Best Places to Work in Collections 2011 Program Kicks-Off

Stephanie Eidelman

This week we officially opened our annual Best Places to Work in Collections program for registration!

Now in its fourth year, insideARM.com’s Best Places to Work program recognizes the most positive workplace environments in our industry.  Winners have enjoyed great benefits including enhanced reputation with creditors, morale boost, and recruiting support.

Compete against companies of your own size.  No need to feel that you can’t measure up against the benefits and resources of a large company, or the family feeling of a small company.  Rankings are determined within three size categories: small (15-74 employees), medium (75-249 employees) and large (250+ employees).

It works like this:

1. Employers complete a questionnaire on workplace policies, practices, philosophy, systems, benefits, and demographics. It can take about 8 hours to gather all of the info for this questionnaire – but hey, if it was totally simple, it wouldn’t produce meaningful results – and if you register now, you’ll have months to pull it together.

2. Employees are asked an in-depth set of questions — you choose online or via paper format; either way it takes about 10-15 minutes to complete.

That’s it. Within about 6-8 weeks of completion, our partner, Best Companies Group, will produce a list of winners and we start to make announcements.

Rest assured insideARM staff does not have access to employee responses; Best Companies Group has no connection to the debt collection industry (with the exception of their role in this program).  If your staff is — ahem — less than kind, nobody will know but you.  But YOU should know!

Participating companies will receive a free one-page “Employer Benchmark Summary”, and will have the opportunity to purchase the full “Employee Feedback Report” that provides valuable data including a spreadsheet summarizing employee feedback, written employee comments, and industry benchmark information.

These reports offer incredibly valuable information at an unbelievably fair price, regardless of whether you are selected as a winner.  The value in having a 3rd party conduct this survey is that you get candid information from your employees; your HR department could never gather this type of information.  And if you chose to do it independently, you’d pay thousands of dollars.

Please, take advantage of this great opportunity to learn what your employees really think.  After all, aren’t they the ones driving your revenue?  If your staff is unhappy, do you think they are as productive as they could be, or that they are representing you and your clients as they should be?

Yes, it will require some time to complete the company portion of the survey, but it’s not due until mid- summer, so you’ve got plenty of time to deal with it if you get started now.

Simply participating will show your employees that you care.  And just read what your peers have to say about the benefits you’ll enjoy if selected as a winner!