The Best Employers 2021: The Winners of the Swiss Employer Award

The Swiss Employer Award is probably the most meaningful award for assessing employer attractiveness. This is because the only thing that counts in this award are the detailed assessments of the company's own employees. The scientifically developed questionnaire consists of around 60 questions and is completed on average by 75% of all employees of a company. This makes the assessments extremely representative and provides a differentiated picture of the working environment in a company.

How employees rate their employers

57 companies received awards this year and the best employers 2021 were selected from their ranks. A further 57 companies received a quality seal this year. These companies achieved a good rating level, but are not among the best employers in Switzerland and therefore did not receive a rank.

Employees rated their employer on all work situation topics relevant to satisfaction and commitment. The following three dimensions of the work situation have the greatest influence on employee commitment in relation to all 165 companies:

1. Corporate strategy, i.e. employees want to know where the company is headed
2. Work content, i.e. employees want to be able to fully apply their knowledge and skills
3. Involvement of employees, i.e. employees want to be involved and have sufficient freedom to make decisions

It is also interesting to note that cooperation within the company and customer orientation have become much more important during the Corona period. This can be explained by the fact that these two topics have become more focused and more difficult to manage during this time.

Heavily burdened employers

In the evaluations, it is noticeable that the workload in many companies has increased even further. In some cases, a vicious circle has begun: Heavy workloads lead to more absences and, as a result, the remaining employees have to take on even more, which increases the burden even further. In some cases, there was not even enough time for recruiting and integrating new employees, which in turn had an impact on cooperation, on the teams and on the mood (spirit). Conclusion: The crisis did not bring about something that was not there before, but at most reinforced something that was already there.

Humility and modesty have grown

"The majority of employees' reaction was very employer-friendly, i.e. understanding, and we often found something like modesty or humility in the organizations. Many employees appreciated still having their job in this rather difficult time and finding support and orientation in their working environment," summarizes Sven Bühler, Managing Director of icommit GmbH, which conducts and evaluates the survey in each case. This is also reflected in the overall satisfaction and commitment. At all companies, the satisfaction index remained at roughly the same level. The sense of belonging to one's own company, the central component of commitment, increased slightly despite or even because of the crisis.

The best employers in 2021 by category

Large companies category (1,000+ employees)

1. Vaudoise Insurances
2. SFS Group Switzerland AG
3. Luzerner Kantonalbank AG

Medium-sized company category (250-999 employees)

1. Ergon Informatik AG
2. zeka centers for the physically handicapped aarau
3. ti&m AG

Medium-sized company category (100-249 employees)

1. IB Langenthal AG
2. Mobimo Management AG
3. Fraisa SA

Category Small companies (50-99 employees)

1. Industrielle Betriebe Interlaken (IBI) AG
2. Arcolor AG
3. SCHURTER Input Systems AG

Rising star of the year

Matterhorn Gotthard Railways

The complete rankings are available here: https://swissarbeitgeberaward.ch/gewinner/