Despite the slowdown, this is one company that seems to have keep its head where its employees were concerned. Moving up the rankings from 14 to 5 took a lot of doing. And it shows. The company topped some of the most crucial parameters—overall satisfaction, peer satisfaction and the total attribute score. It also did very well on training, coming next only to Mascon Global and Infosys Technologies.

Effects of Recession Reduction in perks: 97% Hit in salary increments: 97% Own Job Security in question: 93.9% Increase in work Load: 90.9% Strengths Highest overall and peer satisfaction levels Highest satisfaction on most attributes Weaknesses Low average tenure, high attrition levels Low ‘Preferred Company’ rankings Staff most satisfied with... Company image and internal communications Technology employees get to work on Staff least satisfied with... Compensation and benefits, co-workers Interpersonal relationships

What set it back, however, were comparatively low attrition scores (ranked 11th at 11.5%), retention and tenure scores. Unlike most other companies, where attrition rates have fallen heavily the last year, attrition at Philips fell from 18.9% to 11.5%, but that’s still high for a company in the Top 5. Retention improved from 72.4% to 87.9% but was still just below industry average, as was tenure at 2.3 years per employee. The other big issues were low ‘Preferred Company’ and ‘Preferred Employer’ rankings. With 1.8% of all IT employees voting for it, Philips Software ranked 14th on ‘Preferred Company’ charts.

More important, despite the highest satisfaction levels in the industry, only 33.3% of its own employees voted for it as their dream company (down from 62% last year). Of the rest, 24.2% of Philips employees voted for IBM, 18.2% for Infosys and 15.2% for SAP Labs.

The company, however, performed well on most of the attributes for which employees said they joined it in the first place. It also topped the scores on company image, internal communication, job content, overseas opportunity, performance appraisal systems, technology and job content. It got the second-highest scores on facilities and resources, interpersonal relationships and training and development.

The company has some innovating HR policies not seen so often in these days of the slowdown—paternity leave, higher education policy (including leave) and even a child adoption policy. It is also among the few companies in the industry which overtly encourages recruitment of qualified, disabled professionals and whose entire facilities adhere to Equal Access standards—that is, they are easily accessible and friendly to employees with disabilities.