Best Practice | Momentum Metropolitan’s Offboarding Practice

The offboarding process occurs no matter what kind of contractual relationship an organisation has with the person who is leaving. The desired experience that Certified Top Employer, Momentum Metropolitan, wants for any person who has worked there is one where the individual intends to return to work for them or refer others to seek employment there. Momentum Metropolitan has, therefore, created a holistic exit experience covering activities across contractual obligations, business continuity, relationship management, and workforce engagement.

Certified Top Employer, Momentum Metropolitan, wanted to create a lasting positive impression with their employees with the final touchpoint acting within a collection of streamlined, supportive, and efficient experiences.

This is just a snapshot of Momentum Metropolotian’s innovative best practice; you can find the entire practice on our HR Best Practices database, which is exclusively available to Top Employers. Get inspiration and insight into the approach, challenges and learnings experienced by certified Top Employers. Access it now via the Top Employers Programme if you are certified, or learn more about it here!   

Why the practice was needed:

The offboarding process can be stressful for individuals, as it involves an internal change management experience. It is also worth noting that it is only sometimes, or very often, that an individual undergoes offboarding, which means that this is also a time of ambiguity and reliance on others for guidance in the overall process. As it stands, offboarding relies on back-and-forth emails between various parties, and often, the individual needs to know who to turn to for information and what information should be looked at to support a smooth transition.

With the increased focus on employee experience and the competitive talent landscape, the offboarding stage is fundamental to ensuring a positive, lasting impact. When an individual leaves the company, this is an opportunity to create brand ambassadors, alumni talent, and a growing referral network for future talent pools.

During offboarding, the business also goes through the stress of capacity management, handover requirements, equipment and access controls. It may need more time to give the attention necessary for an individual to feel cared for and looked after.

How the practice was implemented:

Momentum created the following process to meet the needs of their offboarding practice:

Created an Offboarding Platform

Momentum Metropolitan ensured that all the relevant employees had access to the offboarding platform via our employee self-service HumanHub. Additionally, they ensured that the platform was digitally enabled for smartphones and desktops. The platform allowed managers and relevant admins easy access to the platform. They ensured a digital-first approach with tailored tracks for different employees and exit types.

Exit Questionnaire & Interview

• Momentum Metropolitan had an integrated and streamlined digital solution for their exit surveys and interviews.

• • That became a one-stop shop for both the questionnaire and interview experience.

• • It was competency-driven for holistic feedback and data-driven insights.

Automated Processes

• Reminders will be sent through push notifications on the HumanHub App, and emails will be sent at relevant steps in the process to keep HC and line managers in the loop throughout the offboarding process.
• Automatic push to Documents of Record to ensure relevant docs are stored and accessible on the system.

Offboarding Metrics Dashboard

• The HR team at Momentum Metropolitan were able to view available turnover and exit-specific insights.
• Those metrics created visibility of offboarding journey trends and fall-off points.

Practice Guide

• Momentum Metropolitan created an offboarding framework and principles of consideration to assist managers in the offboarding process.

Highlights: 

• A design-thinking approach was applied in unpacking the specific needs of employees, HR, and line managers during the offboarding experience.
• The focus is on the entire journey, from pre-exit, during exit, and post-exit experiences.
• Key touchpoints were identified up-front and positioned within the solution in such a way that we could gather data for significant insights through dashboard metrics.
• Short iterative deliverables have been prioritised, allowing testing, feedback, and pivotal shifts that answer the real needs of their employees.

Download Now: World of Work Trends 2024 

Results:

• A digitally enabled offboarding platform where employees are guided through the process with easy-to-follow steps.
• An integrated solution for both questionnaire and interview experience.
• An offboarding dashboard with turnover stats, journey insights, and exit insights.

Key Takeaways | World of Work Trends 2024

Top Employers Institute’s World of Work Trends 2024 analyses the latest trends in people strategies and practices from leading organisations globally. The report, which came out recently, is available to download now. The report showed the five most significant global workplace trends in 2024. Those trends are:

1. Empower through AI  
2. The Future Defined with Purpose  
3. Dialogue for Transformation  
4. Evolution of Wellbeing Effectiveness  
5. Broaden the Horizon of DEI  

The release of our annual World of Work Trends 2024 was followed by an online live briefing on the 7th of December 2023, with Quinten van Es and Emily Cook delving deeper into the trends. In their discussion, they touched on real-life examples of the trends and broke down the tactics organisations will need to take in 2024 to succeed.

