Haier Europe: Elevating its People Practices with the Top Employers Programme



About Haier Europe

Haier Europe is a global leader in home appliances and consumer electronics, recognised for 15 consecutive years as the world’s No.1 brand globally in major appliances, selling under the Candy, Hoover and Haier brands. The organisation comprises of 750 colleagues in the UK&I and 100,000 globally.

Haier Europe’s Top Employers Journey

Haier Europe had been on an improvement journey, investing heavily in people systems, processes and benefits and whilst colleagues inside the business would have seen the transformation, they wanted to receive external recognition in order to attract great talent, and give candidates the confidence to know that they had been certified by an external, independent validation process. They therefore joined the Top Employers Certification Programme, and following completion of the HR Best Practices Survey and Validation Process, were certified as a UK Top Employer 2023.

Elevating its People Practices

“We have definitely seen the profile of our employer brand increase, we see our candidate numbers are very strong and our retention figures are improving in key areas, but the most important outcome from joining the Top Employers Programme is that it has really made Haier Europe a better workplace for our colleagues because it has given us the impetus and direction to keep improving.” Matthew Given, Group HR Director UK & Ireland, Haier Europe

Having achieved Top Employer Certification in year one, the Haier Europe team immediately started work on its action plan to further improve its HR, using the Top Employers Results Dashboard. They did this by:

• Having a dedicated team of specialists within the HR team working on the Top Employers Certification project.
• Aligning the Top Employers HR Best Practices Survey topics and results with the action plans and choosing focus areas which would add most value to the business.
• Regularly reviewing with the team each quarter to ensure that improvements were being made within these focus areas.

Impressive results

In year two, following on from the action planning, Haier Europe increased their score on the Top Employers Best Practices Survey by 20% points.

They had prioritised Employee Listening, wellbeing and DEI, with the new colleague listening strategy bringing great insights and making sure that they really understood how colleagues felt about the business and its programmes. They also mapped, explored and improved many more colleague and candidate journeys.

The leadership team has also taken notice of the tremendous progress and are now championing many new initiatives across engagement, wellbeing and DEI.

Remote Working: è già tempo di dire addio?

Il Remote working è destinato a scomparire. O forse no. Leggendo i giornali negli ultimi mesi, sarà capitato di imbattersi in vari titoli che annunciavano la fine del remote (o smart) working così come lo abbiamo conosciuto. Al momento infatti, sembrerebbe che la misura introdotta per fare fronte all’emergenza COVID, non sarà prorogata oltre il 31 marzo 2024, comportando apparentemente non pochi disagi per lavoratori del settore privato e pubblico.

Leggendo i giornali negli ultimi mesi, sarà capitato di imbattersi in vari titoli che annunciavano la fine del remote (o smart) working così come lo abbiamo conosciuto. Al momento infatti, sembrerebbe che la misura introdotta per fare fronte all’emergenza COVID, non sarà prorogata oltre il 31 marzo 2024, comportando apparentemente non pochi disagi per lavoratori del settore privato e pubblico.

Ma facciamo un passo indietro, per comprendere quali saranno gli effetti reali su dipendenti di aziende e pubblica amministrazione. Non da ultimo, proveremo a rispondere ad una domanda che tutti, in questo ultimo anno, ci siamo fatti: è finito il remote working?

Lo smart working agevolato

Non sembra poi passato così tanto tempo da quando, per far fronte ad una situazione d’emergenza globale, si cominciò a ridefinire le modalità di lavoro che fino al 2020 avevano rappresentato la quotidianità per milioni di persone. Il mondo e con esso le aziende, hanno saputo reagire (alcune più velocemente di altre), dando continuità al loro business e garantendo anche stabilità ai propri dipendenti.

Inoltre, ogni Paese introdusse delle norme più o meno inclusive al fine di regolare questa nuova modalità di lavoro. In Italia, sono state poste le fondamenta con il DPCM del 1 marzo 2020 (anche se già con la legge 81/2017 si parlava di smart working), quando si estese a tutto il territorio nazionale la raccomandazione di utilizzare il lavoro agile per tutti i lavoratori subordinati, anche in assenza di accordi individuali.

