Study Methodology

The Study is divided into six sequential phases, namely Registration, Data Collection, Data Collation, Random Audits, Judging and Results Announcement.

Registration (September 1—December 20, 2008)

Registrations will be open from September 1, 2008. Organizations which would like to participate will have to register on this website and provide preliminary information (basic information like number of years in business, number of FTE employees, countries of operations, etc.).

Hewitt Associates will confirm each registration through email within one working day.

During this period, Hewitt consultants will be available to answer any queries that organizations may have regarding the study. Samples of tools, reports, deliverables etc. will also be available during this period.

Data Collection (October 1—January 24, 2009)

During this phase, each participating organization will have to complete three diagnostic tools developed by Hewitt—the Employee Opinion Survey (EOS), People Practices Inventory™ (PPI) and CEO Questionnaire.

  • Employee Opinion Survey (EOS)—This survey is designed to gauge the level of employee engagement and collect information about employee perceptions of the work environment. It is completed by a statistically valid, random sample of employees. The EOS takes approximately 25-30 minutes to complete per employee. Hewitt's preference is that all EOSs be submitted on-line using Hewitt's reliable and secure platform, used by Hewitt globally to conduct both Hewitt Best Employer surveys and all Engagement studies.
  • People Practices Inventory™ (PPI)—The PPI is a comprehensive tool that gathers information in different areas about philosophies, practices, and policies that influence the management of people in organizations. This inventory is completed on-line only (a printable version is available, but the inventory must be submitted on-line) and can take from 4-8 hours to complete (the PPI can be split into sections and completed by more than one person).
  • CEO Questionnaire—This questionnaire is designed to collect the CEO's (or the most senior executive's) philosophy and approach to managing people. This questionnaire is completed on-line only (a printable version is available, but the inventory must be submitted on-line) and takes approximately 20 minutes to complete.

Data Collation (November 1, 2008—January 31, 2009)

Hewitt will collate all information received from participants in order to prepare the materials required by judges in reviewing and making their decision. This would include, but not be limited to, analysis reports and relevant quantitative statistics generated from the study.

Random Audits (February 1—February 28, 2009)

In order to verify the accuracy of data provided by organizations, Hewitt will conduct random audits (onsite) for up to 20% of the participating organizations. In cases where discrepancies are found between the submitted data and results from our random audits, an organization could be disqualified from the study.

Judging (March 2009)

A panel of independent judges will decide the list of Hewitt Best Employers in Middle East 2009. The judges will include representatives of academia, government organizations, the human resources profession and the business community.

Hewitt does not determine the list of Best Employers, it is created by the independent judging panel. Hewitt provides cleaned data and analysis from the study data to the judges for their use and information.

Essentially, the judges will consider a wealth of data that will give them a 360-degree view of each organization's employee perspectives, leadership perspectives, and HR practices. Ultimately, they will be looking for those organizations that are able to demonstrate a high level of employee engagement and a strong alignment of their people practices with their business strategy.

All participating organizations will remain anonymous throughout the judging process and the identity of any organization will not be revealed until the judging panel has agreed on a final list of Hewitt Best Employers in Middle East 2009. Therefore the judging process will be 'blind', wherein all data will be presented to the judges without the names of any organization.

Results Announcement (Apr 29, 2009)

The names of the Hewitt Best Employers in Middle East 2009 will be announced at a press conference in Dubai on April 29th, 2009.