Great places to work were celebrated last night at the JRA Best Workplaces Awards 2009 and Barkers Men’s Clothing scooped the pool taking home two awards.
The annual awards recognize companies of all sizes from around New Zealand who make work a positive experience for their employees. The awards are the largest annual employment engagement survey in New Zealand with 27,500 employees across 216 organisations surveyed on a raft of workplace related topics.
Barkers cemented a fantastic year with their two wins including a hard-fought victory in the Medium-Large Workplace category.
"The win is a massive achievement for Barkers," says company CEO Zac De Silva. "Of course it makes the best retail staff across the country want to jump ship and come and work for us! Better still, our current team get a real lift from the award and are proud to work for Barkers, so this drives even better performance."
Zac says that one of the company's medium-term aims when he became involved with Barkers three years ago was to win the Best Workplaces Award.
"We entered for first time in 2008, and came third, so knew if we were focussed enough this year, during the so-called 'recession' that we were going to be right up there!"
Barkers also took out the Most Improved Medium-Large Workplace award for the first time, and the only award they missed out on was the Overall Award, which went to real estate company Colliers. Zac says that having tasted success this year Barkers is keen to have a shot at the big prize in years to come.
Hello, my name is Jack Sparrow. I'm a 50 year old self-employed Pirate from the Caribbean.