Ireland’s 150 Best Employers 2022: Employee retention is the name of the game when employers go all out

Keeping employees happy has suddenly become a lot harder – according to Conor Skehan in the second year of Sunday’s Sunday Independent’s Ireland’s 150 Best Employers.

e is right, of course – and if you want to know why, this publication has it raving in the Sunday Independent and Independent.ie

If there are two big takeaways for me, they are that staff have never been in such a strong position and that Covid-19 has changed everything even more than we thought possible at this time last year than the first edition of Ireland’s Best Employers.

Six of the top 10 companies on our list are tech multinationals. Aside from the extremely good pay (average Google salary in Ireland is €100,000), what did these companies do to garner such impressive employee endorsements in our latest list?

In Sunday’s print and online publication, Adrian Weckler argues that they all have one thing in common: they handled the pandemic well. I’m sure that’s the case for the vast majority of our top 150 places to work, but some have clearly done better than others at keeping employees happy and fulfilled during a time of unprecedented upheaval.

Thoughtful gestures to make employees feel valued are very helpful. Maybe it’s a reflection of the media industry, but after 30 years in the business I’d never heard of a ‘care package’ until they suddenly showed up regularly during lockdown, courtesy of my then-new employer. Mediahuis Ireland, owner of Sunday Independent and Independent.ie. Delivering packages like this to a large number of employees may end up being the bottom line, but these days the name of the game is employee retention – and it’s clear companies are judged very differently by the modern workforce.

If you refuse point-blank to offer your employees flexibility in their workweek, you can expect high staff turnover (and don’t expect to rank in our top 150 any time soon, or ever).
Also in the Sunday packet, recruiter Barry Whelan tells Gabrielle Monaghan that more than half of the employers his firm surveyed intend to offer raises this year.

“It’s going to be very, very similar to the Celtic tiger,” he says, somewhat alarmingly. “Companies are doing what they can to keep employees. Employees are looking for job changes for a better work-life balance and a change of scenery, and we’re seeing spectacular counter-offers from employers.”

The list of companies is compiled in cooperation with Statista, one of the world’s leading statistics companies, which has identified more than 1,100 employers with more than 200 employees, which is the minimum number for inclusion. For reasons of objectivity, Mediahuis Ireland, the only company of this size, has not been included.

The world of work is changing rapidly. I hope Sunday’s printed insert and online content give you a good sense of why – and what’s next for employers and employees.