What’s it like to work at your organisation? Do people feel welcome and included? Do you pay fairly?

These are the kinds of questions being asked by the people you are hoping to recruit.

And the answers they hear? That’s your employer brand.

It’s not often we take time to take stock and think about how far Australia has come in terms of understanding and respecting the importance of diversity, equity and inclusion to our workplaces.

But there’s little doubt the workplace of today is vastly different from even the recent past.

When it comes to doing business though, in 2022 it is clear and the evidence is conclusive — diverse workplaces outperform.

The thirty years of research behind the Great Place to Work® Trust Model© shows that credibility, fairness and respect are critical components of workplace experience.

As we enter the third year of this pandemic, new ways of working are becoming second nature — working from home, QR check-ins, rapid testing, isolation protocols.

For many of us, it’s simply the new routine.

But as we adapt, it’s important we recognise that for all the benefits of our new hybrid workplaces, they are creating a few new problems too.

One of the concerns we hear most is whether workplaces can recapture the sense of collaboration and innovation that characterised work before the pandemic.

What did we learn in 2021? As we wind up for the year, I thought it might be instructive to look back at the insights and advice we’ve heard from the Great Place to Work® community during what turned out to be a tumultuous twelve months. We’ve had the privilege of hearing from some of Australia’s greatest companies this year – from global giants like Cisco and SAP to Australian property and tech leaders REA Group and Atlassian, plus a diverse range of home-grown success stories like Hub Australia, Cobild, BlueRock, Ansarada, Mantel, Bellroy and more.

To limit global temperatures to 1.5 degrees above pre-industrial times, the world must get to net zero carbon emissions by 2050.

That’s a goal that affects every employer and every person on the planet.

But for Australia’s Best Workplaces™, taking real action on climate change not only helps the planet, but it also pays more immediate dividends.

Australia’s home-grown success story Atlassian has been recognised as one of the World’s Best Workplaces™, entering the definitive list of the best places to work for the first time.

Business should take a long term, planned approach to flexible working and not get caught up simply thinking about the end-of-lockdown return to office in Australia’s biggest cities, according to hybrid working experts.

Great Place to Work® asked two experts in flexible working to help businesses plan for the return to work over the next few months as pandemic lockdowns end.

The key message: a hybrid of in-office and at-home working is here to stay for the long term – and business leaders must take a considered approach to making it work in their organisations.

For all the talk about working from home, virtual Friday night drinks and Zoom calls, it was communication effectiveness that sets Australia’s Best Workplaces™ apart from others in coping with the pandemic.

With just days to go before the 2021 list of Australia’s Best Workplaces™ is revealed, I want to take a step back to last year and explore the themes that emerged from last year’s list.

More than 10,000 companies around the world apply to become Great Place to Work-Certified™ each year – and on Certification Nation Day, Great Place to Work® celebrates every single Certified company.

Focusing on your workplace ESG, which stands for the Environmental, Social and Governance impacts of an organisation’s activities, is the key to delivering all three of these goals.