Il successo, dipeso anche dagli effetti contenitivi sul virus, ha portato i successivi interventi legislativi a consolidare la norma negli anni. Fino a quando, con l’art 18bis della legge 15 dicembre 2023 n.191, lo smart working è stato prorogato di 3 mesi, ossia fino al 31 marzo 2024.

Quindi, cosa cambia?

Settore Privato e Pubblico

Attualmente il lavoro agile è concesso a tutti i lavoratori fragili del settore privato e ai genitori di minori di 14 anni, purché la loro mansione sia compatibile con il telelavoro e entrambi i genitori siano occupati e non usufruiscano di sostegni al reddito o siano disoccupati.

Nel 2024 il lavoro agile nella pubblica amministrazione non sarà più legato all’emergenza pandemica. L’opportunità per i dipendenti pubblici di lavorare da casa dipenderà da accordi individuali in base alla direttiva del Ministero per la Pubblica Amministrazione firmata il 29 dicembre 2023.

A questo punto sembra tutto chiaro a livello di sistema. Tuttavia, come si sono mosse in questi anni le aziende Top Employers? E quale sarà la tendenza per il futuro? Lo smartworking verrà abbandonato?

Top Employers Institute

I dati raccolti grazie alla Survey sulle HR Best Practices 2024 restituiscono un quadro chiaro rispetto all’utilizzo dello smart working. Tra le 149 aziende certificate in Italia, il 46.31% permette ai propri dipendenti di lavorare da remoto tra il 20% e il 50% del tempo disponibile, il 36.24% tra il 50% e l’80% del tempo disponibile e il 10% delle aziende tra l’80% e il 100% del tempo disponibile.

Se confrontati poi con i Top Employers in Europa (1252), possiamo notare come i numeri siano molto allineati:

Certamente, rimangono ancora delle aziende che non fanno uso di smart working per motivi anche legati alla natura del proprio business: tuttavia, tra queste, solo lo 0.67% non possiede una policy sul remote working, mentre il 3.36% non specifica la quantità di tempo autorizzato a lavorare da remoto.

Inoltre, se confrontiamo i dati con l’anno precedente, possiamo vedere come l’utilizzo del remote working sia aumentato: ad esempio, le aziende che utilizzano il remote working tra il 50% e l’80% sono aumentate rispetto al 2023, passando dal 30.28% al 36.24%.

E ciò viene anche confermato da uno studio condotto dall’Osservatorio Smart Working della School of Management del Politecnico di Milano. Alla fine del 2023 infatti, i lavoratori da remoto erano 3,585 milioni, in crescita rispetto al 2022 (3,570 milioni) e con una stima sul 2024 di 3,65 milioni.

Siamo sicuri quindi che il remote working cesserà di esistere?

Remote working ed Engagement dei dipendenti

I dati raccolti fanno ben sperare. Tuttavia, ciò che non emerge a prima vista è la modalità con cui lo strumento del remote working venga utilizzato, né se ci sia un potenziale impatto negativo sulla produttività delle aziende, ma soprattutto sull’engagement dei dipendenti.

Ed è a questo punto che il ruolo di HR e organizzazioni diventa fondamentale.

Non bisogna dare per scontato infatti che l’introduzione del remote working porti conseguentemente a dei modelli di azienda “smart”. Molto spesso infatti, l’errata applicazione di questo strumento può rivelarsi un boomerang per tutti, soprattutto per i dipendenti: stress causato dall’iperconnessione e overworking sono i principali danni collaterali.

Le forme di flessibilità lavorative devono essere inserite forzatamente in una visione organizzativa completa, partendo in primis dalla leadership. Essa deve farsi carico di una sfida che vede obiettivi di per sé agli antipodi: garantire il wellbeing e l’engagement dei dipendenti, senza dimenticare il miglioramento continuo degli obiettivi aziendali.

