Datacraft is one of the few companies where the key motivation for new hires is job content and career growth—a parameter on which the company, however, took a beating last year. It is also an interesting illustration of how recession can effect employees. Though overall, Datacraft employees were relatively less affected from recession-led salary cuts (and related perks and entitlements etc), it was recession-led stress and increased jobload that had a significant impact. A good 44% employees said they were very stressed at work (56% said this had increased over last year) and half of them had issues with work-life balance. Driven to a large extent because of that, employee perceptions of the company’s culture fell sharply, as did its overall ranking—from #7 to #13. That said, however, Datacraft hung on to its #5 position on the Small Companies’ Best Employer list, while some others dropped out altogether or fell out of the Top 5.