd took ninth position. Concluding the top 10 was Clover Leaf Motors Group.
The results of the best employer survey were derived from employee engagement surveys that are carried out by the IPC within the respective organisations countrywide.
“Employee engagement” is a business management concept that measures the degree of an employee’s positive or negative emotional attachment to their job, colleagues and organisation which profoundly influences their willingness to learn and perform at the workplace.
IPC managing consultant Mr Memory Nguwi said Zimbabwean firms needed to appreciate the importance of employee engagement, especially in the context of a difficult operating environment.
“The importance of employee engagement cannot be over-emphasised. It is magnified in the Zimbabwean context of increased competition, dwindling profit margins and, in some instances, shrinking demand.
“The challenge many organisations continue to face is increasing revenue whilst maintaining a tight rein on operating costs and price competitiveness. Maintaining price competitiveness will to a large extent depend on the buy-in of employees,” he said.
He however, noted a general improvement in employee engagement across companies.
“The National Employee Engagement result for 2011 is generally high. The result this year is 10,11 percent higher than the result for 2010 (54,15 percent).
“However, more still needs to done to improve employee engagement nationally,” he said.
Mr Nguwi said the factors of “remuneration”, and “commitment and loyalty” were low compared to other factors such as supervision, learning and development, strategic direction, communication and job design among others.
“Employee perception of ‘remuneration’ is low when compared to the other dimensions assessed. Improving overall employee engagement may also entail implementing initiatives that increase the level of ‘commitment and loyalty’ amongst employees.
“While the commitment and loyalty result of 57,98 percent is above the result for 2010 (National Commitment and Loyalty Average 2010, 42,69 percent), the result fell short of the employees perceptions of other dimensions,” he said.
He, however, hastened to add that simply increasing salaries was not a panacea to low employee engagement.
“A misconception that Zimbabwean management seem to have is that increasing salaries is the cure to low employee engagement; this notion is not necessarily true, if anything it will simply tie the organisation into a high cost structure,” said Mr Nguwi.
An analysis of the country’s labour market shows that depending on the sector and organisation employees have been making many trade-offs with employers.
For example, in some instances, some employees are increasingly trading off better remuneration demands for opportunities for learning and career development while in others the actual salary amount has become relatively less important than the employers ability to pay the salary on time.
Online Reporter