The Top 5 Heart Companies: Best Practices for Employee Engagement

We've shared recently with you how Heartcount clients have inspired us to create The Top 5 Heart Companies Award. Their commitment to making a great workplace for their employees couldn't go unnoticed. It wasn't an easy decision for us, but their results spoke for themselves.

Let's Remember the Winners of the Award

For this award, we observed the companies that were using the app in the last six months. We were looking for organizations that were constantly working on improving their company culture by following the best employee engagement practices, organizing activities according to best practices, having the best employee engagement for the observed period, etc.

And the winners of the first Top 5 Heart Companies award are:

• GoPro, a company composed of experienced experts in the field of implementation of IT business solutions.
• Direct Media United Solutions, a leading media system in Southeastern Europe.
• Bizzomate, a company that helps business and IT find each other and create an effective, efficient and better way of working.
• Ametek, a world-class enterprise with market-leading businesses and strong brands. Their businesses are focused on solving our customers' most complex challenges with differentiated technology solutions.
• Roaming Networks, one of the leading system integrators in the ICT field in Serbia and the Balkans.

One of the things we like the most about these companies is the activities they've been undertaking to increase their employee engagement and create a phenomenal work environment. As sharing knowledge and experience helps us all grow and create a better business community, we want to present to you some of the best practices of our awarded companies.

GoPro—Go Together

Staying connected with employees while working apart was challenging at the previous period. The GoPro company was trying to keep in touch by doing several activities.

Good communication was of utmost importance, so the company decided to publish relevant news and information at the company level on the same channel, in addition to regular company monthly meetings.

Since its founding, the company GoPro has been nurturing and respecting family values.
Besides work, they thought of small tokens of appreciation. During the winter holiday season, they surprised their employees and their families by delivering a cake to their homes. Also, over the course of one weekend, the company organised a three-day family gathering for its employees and their families in Fruške Terme hotel.

Health is one of the most important things in life. Due to the lifestyle we lead today, we often forget to take care of ourselves and our health. Health may not be the only important thing, but without it, everything else is worthless. This is why GoPro has provided private health insurance for its employees and their families.

DIRECT MEDIA United Solutions—Harmonizing the Business and Private Life of Employees

DIRECT MEDIA United Solutions keeps working on nurturing a good work environment in the company.

After receiving the Family Friendly Certificate a year and a half ago, last month, the company introduced new measures to further harmonize the business and private lives of their employees.

Direct Media’s present for their employees’ birthdays from now on, is a day off. Also, the employees can have a day off when their children start the first grade of school. Apart from these measures, a very special one has been introduced for the mothers coming back from maternity leave. They will be able to use a gradual return to work, which means shorter working hours at the beginning, and a slower pace while adjusting to the working processes.

The goal of these efforts, as they say in DIRECT MEDIA United Solutions, is the satisfaction and loyalty of their employees. With its consistent business policy and practice towards the employees, DIRECT MEDIA United Solutions has already proven why it is one of the most desirable employers.

Bizzomate—Making a Difference in Challenging Times

Luckily, we are getting back to normal! But what a ride it’s been. From a highly connected team working side by side in our offices with customers, to working from home.

What we found the most important, was to stay connected, not just the partners with the Bizzomates, but also the Bizzomates with the Bizzomates.

The easy bit was organizing online Friday drinks, regular check-ins and sending presents. The things we really think made a difference were many initiatives from the Bizzomates themselves.

As we are an IT consultancy firm, several cool apps were launched by our colleagues. For instance, one app enabled us to book one of four available desks in the office. We’ve kept two of our offices open with very limited capacity, to make sure that when you really needed a break from the crowded kitchen table, you could work from the office. One person built an app to randomly organize and invite people for online lunch meetings, as a substitute for random coffee machine chats.

But we also host online sport activities and yoga. We hope that we can keep that up and stay fit.

We would never want to repeat the previous year, but we do feel that it has also made us more connected as a team.

Ametek's Years of Learning

The results of the employee satisfaction survey from April 2019, as well as the Heartcount results, indicated that Ametek has a significant number of employees who believe that they haven't had enough opportunities for learning and personal development. Based on this research, the company launched the project "Ametek's years of learning".

All employees have the opportunity to fill out the forms by May 7, and express their desires regarding their personal development. The possibilities include what kind of training they wish to attend in the coming period, and which skills they wish to develop or work on. Moreover, they are also invited to express their ambitions regarding their career advancement. On the other hand, they have simultaneously invited and encouraged everyone who wants to share their knowledge and skills, to apply for internal trainers through this project.

Roaming Networks—Strengthening Team Spirit

Roaming Networks is one of the leading system integrators in the ICT industry, conducting its business on 2 continents, 8 markets and in several time zones, with a fast trend of business growth and development in new countries. In total, it has more than 800 employees.

Given that most of the operations and support come from the office in Serbia, they face many challenges, and there is large room for improvement in information transfer, communication, and strengthening the cohesion of all teams, so that everyone feels as part of one company.

One of the ways to overcome these challenges was to strengthen the team spirit. Among other things, they have organized an online team building.

Since the pandemic prevented the organization of gatherings in person, which have been a practice in Roaming Networks company every year, they had to find another way to socialize and have fun. They found the solution in the form of online team building, which allowed them to include colleagues from all markets in which they operate. They played an online game, "Escape Room", where teams of five employees in real-time, in 160 groups, fought for the first three places. Colleagues had the opportunity to "defend the colors of their country," and it was played for a week, with the winners receiving various interesting prizes.

What Are the Next Heartening Practices?

We hope that activities from the Top Heart Companies inspired you to start thinking about creating some exciting things to improve your company culture and increase employee engagement. Who knows, maybe next time, people will read about your great practices!

Also, thanks to all The Top 5 Heart Companies winners for doing a great job and sharing it with the community! Keep rocking and we will continue to follow your accomplishments.

And don't forget, people are the heart of the company, so allow it to beat strongly!