A questo challenge i Top Employers Italia hanno risposto presente. Come? Più della metà delle aziende Top Employers rende responsabili i propri leaders per il raggiungimento degli obiettivi di wellbeing ed engagement; così come il 71% dei Top Employers 2024 coinvolge attivamente i propri dipendenti nella creazione di processi ed attività volte ad accrescere l’engagement aziendale.

E i risultati, concreti, vanno al di là del semplice remote working. Alcune aziende hanno già introdotto la settimana corta, altre organizzazioni progettano e sperimentano nuove forme di flessibilità: ferie illimitate, cancellazione delle timbrature o il distant remote working, che permetterà di lavorare completamente da remoto per alcune settimane o mesi, in alcune circostanze anche dall’estero.

Il Remote working è destinato a scomparire. O forse ha dato inizio ad una nuova era?

Global Work from Home Day 2024

Q&A with Paola Bottaro, People & Business Operations Director at Top Employers Institute  It is safe to say that the way we work has changed fundamentally. Today’s workforce has expanded through digital connectivity and remote collaboration. As organisations all over the world adapt to new work models, we celebrate Global Work from Home Day as the vehicle through which employees and employers celebrate the flexibility and productivity obtained through remote work. 

What are some of the key benefits of working from home? 

When allowing the flexibility to work from home, organisations are creating a positive work environment for all kinds of living situations, life phases, and personal preferences, this takes out of the equation the exclusion that happens when you dictate how people should relate themselves to work. 

Inclusivity brings multiple advantages to adopting a work from home model because it benefits both the employee and the employer. Employers see a bigger pool of people who can be successful at the organisation. For professionals, an enhanced opportunity to choose how they work is offered. The added autonomy of working at home, office, or shared workspace increases their wellbeing and helps them perform better. 

Read More:  How Saint-Gobain, Capgemini and bioMérieux are Engaging Employees from a Human-Centric Perspective 

How do employees relate themselves to work? 

We see high engagement at Top Employers, even with people working from home, but we know the key is to make sure we maintain this level of engagement. We must continually gather information to develop ways to stay connected as the organisation grows. That is why we focus on the importance of creating a programme that is intentional by design.  

To create an intentional programme, we must first know the relationship between employees and their work. What should this look like? In organisations with a human-centric approach, there is the employee, then the team, then the company, and this needs to be well defined. At Top Employers Institute, we continue to develop the process of defining how the employee relates to the team and the company to offer them a journey that is aligned throughout the world. This explains how we look at variables like work location and decide what needs to be in place no matter where you work to keep high levels of engagement. 

Download Now: Navigating a Dynamic Workforce 

How do we stay connected working from home? 

Intentional connection is the key. By making connectivity a goal, we see how working from home fits into the bigger picture of how professionals work and how this shapes the employee-employer relationship.  Connection can’t be left up to chance. It must be worked into an organisation’s goals, and these goals should answer questions like what the relationship between the employees and the employer should look like. How do the employees relate to the work at hand and to the overall goals of the organisation? 

Working from home should not equal working in isolation. There should always be opportunities for employees to learn from each other and model behaviours that create the corporate culture, not in a forced way, but because they like it.  

Practical examples include: 

• Creating an environment that promotes the exchange of information. 
• Fostering efficient processes that support an employee’s best performance. 
• Encouraging a sense of belonging through shared rituals like traditions or team events that improve the employee experience. 
• Providing opportunities for employees to contribute to the company’s narrative and identity. 
• Understanding that this is a work in progress and that growth and change are vital to creating a good programme for the employees. 

Watch More: Top Employers 2023 – Interview Hunkemöller 

What are some things to be aware of when working from home? 

Employees must have what they need to perform their role. This is not just in physical items like computers and desks but also in processes that allow for connection with colleagues and managers, including periodic connections to evaluate performance and ensure goals are being met.  

Keeping a work-life balance can sometimes be harder. One surprising fact is that many people tend to work more when working from home because they’re relaxed and forget the time. Finding the balance when working from home is an important part of why this arrangement must be intentionally planned as it is important to the employee’s wellbeing. 

