Definition of a Great Workplace™
When people think of a Great Workplace™, they often picture an organisation with lavish perks, fancy parties and amazing benefits. While those elements are present in many of the well-known Best Workplaces™, the definition of a Great Workplace™ goes far deeper than perks and benefits. In fact, at its core, a Great Workplace™ is about the level of trust that employees experience in their leaders, the level of pride they have in their jobs, and the extent to which they enjoy their colleagues.
While trust, pride and camaraderie are far more challenging to sustain than a great set of perks, they are all attainable by any organisation willing to work on them.
Thirty years of research and experience have enabled us to define what it means to be a Great Workplace™, to understand how to measure the trust in the workplace, and how to help any organisation become a great workplace. Whether through our Certification Program or our Culture Consulting services, Great Place to Work® has the tools you need to assess and improve your workplace culture according to the global standard of greatness. As a result, your organisation —and your employees—can achieve their full potential and drive performance to new heights.
Two perspectives to establish organisational development
Trust Index© - Employee survey
From the perspective of Employees, a Great Place to Work® is an organisation where you trust the people you work for, have pride in what you do and enjoy the people you work with. We measure these criteria by conducting an employee survey.
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Culture Audit© - Analysis of programs
From the Managers perspective, a Great Place to Work® is an organisation where organisational objectives are being achieved, with employees who give their personal best and with people who work together as a team/family in an environment of trust.
Read moreOur History
1980 - 1990
Great Place to Work® began with an unexpected discovery. In 1981 a New York editor asked two business journalists Robert Levering and Milton Moskowitz to write a book called The 100 Best Companies to Work for in America. Though the pair were skeptical they could find 100 companies that would qualify, they agreed, starting a journey that would lead to more than 25 years of researching, recognising, and building great workplaces. What was the core insight uncovered by the extensive research? It was that the key to creating a great workplace was not a prescriptive set of employee benefits, programmes and practices, but the building of high-quality relationships in the workplace; relationships characterised by trust, pride, and camaraderie. These relationships weren't a 'soft' activity, but key drivers that help improve an organisation's business performance. The role of trust in the workplace became core not only for that first, pioneering 1984 book, but its 1988 sequel, A Great Place to Work®: What makes some employers so good and most so bad.
1990 - 2000
These insights led to the founding of the Great Place to Work® Institute. Business leaders around the world adopted the Institute's models and methodology as a valuable way to measure and create great workplaces. In 1997, FORTUNE (in the United States) and Exame (in Brazil) partnered with the Institute's research arm to produce the world's first '100 Best Companies to Work For' workplace rankings. Great Place to Work® came to Belgium in 2003. Today, our clients include some of the most prestigious organisations.
2000 - 2018
In 2002, the European Commission engaged Great Place to Work® to initiate a government-sponsored Best Companies list competition in 15 European countries as part of their strategy to create successful businesses, desirable workplaces, and thriving economies and communities throughout Europe. Great Place to Work® gradually opened doors in 45 countries around the world with more growth slated in the coming years.
Today
Today, Great Place to Work® Institute partners with many of the most successful and innovative businesses around the world to create, study, and recognise great workplaces. During the course of a typical year, Great Place to Work® works with more than 10.000 organisations, representing over 10 million employees. These partnerships continually build our unique expertise, including our multi-industry workplace culture benchmarking and best practice databases. Our premiere Best Workplaces lists are published or distributed by market-leading news media around the world, to an audience of more than 25 million readers. The combination of this direct advisory work and media coverage is all core to how we create a better society by helping companies transform their workplaces.
More than 50 Great Place to Work® offices worldwide
The Great Place to Work® Institute conducts research and recognizes leading workplaces in more than 50 countries on different continents. Based on results of surveys representing over 10 million employees around the globe, these best workplaces' competitions form the basis of the world's largest and most respected set of studies of workplace excellence, management and the role of trust in workplace culture.
The international character of Great Place to Work® implies that we, the institute in Belgium, can facilitate research within multinational organisations. The advantage of this international collaboration is a continuity in methods, lower costs due to efficiency, benchmark possibilities and recognition of good employership on national and worldwide level.
Great Place to Work® in Belgium
In 2002, the European Commission integrated Great Place to Work® in Europe, to make sure good employership was being stimulated. The Belgium establishment was being founded in 2003. The Great Place to Work® team in Belgium, with as its official partner Vlerick Business School, has a clear mission: to help companies to create and maintain great workplaces through the development of a corporate culture based on trust. We are already looking forward to working with you in the future.
Meet our teamContact us today to take the first step on your Great Place to Work® journey!