Being an Aiconaut
Being able to effortlessly come up with reasons why someone should join Aico not only makes my job as a recruiter easier but also makes me proud to be part of Aico’s story. And while I still have plenty of things to learn about Aico as an employer, company and product, there are already certain things I want to bring up about Aico in every discussion I am having with potential employees. These are the kind of things that I have observed happening systematically during the past 3 months, which is the length of my journey as an Aiconaut so far. The pitch goes something like this:
“Aico is a modern employer, where employees are highly valued and people respect each other. That is visible, for example, in the way people communicate and how much attention is paid to the well-being of employees. There’s a low hierarchy and a lot of flexibility, which not only gives you freedom but also heavy responsibility when no one is telling you how to do your job. Don’t get me wrong, you’re definitely not left alone – questions are encouraged and colleagues are always willing to help out when needed. What I mean is you need to be ready to take initiative, work hands-on and think innovatively. If you are, Aico might be a great fit for you and the chances are, you’d truly enjoy working here.”
Employee survey
Since we conducted an employee satisfaction survey quite recently, you don’t have to just take my word for it. The survey was conducted in collaboration with our Finnish pension insurance company ELO, and it was sent to 51 employees, from which 44 responded, giving us a satisfying response rate of 86%. In addition to measuring our current employee Net Promoter Score (eNPS), the questionnaire focused on areas such as individual’s work, work community, leadership, personal development and work ability.
If you are not familiar with what eNPS is, it is an internationally comparable recommendation index where employees respond to how likely they would be to recommend the company as a workplace to their acquaintances on a scale of 1-10. The score may vary anywhere between -100 and +100. As a rule of thumb, the score is considered acceptable if it is anything above 0.
The overall average result of all questions was 4.13 (out of 5) and our eNPS was an astonishing score of 52. In comparison, the average score within the information and communication field, according to ELO, is 31. ENPS is a good starting point, but to dig deeper you need to understand what works and what doesn’t. Here the rest of the survey came in handy.
Here are a few things that clearly work at Aico (and I picked these to back up my pitch mentioned above):
- We speak to each other with respect (rate 4.68)
- We share a sense of collaboration and achievement (rate 4.18)
- We get to use our skills and expertise in our line of work (rate 4.32)
- Supervisors treat everyone equally (rate 4.61)
- Aiconauts believe that their workability will be good two years from now (rate 4.52)
Next steps
But enough with the numbers and scores for the time being! What delighted me even more than the positive data collected from the questionnaire was observing what happened behind the scenes after the results came in. There’s no point in conducting a survey unless the company (and especially the leadership) is willing to act upon the results – whatever they may be. And that is exactly what Aico has done. So far, I’ve witnessed the results being thoroughly analysed and brainstorming sessions within teams being organised – all this to create a concrete action plan for how to improve, based on the results.
What’s remarkable is that Aico has been able to maintain such a high employee engagement and satisfaction rate while growing significantly during the past year. As we grow even more, we’ll continue working on the areas where need for development was detected, making Aico an even better place to work at. You can contribute to that by joining the team – check our open positions <here>.