How can an employee advocate for remote work accommodations? 

An employee’s work environment needs to match their own beliefs and vision to bring about the best work. It’s a very personal decision, and it won’t look the same for all employees. Our belief at Top Employers Institute is that everyone we hire is a professional and is motivated. The organisation and the employee should work as a team to make sure the employee has what they need to be successful because the motivation is already there. It’s hard to believe that providing employees with what they need to fulfil their duties doesn’t link to better financial results for the company because people are happier, and happier people perform better.  

When advocating for this type of work arrangement, the organisation must be able to see how this is of mutual advantage. The culture in the organisation must be the type that believes that giving people autonomy will produce better employees, so making a business case for this type of work set-up must show how it will improve productivity. 

Read More: How Organisations Improve Employee Engagement with Emotionally Engaged Leaders 

What advice do you have for companies deciding on their policy for a work from home programme? 

For us, the priority is getting the right person for the job rather than the right person, in the right place, in the right time zone, and in the right phase of their lives for the job. The model is simple, but the effect is huge. There are a lot of systems to hold up this style of working but having a productive workforce should be the goal. 

Organisations are hiring professionals, and the expectation is that they should know what they need to be successful. This can only happen once the definition of success inside the organisation has been explained. A certain balance in autonomy, sense of belonging, and a clear picture of what is expected of the professional is the key to developing a great work from home programme.  

Part of it is, of course, where the employee is physically doing the work. The other part is how they are staying engaged. Are they collaborating? Do they feel connected? Many elements that can be used to create the right work from home environment, and this is where we should focus on the philosophy or point of view and not where a person is physically working.  

The role of the organisation is in coordinating the matrix that facilitates the connections to happen between employees. Reinforcing the culture, common language style, ad hoc encounters, and building relationships are some of the tools an organisation can use to facilitate connections between employees.  

Organisations that keep a human-centric approach must continually ask if policies are still working for the wellbeing of the employees and for reaching the organisation’s goals. We need to make sure we take care of each other; if one sees the other is not doing well in our definition of success, it’s my responsibility to help you out. Your success is my success. The human-centric approach towards working from home is just one element of a whole approach to a person-centric work culture and it’s what we believe is the right thing to do for a successful company. 

During Top Employers Inspire 2023, we got an insider’s view of how Top Employers Institute is becoming a human-centric organisation. Paola Bottaro, People Director at Top Employers Institute, talked to Wouter van Ewijk about how the business has adapted to support its employees better while learning to be mindful, empathetic, and purposeful. You can watch that session here. 

Best Practice | Virtusa’s Talent Digital Transformation



Certified Top Employer, Virtusa, committed to an 18-month-long HR digital transformation to dramatically change the digital experience for their employees, covering everything from recruiting and onboarding to learning and development, inclusion, and rewards. The organisation did not simply make small incremental changes; they reimagined all their processes and radically transformed them into a single, fully integrated, hyper-personalised employee platform. 

This is just a snapshot of Virtusa’s innovative best practice. You can find the entire practice in 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:  

Although technology is at the core of their business, Virtusa struggled to make technology work correctly for their employees. They had too many disjointed systems that were not creating a seamless employee experience. The systems were not driving engagement or speaking to one another. Eranga Pathirage, VP & Head of HR for the UK, Europe, and the Middle East + the Global Head of HR Tech Transformation, helped the organisation dramatically improve its talent understanding and engagement through a digital HR transformation. 

Pathirage recalls that they already had all this valuable data about their 35 000 employees across 25 countries. As a provider of technical services, they respected and knew the power of technology. They saw a solution in centring the relationship between technology and their employees to drive adoption and employee loyalty. 

