The participating companies had to go through the same rigorous methodology followed in the rest of the world. Grow Talent first administered the Great Place To Work(c) Culture Audit.

Simultaneously, a randomly selected sample of employees responded to the Great Places to Work(c) Trust Index questionnaire. It comprises a battery of 58 statements on a 5-point scale. Respondents were also asked to give qualitative feedback on why they considered their organisation a great workplace and what would help it to get better. The scores and the qualitative comments were then evaluated by the Grow Talent team.

In fact, preparations for the survey had started in January itself, when two experienced consultants from GPTW's US office conducted a week-long training programme in Gurgaon for all members of the Grow Talent team. And before the survey went live, the research team responsible for the final list of great workplaces underwent another week-long training programme. This, too, was conducted by an US-based consultant of GPTW. Now, every detail had been sewn up and the stage was set for the rollout.

Over 20,000 employees participated in the exercise. The companies that make up the Top 25 companies in the Great Places to Work survey represent a broad cross-section of corporate India and cover industries ranging from the consumer packaged goods to pharmaceuticals to services to core industries like steel. (The full list is available on page 26.) Of course, the technology companies do tend to dominate the list. As many as eight companies from the IT sector figure in it, which is very much in line with the tech sector's people-focussed approach. Twelve manufacturing companies made the cut. The list also has a fair mix of Indian and global companies, though the latter comfortably occupy the top five positions. But despite all the diversity, most of these companies share certain characteristics.

Trust is the building block
Ever asked yourself: Do your employees really trust you? The chances are you'd end up asking yourself yet another question: What is trust really?
The Great Place to Work Institute has a simple definition of trust. It asks employees to rate the management on three counts: whether the communication systems in the company work well, whether employees are provided appropriate resources to carry out their work and whether the management operates with integrity. These three parameters measure credibility. Add fairness and respect - and you get trust.

So how do the 25 companies fare on the trust factor? In fact, all of them fare quite well, with scores varying from high to above average. This means employees not only enjoy a lot of respect, they are satisfied with the level of professional support and caring they receive. They also feel that management policies are fair and impartial.

Federal Express, WiproSpectramind and Texas Instruments come out tops simply because their employees give them a higher score on all the three factors.

But how does trust manifest itself in organisations? At Marico, for instance, there is no concept of a fixed number of casual leaves. Employees have the freedom to leave after simply informing their boss. And when they troop into the office every morning, they aren't required to sign a muster

When times are good, building trust isn't that hard. The acid test comes when business slows down. Last year, Texas Instruments faced such a moment. It had made offers to 150 students from the IITs for various assignments at its high-end product development centre in Bangalore. Shortly afterwards, the downturn kicked in. While many software firms withdrew or deferred their offers, Texas Instruments did not - and emerged with a stronger reputation.

The leaders walk the talk
In 2000, the Delhi-based NIIT was smack in the middle of the downturn. As orders dried up, morale suffered - and a few irate discussion boards critical of the NIIT management came up on the intranet. Says Rosita Rabindra, the human resource head at the company: "We even wondered if we should be censoring the discussion boards."

Eventually, NIIT's top management decided to not to react. "And, we found that other employees soon took up cudgels on behalf of the management," says Rabindra. Even today, the NIIT founders continue to have extremely candid discussions with their young staffers - both online and through face-to-face interactions. During one of these sessions, NIIT chairman Rajendra Pawar had to face a tricky situation. At one discussion, while talking about the company's new strategy, he had to field questions like 'Will there be lay-offs?', or even, 'Didn't the top management
see this coming?'.

These moments are horribly uncomfortable for any leader. But it is during such moments that an organisation's culture is defined, perhaps more strongly than through dry vision statements hung up on the wall at the reception. Says chairman Rajendra Pawar: "Leaders should be vulnerable. If we make a mistake, we should learn to own up."
Can you recall the vision statement of your organisation? No? Well, NIIT and all the other 24 workplaces don't just have a well-articulated vision, they believe in making it a part of their work lives. That may be why the Top 25 firms tend to have relatively high scores for top management's clarity of vision.

Of course, every corporation has its own way of connecting with employees. At Wipro, everyone gets a chance to meet the chairman after he or she completes six months. The chairman then communicates not just the organisational vision, but also the role that the employee can play in making the vision a reality. Firms like Cadbury make 'living the vision' a part of performance measurement.

Cadbury also wants to make consumer insights and innovation an important facet of its culture. But to measure progress against intent, CEO Bharat Puri prefers to first turn the focus on his own and his top team's performance. During its start-up phase in 2001, insurance major Aviva conducted a visioning programme called Navkriti, involving its employees. All 100 employees attended workshops and conferences to figure out what their common objectives and desired behaviour should be.

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