Case Study: The Saint-Gobain HR Mirror



Certified Global Top Employer, Saint-Gobain, is the world leader in light and sustainable construction. Saint-Gobain designs, manufactures, and distributes materials and solutions for the construction, mobility, and industrial markets. They have been certified as a Global Top Employer since 2016.

In 2019 Saint-Gobain began organising a global Employee engagement survey called me@SaintGobain. It covered 40 questions across five different themes to identify how motivated employees are at that moment. In doing this survey and the Top Employers Best Practices Survey they realised that they could use both surveys to create a mirror survey that would allow them to continue to get more useful information to improve their employee’s life at work.

Download the Case Study to learn how:

• Saint-Gobain created a four-stage process to mirror the two surveys and create the HR Mirror survey.
• How they implemented the survey across their global offices with a strategic communication plan.
• How they use the results of the survey to improve the working conditions and policies for their employees across their global offices.

Learn more about how they implemented Saint-Gobain’s HR Mirror by downloading the case study now.

The tips are often small but have a big impact.



How do you make use of the Top Employers Community?

Since being certified by Top Employers we have been building relationships, not only with the Top Employers Institute, but also with other certified Top Employers. There is a network of organisations willing to share, help one another to progress and learn from each other. I have been brought into contact, via Top Employers, with organisations with more extensive expertise on employee well-being, which has led to virtual workshops on mental health.

How do you share successful practices and processes (with other Top Employers)?

I had the opportunity to be a guest speaker twice, to share my expertise on Talent Acquisition and D&I. Whether I’m on stage or in the audience, after a Connect & Share session I am always inspired and eager to implement what I learn at PageGroup.

How has the Top Employers community contributed to your development?

Being amongst other Top Employers gives me a sense of pride in my work at PageGroup. Reflecting on the practices of other Top Employers helps me to reflect on PageGroup and act upon what we could improve. The tips are often small but have a big impact.

World of Work Trends Report 2023



Top Employers Institute’s World of Work Trends Report 2023 analyses the latest trends in people strategies and practices from leading organisations globally. The report examined data from 2 053 Certified Top Employers to give a broader insight into how global developments will impact workforces in the year ahead.

What’s Inside?

Our latest research shows that the top 3 people priorities for these organisations in 2023 will be to create a high-performance culture, develop new leadership capabilities and align purpose, vision, and values. These three priorities reflect the following three key trends we have identified in our research.

Our contributing researchers and HR auditors explore the changes happening in the world of work, focusing on three major trends that are shaping global people practices:

The Employee Experience will become “super-personalised”.

We will see an unprecedented level of personalisation in the everyday employee experience. The personalisation of consumer needs has been a challenge for organisations and now employees expect to be treated as “internal” customers. The rise of individual employee needs will have much further to run in 2023 – what has been “people centric” will become “person centric”. Only those businesses that can go the extra mile in providing a genuine and heartfelt commitment to their people in this way will generate the emotional reaction necessary to enable a high-performance culture.

Leaders will actively listen for the “heartbeat” in their organisation.

Leaders will develop new strategic skills, particularly that of “listening to the heartbeat” of the organisation. Leaders are effectively having to “double screen” their working world. They need to simultaneously think about long term horizons, while acting decisively in the short term to survive, not to mention to thrive. They, and the next generation of leaders they nurture, will need to place a more committed listening strategy front and centre, to win the emotional commitment of their teams for in preparation for disruptive challenges.

Positive Impact – the new “North Star” for better decisions.

A clear commitment to “positive impact” will be the new North Star for everything that enlightened businesses do in 2023. Positive impact among our Top Employer organisations can be defined and achieved in three ways:

• A “lived” purpose that works best when it comes straight from the heart of all employees after all – and remains a constant in their everyday decisions.
• The positive impact made by an organisation can only ever be as good as the views that it allows itself to hear. So enlightened attitudes regarding diversity and inclusion are not only important in their own right, but also for the forward momentum they create in all organisations.
• Sustainability is key, both in the way an organisation ensures its own continuity through a positive wider impact – and in the way it is perceived and behaves as a good employer.

2023 will be all about these three trends. They will show a powerful human shift towards respecting individuality and valuing difference. It is vital that we attend to these needs because old management models are no longer useful. The best companies listen – truly listen – to their employees, invest in the individual experience, and create a shared purpose that gives meaning to the everyday employee experience. For organisations that achieve this, the future, despite the uncertainty we see all around us, will be very bright.

