Their staff are more engaged, their voluntary turnover is lower than average, they’re pretty good at rewarding good performance – and most have fewer than 500 staff.
That’s the profile of companies who feature in this year’s Hewitt Best Employers in Australia and New Zealand Study. Eight of them are repeat winners – including call centre services company SalesForce which is the only company to be awarded top title two years in row. Also featuring in both the 2004 and 2005 lists were seek.com.au, Swiss Re (both earning commendation for consistent improvement), American Express, Bain and Company, Dell, Golder Associates and Select Australasia.
Others on the 2005 list are Bayer Healthcare ANZ, Blackmores, British American Tobacco, Carson Group, Medtronic, Nokia and Westaff. All up, 139 companies participated in the study for which data was collected from 40,000 employee surveys.

Engineering leader to oversee Fergus’ global technology direction
Fergus, a job management software provider for the trade industry in Australia and New Zealand, has announced the appointment of Ben Gracewood as Vice President of Engineering, based in Auckland.