If you missed out on the session, you can watch it now by filling in the form on the side of the page.

Make sure to unlock the core HR trends affecting organisations across the globe. Watch the session now.

Best Practice | Stay Interviews at BAT

By Top Employers Institute

In this blog post, we will discussing how BAT improve their workplace culture and retention strategy by gaining employee insights through stay itnerviews.

What are Stay Interviews

While it is traditional for organisations to have exit interviews, many companies realise there is a need to conduct stay interviews. Stay interviews are a proactive and structured approach to engage with current employees and gain insight into their job satisfaction, career aspirations, and overall experience within the company. Where exit interviews are reactive, stay interviews are a proactive approach to assessing the needs of employees while they are still within the organisation.

How BAT established stay interviews:

In the APMEA West region (Middle East, North Africa, Caucasus, Central Asia and Pakistan), BAT recently established stay interviews with their employees to help with retention and focus on customised, individualised, and purposeful interventions for employees instead of a ‘one size fits all’ strategy.

The primary objectives of stay interviews include:

• Identifying factors that contribute to employee retention.
• Understanding individual motivations and needs.
• Addressing potential concerns or dissatisfaction before they lead to turnover.
• Aligning employees’ goals with the company’s objectives.
• Tailoring retention strategies to foster a more positive and fulfilling work environment.

This is just a snapshot of BAT’s innovative best practices; you can find the entire practice on our HR Best Practices database, which is exclusively available to Top Employers. Get inspiration and insight into the approach, challenges and learnings experienced by certified Top Employers. Access it now via the Top Employers Programme if you are certified or learn more about our HR best practice library.

Why the stay interview practice was needed

BAT sees stay interviews as necessary for their organisation’s talent management strategy. The interviews provide a proactive and insightful approach to employee retention, allowing the organisation to understand their existing workforce’s unique needs, motivations, and concerns.

By engaging in open and candid conversations with employees about their experiences, career aspirations, and overall job satisfaction, BAT can identify potential issues and opportunities for improvement before those issues escalate into reasons for departure. Stay interviews not only demonstrate their commitment to employee wellbeing and growth but also enable the customisation of retention strategies that resonate with each employee.

BAT’s main focus was a targeted approach, mainly focusing on their key talents, employees sitting in critical roles, and women; this was in line with the turnover trends and likely personas to leave the organisation, as the organisation had observed in the last few years.

Their strategy and subsequent practice were born out of numerous brainstorming sessions in the HR team aimed at curbing attrition rates within BAT’s APMEA West region. Over the past three years, this region has witnessed an upward trend in attrition, mirroring prevailing patterns across diverse industries and markets.

To effectively tackle this challenge, BAT developed and deployed a proactive measure to understand employee sentiments – what it would take to leave the organisation and what they appreciate in the organisation so that BAT could focus on elevating and building on those initiatives.

How stay inteviews were implemented:

BAT conducted external research to see what cutting-edge practices were available externally in the era of “great attrition” to foster employee retention and engagement and found that stay interviews were highlighted by many other researchers and top-tier businesses globally. They broke down the process into four steps.

Step 1: For BAT, building complete awareness of the stay interviews concept for their HR teams across the region was critical, including upskilling sessions to explain the practice and how to conduct meaningful and targeted stay interview sessions for different personas.

Step 2: The second step was a region-wide upskilling session for all their line managers run by the Area Talent Team to ensure the same messaging and level of understanding was provided for all line managers conducting the stay interviews with their direct reports.

Step 3: The third step was to share the standardised stay interview templates, questions with all line managers, and online self-learning tools for additional content.

Step 4: The fourth step was to gather all the stay interview information and to begin a complete analysis to ensure consistency of findings. This analysis was done by the to commence by the Area Talent Team.

Stay interviews results:

Stay interviews allowed BAT to take a deep dive into what drives employee corporate purpose and contributes to fostering the best workplace to develop and build their careers. Overwhelmingly, the organisation saw that there were three main reasons employees chose to stay with BAT:

1. Challenging work that allows them to grow both personally and professionally.
2. A feeling of camaraderie and support, providing employees with a like-minded circle to work within.
3. Learning opportunities provided by BAT to finesse functional mastery and leadership skills to deal with constant change and speed.

