For the fourth year in a row, HDMZ has been certified as a Great Place to Work. That means that over the last several years, almost every single employee has participated in an anonymous survey, indicating that they enjoy working here. In fact, in 2024, we were considered a great place to work by 97% of our employees, compared to an average of 57% at the typical US-based company. But more than just giving us bragging rights, the Great Place to Work survey allows us the opportunity to gain insights into our employees’ true perceptions of the agency, enabling us to use that feedback to improve our culture. Read on to find out what we take away from this experience.
What our employees like about us
There are two ways employees can share their thoughts with us via the Great Place to Work survey: through their responses to multiple choice questions, and in free response sections. HDMZ receives a fully anonymized breakdown of these responses, allowing us to identify areas where we excel and where we can improve.
From evaluating these responses, some common themes have emerged. The first is that our employees like one another. They feel that their coworkers care about one another, and enjoy each other’s company. This is something that we find is not only highly valued among current employees, but also frequently mentioned by individuals who are interested in working with us. After all, when you spend most of your day at work, it’s important to like the people with whom you’re working.
Another important takeaway is that our employees value the work we do. By partnering with organizations in the health and life sciences, we know that we can make a significant impact on people’s lives. Having that kind of purpose is important to many HDMZers, and makes showing up to work every day even more meaningful.
How we’re improving
Because the surveys are totally anonymous, employees can feel free to answer honestly. That means that the Great Place to Work survey gives us an opportunity to learn about issues that they might not share otherwise. Over the years, we’ve used this open feedback to guide changes in the organization, and make improvements that reflect our employees’ priorities and challenges. The survey results generate a "word cloud" of the most common themes from the comments. You can see what ours looks like below.
The first year our employees took the survey, we learned that they wanted a more structured career development process. As a result, we developed better-defined job descriptions and formal guidelines for evaluations and career advancement. Today, these standards are applied throughout our company, with twice-yearly career check-ins for every employee.
In another year, employees expressed that they wanted more transparency about how the company is performing. Now, HDMZ leadership gives a quarterly presentation to employees on the state of the organization, as well as goals and projections for the future. This helps employees feel more connected to the company as a whole, and find clarity on how their work contributes to the big picture.
How we keep HDMZ’s culture strong
Establishing a good company culture takes more than just responding to survey results. Fostering connections among employees and with HDMZ is a significant effort, especially with a distributed workforce across the United States — and even other continents.
When we began remote work, we frequently checked in to make sure everyone was integrated with the necessary technology and happy with the changes that were being made. Now that our virtual work format is established, we try to find ways for people to stay involved, even digitally. We make an effort to talk to one another in virtual meetings, not only about work, but also about what’s going on in our lives. Twice a week, we hold a full-company town hall to keep connected with teams and coworkers we don’t work with daily.
Less formally, we make sure to offer lots of opportunities for HDMZers to interact. We hold charity drives to which employees can choose to contribute, as well as contests such as a fantasy football league and a step-counting competition. We’ve created a number of Slack channels to encourage discussion on shared interests — such as the particularly popular pets channel. We’ve also established several employee resource groups that enable our team members to engage in causes that are meaningful to them. And, even though we occasionally organize in-person events at our Chicago office, we make every effort to ensure that our remote employees do not feel left out.
Great and getting greater
While we don’t need a survey to confirm how much we enjoy working at HDMZ and recognize our phenomenal culture, as a science-minded organization, we appreciate having the data and statistics to support our experience. And, we’re excited to keep finding new opportunities to learn and grow, and to make our “great place to work” even greater.
