Work Style - Great Place to Work Institute

The Special Awards
Great Place to Work ® Institute is recognizing five companies
for extraordinary practices in five areas of the GiftWork Model
1
Inspiring leadership
this is not just a job
Winner Creativ Company (Denmark)
Runner Up IKEA Group (Poland)
Runner Up Liberty Seguros (Portugal)
The winner of this year’s Great
Place to Work® Special Award for
“Inspiring” is Creativ Company,
a retailer of art supplies based in
Denmark. This award is given to
a company that fosters a strong
sense of pride across the organization
and helps employees feel
that their work is “more than just a
job.”Although it is relatively small,
with only 95 employees, Creativ
Company has managed to make a
difference, not only for its own employees,
but also for socially marginalized
groups in society, including
people who suffer from physical
or mental disabilities, such as industrial
injuries, drug addiction, or
eating disorders. One employee – a
former drug addict – told a newspaper,
“This place is special. You
are not allowed to hide and give
up when something is difficult.
The ones who would rather hide
are those most needed to be seen.
Here, you are seen and accepted
for who you are. You just have to
behave. That is a simple and fair
demand. Besides becoming clean,
this job is the largest success I have
experienced in my life.”
2
Speaking the truth
credible communication
Winner Unicarepharmacy (Ireland)
Runner Up 3M Deutschland (Germany)
Runner Up Bristol-Myers Squibb (Greece)
Unicarepharmacy has been forced
to freeze salaries for its roughly 850
employees twice in two years.
Yet throughout these difficult times,
the company’s leaders did not isolate
themselves, but rather they
reached out to their “colleagues,”
as the company’s employees are
known, to make sure that people
understood what was happening
– and help them understand how
they could pitch in to help avoid
layoffs. The result? More than nine
out of ten Unicarepharmacy employees
responding to the Great
Place to Work ® Trust Index © Survey
this year agreed that “management
would lay people off only as
a last resort” – and as of October
2009, the company had reached
97% of its “Plan A” targets (‘Plan
A’ would “protect... colleagues’ job
security and avoid having to pursue
an alternative route). For outstanding
communication practices
during this trying period, Unicarepharmacy
is this year’s recipient of
the Great Place to Work ® Special
Award for “Speaking,” which recognizes
a European company that
excels in communicating.
Thank you!
The Great Place to Work ® Institute
is so grateful for the time and effort
that people have dedicated to making
the European Award and Conference
events in Madrid a great success. We
thank the speakers from the following
companies:
• NetApp
• Vodafone Spain
• Nordea Life & Pension
• ORMIT
• IKEA Spain
• Admiral Group
• High Performance Sport
• noventum consulting
• Telefónica International
And a special Thank You to our sponsor
of a Workplace Culture Session
NetApp.
17
twsm — GPTW Special Issue 2010