Register for The Building Good Employers Guide 2017

Good Employer Guide

Building’s Good Employer Guide celebrates the achievements of the best employers across the industry.

Register today to take part in this year’s Building Good Employer survey.

With an industry skills shortage and uncertainty of recruitment from the EU surrounding the UK’s Brexit negotiations, what can your organisation do to attract the highest skilled professionals?

Take part in our annual survey for a chance to demonstrate how the industry’s most skilled professionals would benefit from working for your company.

The best employers will be promoted in the Building Good Employer Guide mailed to all Building subscribers and available online for 12 months. We’ll also be honouring our winners at Building Live on November 28th.

Register by Friday 28th July.

Deadline for completion of entries: Friday 29th September

FAQs

1. How can I register my interest in the Good Employers Guide?

The registration form asks basic questions about:

  • Your company – name, head office and website addresses, main sphere of business
  • Contact details of the person(s) to whom future correspondence should be directed
  • Your employees – number of employees and of employees in non-support roles
  • Whether you meet the Guide’s registration criteria

2. What are the registration criteria for participating companies?

In order for your company to take part in the selection process for this year’s Good Employers Guide, your company must:

  • Have a primary business focus within the construction sector
  • Be either a consultant, house builder or general/specialist contractor
  • Be willing to encourage all your employees to respond to the survey promptly and honestly
  • Answer a detailer relating to your company and the employment benefits offered to your staff
  • Should it be necessary, to make a member of your senior staff available to answer questions on issues highlighted by either the Staff Opinion Survey or the Employer Questionnaire

3. What is meant by UK based staff member?

As one of the Guide’s primary functions is to promote employment within the UK, staff members employed overseas by international companies or international divisions of a UK business will be excluded.

When providing staff numbers the following employees should be included:

  • Those contractually employed by a UK based corporate entity and based permanently within the UK business
  • Those contractually employed outside a UK based corporate entity but based permanently within the UK
  • Those contractually employed by a UK based corporate entity and seconded – on a temporary basis – to an international part of the business

The following employees should, however, be excluded:

Those contractually employed by a UK or international corporate entity and based permanently abroad.

4. How are full time equivalent (FTE) Employee numbers calculated?

Employee numbers should be calculated as the average number of UK based staff members working on a full time equivalent basis for the most recently completed financial year and should exclude all sub-consultants or employees on a fixed term contract of less than 6 months duration.

For example, if two staff members work part time, each for half the hours of a full working week, then they should be counted as 1 FTE. And, if the company had a staff of 150 FTE at the beginning of the last financial year and 200 at the end, the total number of employees should be returned as 175 FTE.

5. Why are support staff members excluded?

The audience for the Guide is, in the main, Building readers who are construction industry professionals. Employees involved in support roles such as finance, human resources, IT etc are far more likely to seek employment guidance from their own industry related publications. However, when offered employment in a construction related industry the Building Good Employer Guide will still provide them with a good steer as to where the best companies are.

6. How are support roles defined?

Support roles are defined as those who are employed in the following activities: secretarial, PA support, marketing & PR, finance & accounting, IT support, human resources, receptionist duties, facilities management or property maintenance where this is related to the firm’s own offices.

7. Why is an Employee Opinion Survey necessary?

Whilst a background image of the business is created from information supplied by Employers to highlight the benefits offered by the Company to its staff members, it does not show whether employees enjoy coming to work or whether they feel that they are being looked after.

Some companies believe that a higher salary can be used by employees to buy benefits as they choose; others will provide things such as healthcare as a matter of course. However, providing more days of holiday, for example, is only worthwhile if staff can find the time to take it. The Employee Opinion Survey was devised to directly elicit opinion of staff members and gauge their strength of feeling to a set of statements that focus on both general areas of employment and also those specific to the construction industry.

The survey also enables scores to be awarded to each company on a comparable basis and the aggregated results enable companies to be compared, rated and ranked allowing them to be objectively selected.