Final Thoughts: BAT’s stay interviews, a new way to listen to their employees.

Understanding employee experiences is critical to helping an organisation thrive and keeping valuable talent. If you want to read more about BAT’s practice and get a complete insight into the approach, challenges and learnings.

Access it now via the Top Employers Programme if you are certified, or learn how to became an employer of choice.

Winning the Battles for Talent



I think it’s time that we stop saying we’re in a war for talent. Not because the fight is cooling off, but rather, because it is intensifying. It is worth changing our perspective on the concept itself; its real form is not that of a war, but of continuous battles for talent. Organisation’s ability to attract, engage and stay committed to and excited about the talent they need is not something we win or lose at once. It is a process of continuous improvement – a thrilling one at that – in which the areas of people management play a decisive role.

Maximising the Employer Brand Strategy

88% of companies worldwide certified as Top Employers have an employer brand strategy that incorporates their employee value proposition as a core element. Naturally, all organisations offer some kind of value proposition to their employees.if they didn’t, it would be difficult to attract anyone, or keep them in the company for that matter – but here we are talking about effectively addressing the challenge of identifying, developing and communicating what you can offer to the talent you require, both during the hiring process and once they are in the company. A value propositon is something that makes the organisation unique, makes it a company that professionals want to belong to, where they want to work and thrive. That, undoubtedly, is a competitive advantage that sweeps away any competition.

Optimising the Candidate’s Journey

The best companies want to make sure they deliver on what they promise, and they achieve it by embarking on a process of listening and continuous improvement. That  is why 89% of Top Employers design and review the key stages of their talent acquisition process so that they are aligned with the pillars or key characteristics of their employer brand. What’s more, 70% of Top Employers systematically measure their employer reputation among their potential candidates – their target market for talent – while 70% also map their candidate’s journey, allowing them to optimise it. They outline what the experience will be like, both from their perspective and that of the candidate, and work with the information they collect from surveys to implement a process of continuous improvement at each focal point. The aim of this is to improve the candidate’s experience so that the hiring process is agile and reflects the pillars of the employer’s brand, making the company more attractive.

Measuring the Experience of Newcomers

These steps are not limited to candidates; they are also aimed at employees, both existing and new. 79% of certified Top Employers measure the experience of new employees, but it is interesting to note that 40% also focus on discovering whether the perception of the employer brand the employee had before joining the organisation has matched their actual experience in their first few weeks of company life. This is very insightful information. It reflects the fact that they are companies with a daring attitude, that are very committed to people, and that thrive in the spirit of continuous improvement. The results they capture inevitably lead to action, and either they change the experience or they will have to change the employer brand.

The best companies will need to work to build trust in their employer brand with the aim of maintaining their commitment to their promise of value throughout the talent life cycle of the organisation. 85% of companies certified as Top Employers ensure that there is a clear alignment between the employer brand and the perception and experience that employees have. They are consistent and coherent brands that work to ensure that no disparity arises between how they consider themselves to be and how they really are in the day-to-day life of the company.

The EVP at the Core of the Employer Brand

An employer brand strategy should have the employee value proposition (EVP) at its core. This is, after all, what gives it consistency, because it brings together the tangible and intangible benefits offered to employees and is aligned with the pillars of the employer brand, related especially with the current and aspirational values of the company.

80% of Top Employers are clear on the fact that, for an employee, a good value proposition must include an effective listening process. For this reason, they actively involve representatives from different groups of employees in defining their value proposition, evaluating their needs, aspirations, and current work experiences. Best practices in this respect shows us the relevance of segmenting employee samples and analysing whether there is a gap between the company’s vision and that of the employee – something which is usually the joint work of management and human resources.

Mapping the Employee Experience

Of course, the EVP, the heart of the employer brand strategy, is certainly not the result of a one-off exercise; the best companies – 72% of Top Employers – increase their value by regularly assessing it, and they continue the systematic exercise of listening to employees. 46% of them use effective tools like employee experience mapping, which details the employee’s perception at every touch point of their journey in their relationship with the company.

Final Thoughts

Talent battles are continually being fought. Socrates, with very good judgment, left us with this reflection: „The way to gain a good reputation is to endeavour to be what you desire to appear“. Consistency between what we say we are and what we really are is what builds trust in the employer brand. The best companies invest time, resources, and enthusiasm, as they embark on a process of continuous improvement to achieve what they promise.