Why Developing an Effective (Remote) Offboarding Process is Important

Remotely onboarding and offboarding employees are becoming the norm across organisations globally. These practices are revealing new challenges and opportunities in these new and established practices. While we explored some of these opportunities in our past article about onboarding, this article is focused on current practices around remote offboarding. The article will explore how people practices around offboarding are being adapted to meet the virtual digital landscape many employees are currently navigating.

What is Offboarding and Why is it Important?

Offboarding, which is the process when an employee parts ways with the organisation they have worked for, is often overlooked as much of the focus usually falls on onboarding processes. But offboarding should not be forgotten.

Offboarding is likely neglected because many often see offboarding as a necessary process for returning company equipment and deactivating company access to various systems. They forget the way the process of offboarding affects the transferring of responsibilities and knowledge, feedback from employees and the last impression they have of the company.

Let’s take a moment to look at some of the reasons why having a good offboarding process is important and should be on the HR agenda

• Past employees can become future employees – The reason that employees leave companies is not always because they do not enjoy working at the company. There is a multitude of reasons why employees leave. They might leave for personal family reasons, because they are relocating, or because they feel that they may be challenged more at another organisation. In the future, it could become advantageous for both parties to work together. When employees leave on a sour note this possibility is diminished.
• Past employees strategically impact a company’s employer branding – The impressions of an organisation that an employee leaves with are built over the length of their employee journey. And the final days of their employment can cement their feelings about the organisation. While they may not work for the organisation anymore, if asked, they will likely report positive feelings. And as employer branding moves higher on the agenda, this good feeling can funnel into social posts and other word of mouth stories that help the business attract new employees.
• Past employees can aid in assisting new employees – One of the more pertinent reasons for properly offboarding staff is the need for a smooth handover process between them and the new employee. When there is a well organised and empathetic offboarding process former employees are more likely to be willing to smooth the transition of knowledge and expertise to the next person.

How Offboarding has Gone Remote

While the larger shift to remote offboarding, like remote onboarding, was increased due to the global pandemic and with many jobs continuing to operate remotely it is sure to be a practice that not only stays but innovates to better suit the needs of the organisation and its workforce.

To create seamless and effective remote offboarding processes HR departments need to work closely with their Digital and IT departments to develop the right digital employee experience that helps to create an empathetic work environment, so as to make employees feel empowered and engaged in making their steps out of the organisation.

The support of digital systems can lead to the creation of a well-thought-out dashboard or portal that can make the transitionary process seamless.

The portal could include a guide to how employees can return their equipment to the employer, best practices for virtually handing off responsibilities and other tasks that aid the offboarding process. The HR department leads in the knowledge and experience around what is needed in the process and the IT department aid in making this process a digital reality. Working together to tackle the challenges of offboarding remotely is eased when these two departments work together.

One of the best ways to make the offboarding process an easier procedure is to have it operate in an environment that is already adaptable and empathetic to its workforce. While how a business can do this work cannot be covered, even briefly in this article, we have many other articles on our insights page that can lead you in understanding how that environment.

Companies and leaders that are more keen to listen to employee insights and HR analytics, and are open to it empathetically will be able to make sure that as their former employees leave on happier notes.

Concluding Thoughts on Offboarding

The need to have a successful offboarding process is supported by HR and IT departments. As remote work becomes the standard, or at least an option, in many organisations creating processes that support these workers is integral.

Are you curious of Offboarding best practise? By joining Top Employers Institute Program you will have access to an immense library of best practise that will help your company grow.

Get in touch today for free to become an employer of choice!

Case Study: How personalised learning rapidly upskilled the Virtusa workforce



UK Top Employer Virtusa helps clients to grow their businesses, by providing digital transformation, engineering and outsourcing services across a wide range of sectors globally.  

To sustain and improve engagement and well-being in the new environment created by the pandemic, Virtusa needed to reskill team members quickly in future technologies. To transform these capabilities was something that employees also wanted, which led to the launch of Engineering IQ (EIQ).

Download the Case Study to:

• Learn more about Virtusa’s unique Engineering IQ Programme
• Discover how Virtusa has managed, through its EIQ Programme, to link employee well-being directly to a long-term focus on careers
• Be inspired by how purposeful and customised learning in a supportive environment rapidly upskilled the Virtusa workforce – and why its clients now want to launch similar programmes of their own

Complete the form to download the Case Study now.