8. What is in the Employee Opinion Survey?

The survey contains eleven questions gauging staff sentiment on your company’s performance in the following areas:

  • Leadership
  • Company’s policies on Corporate Social Responsibility
  • Encouragement of participation from employees in decision making at appropriate levels, including over business strategies and decisions that affect the working environment
  • Work atmosphere
  • Work life balance
  • Opportunities for career progression

9. Which of my employees can take part in the survey?

UK based staff of all grades. In general, professional and technical staff – not those in purely supporting roles and those who are primarily office based- rather than site-based. Equity Partners and the equivalent Main Board Directors will be excluded.

Each participating employer will be asked to distribute the survey via email to all their employees omitting those in support roles, those employed internationally and Equity Partners and the equivalent Main Board Directors.

10. When will surveys be available for distribution?

Please register as soon as possible to ensure early receipt of the link to your staff survey. The survey link will be provided as soon as possible after registration, but in busy times may take up to one week. If you have not received your staff survey after 7 days please contact buildinggoodemployers@ubm.com.

11. How can I be sure that we are receiving all the e-mails?

To ensure that both you and your staff are able to receive e-mails from us and are able to access the online surveys, we ask that you check that your IT systems will accept e-mails and enable links received from either ‘surveymonkey.com’ or ‘buildinggoodemployers@ubm.com’ and that they should not be trapped as SPAM.

12. Must all surveys and questionnaires be answered online?

Yes. In order to participate, submission of all responses to both the Employee Opinion Surveys and Employer Questionnaire must be online using the links that will be provided.

To enable review of the Employer Questionnaire in advance of completion and to enable companies to retain a copy of their answers, a .pdf copy of the questionnaire will be issued with the e-mail containing the electronic link to the Employer Questionnaire itself.

13. How are the ‘Good Employers’ selected?

In order to understand how participating companies are performing employees are invited to participate in an opinion survey designed to elicit their strength of feeling as it relates to various aspects of their working life; these being Social Responsibility, Smarter Working, Feel Good Factor, Leadership, Inspiration and Ability to contribute.

Companies may be asked to make themselves available to answer questions on issues highlighted by these two earlier selection stages.

When total scores are ranked, the top companies will become the annual Good Employers and will be included in the Guide.

A judging panel within Building will select an overall top 5. The remaining companies will be listed in alphabetical order.

14. What does the Employer Questionnaire comprise?

The Employer Questionnaire, comprises a series of questions devised to elicit the following categories of information:

  • Company name, head office address etc
  • Main spheres of operation
  • Corporate statistics and employee demographics
  • Benefits package on offer to staff

The information obtained from the Employer Questionnaire is used primarily to describe the company in the Guide itself. However some responses to queries regarding corporate statistics and employee demographics will be used to help rank the company. For example, a large architectural practice that employs no female architects is unlikely to be selected as a Good Employer even if the male employees have rated it well in the employee opinion survey. Building reserve the right to contact companies direct and discuss responses to the questionnaire if they raise particularly anomalous responses.

15. When will I receive an Employer Questionnaire?

The Employer Questionnaire will only be sent to companies that qualify following completion of registration.

16. When will we know if we have been selected?

The final list of Good Employers will be published in the Guide due for release in November.

17. When will the Good Employers Guide be published?

The Good Employer Guide will be circulated to its 22,754 audience and distributed at the Building Live Conference in November. It will also be available as a digital edition on the website.

18. Will the format of the Good Employers Guide be similar to last year?

The overall format of the Guide will be similar to last year, a copy of which can be viewed at http://www.building.co.uk/digital-supplements/5000208.article

19. Will I receive feedback on my Company’s performance?

If you are selected as a Good Employer, the Guide itself will be produced with a graphic detailing the results of the staff opinion survey split into 9 categories:

  • Leadership
  • Social responsibility
  • Ability to contribute
  • Atmosphere
  • Smarter working
  • Career progression

All participating companies, whether selected or not, may request a summary of their Staff Opinion Surveys, excluding responses to open ended questions that may identify employees.

20. Is there an award for Good Employers?

All Good Employers will receive a Building Good Employer logo for use in promoting your company as an established good employer. The winner will be honoured at our Building Live Conference in November.

21. Where should I direct queries not answered by this Guide?

Any further queries should be e-mailed to buildinggoodemployers@ubm.com with your company name in the subject box.