Canada’s Best Employers Measure Employee Engagement, Hewitt Says

Somewhat overshadowed by Fortune‘s list of the 100 Best Companies to Work For released earlier this month is a smaller survey that took place among our neighbors to the north.

Hewitt Associates says the companies named to its 50 Best Employers in Canada list earned their spots because of high employee engagement.

Hewitt says 77% of employees are engaged at a typical Best Employer, compared with 55% at other organizations that participated in the study.

Hewitt defines “engagement” as measuring the state of emotional and intellectual involvement or commitment of the workforce, not only creating happy or loyal employees. Hewitt surveyed more than 100,000 Canadian employees at nearly 120 organizations.

On average, the Best Employers all share the following traits:

Low voluntary turnover rates. For the best companies, the rates are 9.4% for full-time employees and 22.4% for part-timers, compared with 12.4% and 33.6%, respectively, for other organizations in the 2007 study.
Easier time attracting new employees. The 50 Best Employers receive an average of 47 applications for every externally posted job opening, compared with an average of 30 applications received by the 50 lowest-ranked participants in this year’s study.
Better financial platform. Employee engagement benefits a company’s bottom line, the study suggests, with the top-20 publicly traded Best Employers experiencing an average compound annual growth rate in net sales over five years of 12.9%, compared with 4.9% for those publicly traded companies among the 20 lowest-ranked study participants.