UniCredit Bulbank’s ESG Learning Journey

Certified Top Employer UniCredit Bulbank is the leading bank in Bulgaria and a member of UniCredit, a successful pan-European commercial bank operating in Italy, Germany, Central and Eastern Europe. It has a unique service offering and its purpose is to empower communities to progress, delivering best-in-class for all stakeholder, unlocking the potential of clients and people.

UniCredit puts integrity, ownership and caring at the heart of its decision-making in everything it does, and digitalisation and a commitment to ESG (Environmental, Social, Governance) principles are key enablers for delivering this. Their commitment to their ESG values and the ambitious energy goals that have been set in the EU for 2030 and 2050 is what started their award winning ESG Learning Journey in 2021.

For UniCredit Bulbank, ESG is not the responsibility of one department, team or individual, but everyone’s duty.

Download the Case Study to learn how:

• UniCredit Bulbank Bulgaria used a pyramid approach to restructure their ESG principles.
• They created an integrated group and local learning offer for ESG that had targeted initiatives for different groups of employees across the organisation that addressed specific needs and accountabilities for them.
• UniCredit Bulbank Bulgaria created ESGpresso, an ESG education platform, for colleagues to have easy access to information about their policies.

Download the case study now, click on the button below and get the full case study for free.

Inside the Mind of the HRD on … the employee experience



Over many years, we have become used to data showing us how disengaged employees are at work. According to Gallup, for example, only 15% of employees worldwide are engaged in their work, while 85% are either passively or actively disengaged. In attempting to convert the latter into the former, however, the HRD first needs to understand the difference between engagement and the employee experience.

Engagement vs the employee experience

The employee experience is a broad and increasingly powerful weapon for the HR Director. It means nothing less than the long-term resdesign of the organisation, with people strategy at its core.

It is effectively the sum of all the touchpoints that a potential employee has with his or her employer, from the starting point of being a candidate to becoming part of an organisational alumni upon departure. It gives HRDs the opportunity to work with the business on organisational design to give a fair chance of employees feeling engaged enough to want to make a difference.

It’s taken most organisations a long time to get to this level of understanding. A century ago, the workplace wasn’t a place people went to to be happy or engaged – it was simply a means to an end.

Fifty years ago, the focus was on productivity, with companies openly looking to get “more for less” from their people. In the last twenty or so years, employee engagement (augmented by attractive benefits and incentives) came to the fore. It is only much more recently that the needs and wants of the workforce have come to be seen through the more holistic idea of the employee experience.

What makes the biggest difference?

Research by Josh Bersin earlier this year “Employee Experience: The Definitive Guide” in partnership with one of our Top Employers, Microsoft, reveals that the modern employee experience is driven by many factors, but with trust, transparency, inclusion and caring to the fore.

That’s why is so important for leaders and HRs to be able to read employee insights.

Among the specific factors that Bersin found, the most significant included:

• A mission and purpose beyond financial goals.
• Transparency, empathy and integrity of leadership.
• Continuous investment in people.
• Inclusive, diversive and sense of belonging and community.

The impact of a great employee experience

Another study by Jacob Morgan of 252 organisations found that only 15 companies (6%) are doing a great job at creating employee experiences. Rewards for the few organisations that achieve this are signficant in terms of business, people and innovation:

• Business Outcomes
  • The successful are 2.2 times more likely to exceed financial targets than the unsuccessful.
  • 4 times more likely to delight customers.
• People Outcomes
  • 1 times more likely to create a sense of belonging.
  • 2 times more likely to be a great place to work.
  • 1 times more likely to engage and retain employees.
• Innovation Outcomes
  • 7 times more likely to adapt well to change.
  • 3 times more likely to innovate effectively.

How to get started

One of our Top Employers, Accenture, published research in 2020 showing that winning the war on talent means that the HRD must improve the employee experience in three ways:

• Co-creating the experience. Customers are regularly engaged re their desired experiences and companies must do the same with their employees. There must be a co-creation of what the experience means, through human, physical and digital lenses.
• Reimagining the model. Traditional levers like compensation and benefits are not enough. There must be clear single accountability for all of the people processes, experiences and tools to achieve the desired outcome.
• Empower both humans and machines. This is necessary to deliver new models at scale and speed. Expanding in this way can unlock new sources of value through innovation.

