HT Media among India’s hottest employers

HT Media Ltd, the publisher of Hindustan Times, has emerged as the top media employer in a “Great Place to Work” survey of 600 companies. Google’s India unit has topped the overall winner list of 25 for the country. The survey, part of a global series, also listed winners by 14 
categories.The recipe to make an organisation a great place to work involves three ingredients,  trust, pride and love , experts said at a function to announce those who made it to the elite list for India.
“Overall employee perception of their workplace culture has not changed significantly from 2011. While individual companies may have done well or poorly in building trust with their employees, the workplace culture in the Indian corporate landscape remains the same,”  said Prasenjit Bhattacharya, CEO, The Great Place to Work Institute, which conducts surveys worldwide to arrive at overall and sector-wise lists to choose hot employers.


The winners after this year’s  study to pick the best Indian companies to work was announced last Friday at Mumbai's Hotel Lalit at a function attended by top executives of India’s leading companies.In judging the best employers, factors such as competitive salaries, timely promotions, transparency, fair treatment and camaraderie among employees do matter, but experts said  in addition great workplaces are built through the day-to-day relationships that employees experience.

“We need to redefine the role of the manager. A positive harmony in the company is achieved when the CEO drives the company with a vision for the employees,” said Vineet Nayar, CEO, HCL Technologies.Besides the top 25 companies to work for the study points out a growing degree of maturity in organizations. Despite the current economic slowdown, reactions from both  managements and employees surveyed are different from the panic reactions witnessed in  2008 and 2009. While the best employers are conservative and are watching costs carefully, employees are not overly disturbed about not getting salary increases in high double-digits, the survey says.


Positive perceptions about workplace culture continues to be high for those in the senior management category compared with supervisory staff. Less than 7% of supervisory staff gave positive feedback.Not surprisingly, a number of companies have started turning younger. "In the last few years we have seen a number of relatively younger employees handling bigger roles. A decade ago similar roles at Godrej were handled by individuals in their 50s. Today the 30s are taking bigger roles," said Sumit Mitra, executive vice-president(corporate HR) at Godrej Industries. Godrej Consumer Products topped the fast moving consumer goods (FMCG) category and Godrej Properties ranked 14 in India's top 25 list.


The percentage of women in the work-force continues to be low. Only five of the Top 50 employed more than 40% women employees. Women constitute less than 10% of employees in seven of the Top 50. Only three of the Top 50 have more than 30%  women among their senior managers.