Press release, 10.30pm Thursday 26 November, Auckland
Southern Cross Travel Insurance has been named as New Zealand’s best
workplace in the annual unlimited/JRA Best Places to Work in New
Zealand survey.
The insurance company also took out the Best Small Workplace title, after
being a finalist in that category last year.
As in previous years, iit was a hard decision judging between some high
calibre category winners to select an overall winner, but Southern Cross Travel
Insurance stood out with one of the highest performance scores recorded in the
survey’s history and a 100% response rate from its 44 staff.
“One thing you really notice about Southern Cross Travel Insurance is the
focus on hiring people with the right attitude, rather than simply hiring people
for their skills or experience,” says unlimited editor Fiona Rotherham. “And
once they are on board, CEO Craig Morrison has a strong philosophy of teamwork –
getting everyone ‘rowing the boat’ in the same direction.”
Other big names among the award finalists include the New Zealand Rugby
Union, Trade Me, Toyota, AA Insurance, Flight Centre, The Bell Tea & Coffee
Company, Overland Footwear, Barkers Mens Clothing and more. For a full list of
finalists and winners, please visit JRA's Hall of Fame.
The 35 finalists participated in what is New Zealand’s largest employee
engagement survey. In total 217 organisations employing 37,456 people took part
this year. Employees rate their organisation based on 60 questions on issues
such as culture and values, reward and recognition, communication, and learning
and development, and these answers are then analysed and collated into an
overall ‘performance index’ score for each organisation. There are four
categories to the awards, based on the number of people employed by each
organisation. There are finalists and a winner from each of the categories, and
the overall winner is chosen from the four category winners.
There’s an obvious powerful link between a good workplace with engaged
employees and financial success - Southern Cross Travel Insurance, for example,
recently recorded the best four month’s financial results in the company’s
history.
“That’s a great achievement amidst economic uncertainty. Employees who feel a
strong a sense of engagement are much more likely to ‘go the extra mile’ and
this is even more valuable in tough economic times,” says John Robertson of
workplace survey and analysis specialists, JRA, which carries out the Best
Places to Work survey.
Southern Cross Travel Insurance won the small workplace
category (20-49 employees) and was judged the overall winner. Outward
Bound Trust of New Zealand, which was the overall winner in 2007, again
won the small-medium workplace category (50-149 employees). Mars New
Zealand won the medium-large category (150-399 employees) and
Flight Centre (NZ) won the large workplace category (400+
employees) for the seventh year running.
Waitakere Enterprise and Northpower were
given Highly Commended awards for the public sector and private sector
categories respectively, based on their efforts to improve employee engagement
levels.
Many organisations use the survey results to identify aspects of their
workplace to improve and to benchmark themselves against other organisations in
their industry. This drive to continually do better is recognised by recognising
the achievements of the ‘most improved’ organisations in each category: this
year’s winners were Oasis Engineering, the Hospitality
Standards Institute, Metrowater and Livestock
Improvement Corporation.
The finalists and winners were announced at a black tie Awards Evening
at the Langham Hotel in Auckland on 26 November 2008.