Top Employers and the Employee Experience

Finally, our Top Employers Certification Programme gives us a unique perspective on the employee experience because it begins with our HR Best Practices survey covering every aspect of an organisation’s people practices. To help HR Directors in their thinking on this important subject, we have brought together what best practice looks like in a three-part series of e-books, Optimising the Employee Journey.

People Strategy: from talent management to strategic workforce planning

What do HR leaders need to consider when creating, or recreating, their people strategy?

Leading organisations across the globe are forced to transform rapidly – and continuously – in order to remain purposeful, relevant and stay ahead of competition. This in turn means that the very definition of people strategy is itself evolving at pace. The role of HR leaders is changing too, and the number of challenges they are asked to solve is increasing. Most likely, when answers are found, the questions themselves will change.

Despite these complexities, it’s worth unpacking the concept of people strategy in terms of definitions, roles and challenges a little better.

People strategy: three definition that you need to look at

People strategy has a myriad of different definitions – it depends what you read and where you look. Top Employers Institute’s HR experts and auditors propose three broad lense

1. Invest in talent

Let’s first look at people strategy through an investment lens. In this sense, it is seen as a battles for talents. If an organisation matches its investment in talent to business objectives, it is more likely to get the right people with the right skills focused on the right initiatives. The return on investment that this then creates will drive the business forward and accelerate results.

2. Align hr strategy with business strategy

The second lens defines people strategy in relation to its alignment with business strategy. To think in terms of alignment allows us to ask important questions, such as “What capabilities do we need?” and “Where do we need them?” This simple approach sharpens our understanding of the gaps (or overlaps) in aligning our strategic workforce planning and other HR strategies to the business needs.

Our research shows that 97% Top Employers demonstrate the importance of aligning their people strategy with their business strategy. Yet it is worth noting that only 77% of Top Employers translate their people strategy into key HR metrics and related targets.

3. People strategy is the business strategy

The final lens moves beyond alignment to the complete integration of a people strategy within the business. By this definition, your people strategy IS the business strategy. Here, forward-looking leadership teams explicitly reject thinking about their people as assets.

Rather, it is the employees who are the “investors”: they call the shots and choose to invest their precious time, energy and talent. It is the organisation that needs to work hard to keep them engaged and motivated.

Leadership cannot take their talented employees’ hard work and commitment for granted.

A strategic role for the HR leader

The definition of people strategy vary greatly across organisations of different shapes and sizes, but research from the Top Employers Institute global survey shows that HR leaders are taking on a more strategic role. In the past, business strategy has been driven largely by the CEO and the CFO. This has been because the twin drivers of organisational success were firmly rooted in strategy and finance.

Now, however, organisations are increasingly moving from this “Dynamic Duo” to a “Transformative Trio”. According to the Harvard Business Review (HBR), the CEO and CFO are being joined more and more regularly by a CHRO who together need “to fuse the strategic, financial and people issues into business strategy”.

Challenges and priorities in people strategy

To play their full role in the triangular alliance with CEO and CFO, there are four challenges that the CHRO needs to meet:

1. Being able to look ahead and identify strategic workforce challenges that will come about as a result of the changing business world.
2. Creating talent supply chains that can support innovation and growth.
3. Developing the talent management skills of business leaders.
4. Provide insights through greater use of metrics and analytics to show the effectiveness of their people strategy.

Significat data obtained from 1.679 certified Top Employers organisations globally, closely resembles the challenges set out in the HBR. When asked to rank their Top HR priorities the majority of Top Employers indicated:

1. Supporting cultural and organisational change;
2. The development of talent strategy;
3. Leadership development;

And the role of technology in providing metrics and analytics within all HR disciplines is, according to Top Employers Institute research, moving up the priority list for HR leaders as way of underpinning significant  changes in people strategy that we are seeing within so many of our Top Employer organisations. Amid the changing HR landscape, the need and the consequent move towards a broader and more holistic scope of people strategy is obvious.

It is no longer something that only focuses on talent management but encompasses strategic workforce planning to future-proof the skills and capabilities gaps and is supported by concrete metrics and the likes of predictive analytics.

As a result, HR leaders are also expected to devise and execute people strategies that align with the current and future business needs.