Take a Look

If you have recently been online on one of the many search engine sites you might have passed a few articles that gave a list of the best and worst brands, best schools and so on. These lists are compiled every year around this time and are the results of thousands of surveys taken throughout the year. One list I neglected to mention really caught my eye. It was a list of the worst companies to work for.

This list included ten companies that we all have heard of and may have used them in the past or we might be using them now. Current employees and former employees were all surveyed based on some questions and when the percentages came back the numbers were very alarming. The one thing I noticed that these companies had in common besides being on this list, was their employees really hated working there and that the companies main objective was completing the sale they could care less about the customer.

Two very alarming trends but most importantly two ways to get your businesses reputation destroyed which is partly done already because you are on this list. My first thought about the companies that made this list - are they aware of this? If they are, what are they doing to change it? Do they even care? Most companies will pay little attention to these types of lists because they feel it doesn't represent what their company means or they are under the impression that they have employees that love coming to work every day.

They might give internal surveys and based on the result of that they would think they are doing a good job when it comes to employee relations and customer relations. Not a good list to go off of because it is very biased and employees might be afraid to speak out fearing they will lose their job. So it is safe to surmise those internal surveys give a false result. The lists that are posted should be a wakeup call to any CEO whose company made that list. It is public and the whole world can see what type of business you're running which will definitely have an impact on stock prices and the board won't be too happy either.

It is time to get help and begin to patch the relationship up between you and your employees. You have to think about the future and recruiting talent down the line. If you're on this list and have not made any types of improvements talent will pass you by without looking back. I have written before about how important employee morale was to the image of a business and that if it is bad the whole company is going down. What you can take from these lists are ways to improve your image by starting in house. You may think no one is watching or reading these lists but judging by the amount of comments left under the article themselves you are severely wrong.

Lists can sometimes be wake up calls, primarily for those who land on worse of the worst list. It is public for everyone to see and eyes will be watching to see if you are taking the necessary steps to make sure you are not on next year’s list.