Read More: Best Practice | Momentum Metropolitan’s Offboarding Practice 

How they implemented the practice:  

Pathirage recalls that the most challenging part of their HR digital transformation was the beginning, as he and his team wanted to be bold and did not know exactly how to start; they wanted to involve everyone in the business and obtain their buy-ins as well.  Pathirage and his team took on the enormous task of reviewing all their processes to truly reimagine a digital solution offering their people an optimal employee experience. As he explained, they were not making incremental changes to some of their HR systems but instead re-hauling the entire process. In thinking through the right solution then, they followed some important grounding principles: 

• There would be one single source of truth. 
• Their HR digital solution would be fully integrated within Virtusa’s IT system.  
• The technology they picked would also give the company the ability to evolve. The technology selected and implemented should allow Virtusa to stay agile and guide the business accordingly. 
• As a technology services organisation, Virtusa also wanted to put technology first.

With these grounding principles, the organisation set out to pick a Software as a Service (SaaS) solution for each element of the employee experience. The solution as a whole was born in the cloud. 

Download Now: World of Work Trends 2024 

The results of implementing the practice 

The results of this HR digital transformation can already be seen. The company now has an AI chatbot to assist in a personalised candidate experience, providing a consistent company story for prospective employees. SkillPrism, powered by AI, can create an employee profile from multiple data points to fully understand competencies within the business. The company can now also offer a personalised learning journey for their employees and, through Edge, can offer their own internal “LinkedIn,” giving each employee one to three personalised job openings across customers, domains, and countries. 

Once this digital solution was offered, Virtusa employees adopted it quickly, with an 85% adoption rate in the first two weeks.  

Learn more about the Top Employers Certification here.

Navigating a Dynamic Workforce

The Journey to Become a Top Employer



Tell us about yourself and your role at Top Employers Institute

Greetings, I’m Sebastiaan ter Horst, stationed at the headquarters in Amsterdam, where I have been the face of the Certification team since 2021 for Top Employers Institute. Leading a dedicated team spread across the globe. I take pride in steering the Certification process and ensuring optimal service delivery for our Participants.

As the Certification Director, my primary commitment lies in upholding the quality of our Certification program. Collaborating with diverse teams worldwide, I continuously strive to enhance our services and support our teams and individual members in their journey towards success. It’s not just about maintaining standards but also about empowering every team and team member to achieve excellence.

Can you give us an overview of the Certification Process?

The Certification Process consists of four stages: Service kick-off, Survey, Validation and Certification. It is designed to help the Participant benefit from our programme.

The first stage is the Service kick-off, as the words suggest, the start of the programme. The purpose is to set the right conditions for our participants to complete the Survey and be prepared for the validation process. Participants are provided with an overview of the upcoming Certification Process and what is required, receive a high-level look at the HR Best Practices Survey and any updates, plus be introduced and updated to the Top Employers Portal and supporting tools and materials.

The following stage is the Survey. Here, the Participants will answer the HR Best Practices Survey questions. Participants who are new to the program have the opportunity to answer all questions. Participants who have completed a Survey in the previous year have the chance to update their answers from last year and answer all the new HR Best Practices questions. When ready, the Participant submits the HR Best Practices Survey answers for Validation.

The Validation stage is the third stage in the process. The Validation stage aims to ensure the answers submitted in the survey reflect the HR practices and conditions provided to the employees within the company. By checking the consistency of interpretation and proactively correcting potential errors or ambiguities, Top Employers Institute ensures that all submitted data provided for certification is correct and reliable.

The Participant is contacted to schedule a Validation session. An overview of questions within the survey to be discussed will be provided before the session so you can prepare for your session with the HR Auditor. Additional clarification and/or evidence to illustrate that a practice has been implemented according to our definitions and requirements may be requested before or based on the Validation outcome. Typical examples of such requests for further evidence are employee handbooks, technology screenshots, policy documents, etc.

The Certification stage is the fourth and final stage after the Validation stage is completed. Certified Participants are invited to attend a Certification Activation session where Top Employers Institute will take them through all the communication tools available to leverage your employer branding activities as a certified Top Employer. In this session, Top Employers will also be taken through the structure and navigation within the Results Dashboard, including Benchmark data from other Participants of the Certification Program.

What makes the Top Employers Certification Methodology unique?

The Certification Methodology applied is unique in many ways.

The Certification methodology is a holistic and fact-based validation approach to the people practices available for the employees of Certified Top Employers and is not based on opinions or perceptions. It is a single methodology applicable to all participants in the program, ensuring that all Top Employers are held to the same standard, thus providing a global benchmark.

The quality of the validation process is ensured by a team of highly qualified auditors who went through a rigorous qualification process and are subject to ongoing learning and calibration. In addition, our quality process, including system, quality checks and monitoring, ensures that the highest level of quality for our Certification Program is ensured.

Lastly, our Certification program, including our processes and Certification Results, is subject to an annual external audit.

How often are the HR Best Practices Survey questions updated, and what drives those updates?

The HR Best Practice survey is updated yearly to ensure it syncs with the ever-evolving HR landscape. On average, 10 percent of the questions will be updated every year. A survey update is informed by (external) research into HR trends and developments as well as reviewing client data (trends in practice adoption) and input and feedback received by our clients during the various stages of the certification process (survey, Validation, results, ad-hoc feedback). Changes to the survey can be incremental, e.g. small tweaks to the description of a practice, or more significant (e.g. adding a completely new practice or even a topic). We always aim to find a good balance between stability and staying up to date.

How does Top Employers Institute decide how to weigh the importance of the different questions in the survey?

The centre of gravity in our HR Best Practices survey is the employee experience.

60% of the overall scoring points are in the domains Attract, Develop and Engage, as these domains represent the end-to-end employee journey. In addition, you will see that individual practices that directly impact the employee experience have a higher weight than practices that are supporting or conditional.

About 20% of the survey consists of benchmark questions, which are included for contextual purposes and benchmarking and are not scored. The weighing of the different questions in the survey aims to be effective in setting a meaningful threshold for certification.

Several standard and fundamental practices have a relatively high weight. These practices are seen as essential for any Top Employer. In contrast, ‘advanced practices’, which refer to practices commonly seen in organisations with slightly more mature HR practices, could have varying relevance depending on the organisation’s size, industry, or region. Although these practices might be inspirational to most, their weight and impact on scoring are relatively limited.

As the year-over-year adoption of practices is changing, the weight of individual practices is reviewed on a yearly basis, too. When needed, the weights are adjusted to reflect changed importance. Commonly, a new practice, when just added to the survey, will be given a low weight (or even introduced as a benchmark question), and when we see the adoption levels of these practices rising, we increase the weight.

How does your team validate the answers given by organisations in the survey?

First of all, with a lot of passion and motivation! For the validation moment itself, established criteria and standards apply to each practice and assess the level of maturity of a participant’s processes and procedures against these requirements, including looking at the supporting documentation. After initial review through the Top Employers Institute portal, the HR Auditor has a validation session with the Participant to discuss a selection of practices in more detail and clarification.

What upcoming topics and questions are Top Employers Institute looking at for future surveys?

Allow me to mention the latest World of Work Trends report based on the responses from our Participants in the 2024 program. The trends mentioned in the World of Work Trends report illustrate the expected future changes in our HR Best Practices Survey. I want to mention some other perspectives as well:

1. Human Centricity (already captured in the WoW trends report, but also as a more general theme)
2. Continuous focus on (Digital) Employee Experience, including leveraging AI in a human/responsible way,
3. Employability
4. GenZ
5. Contingent / Flexible Workforce

What one piece of advice would you give an organisation taking part in the Top Employers Certification Programme for the first time?

Reach out to us when you have a question or if something needs to be clarified. Our team is committed to enabling our participants to have a successful Certification experience and will support them when appropriate. They will provide tips and guidance for efficient completion of the Survey that is appropriate to the needs of each Participant. For instance, how to organise the internal team to answer the HR Best Practices Survey in a timely manner, clarify Survey questions and what sort of supporting evidence is needed, how to use the tools provided in the Portal, etc.