Nous Group is Australia's top company (and consultancy) to work for
Nous Group – a management consultancy with seven offices across Australia – has been named the country’s top company to work for in a new ranking of top employers.
The ‘Best Places to Work’ study by WRK+, an independent Australian human capital research firm, canvassed the views of employees from over 110 companies, asking them to assess how their employer performs in areas such as leadership, workplace culture, diversity & inclusion, internal collaboration, transparency and more. The employee engagement results were complemented by a review of an organisation’s people policies and procedures.
At the very top of the ranking created sits Nous Group, a consulting firm with around 450 consultants and staff in Australia, the UK and Canada (over 400 of which are based in Australia). Nous placed number 1 for businesses with more than 100 employees, ahead of consulting industry peers and companies such as Mastercard and Equinix. Meanwhile, Elantis Premium Funding was named the top employer in the less than 100 employees category.
In the survey, more than 95 per cent of Nous Group’s employees agreed with statements including “My manager trusts me to do a good job”, “This is a friendly place to work”, “I can see a clear link between my work and the company goals and objectives” and “The leadership team has a clear view of where the organisation is going and how to get there”.
The review of its human resources strategy and operations found that Nous Group stands out across a number of aspects, including providing a compelling purpose to its people, building trust and transparency across all tiers of the organisation, a compensation & benefits policy that promotes equity & inclusion (for example: a bonus based on collective targets), and a knowledge infrastructure that stimulate continuous learning.
Project staffing is another area where Nous Group shines. Notoriously known for being a top-down process at many of the firm’s peers in the consulting arena, Nous Group’s consultants “have the opportunity to express preferences that align to their personal motivation, strengths and areas of development”, and more importantly, these are subsequently placed at the epicentre of resourcing decisions.
Improving Nous Group together
At the heart of the culture at Nous Group is a vision of empowerment. Enabling all employees to speak up and make suggestions on how to make Nous Group as high-performing and successful as possible is hard wired into the Nous culture, and a contributor to the immense pride Nousers take in their work, according to the final Best Places to Work 2021 report.
The Nous Advisory Council is a forum to raise ideas and suggestions for change. Members of the forum are voted on by their peers as a representative employee group. Each Nous Advisory Council member brings issues or ideas from employees in the offices that they represent, and management then integrates the best ideas into the firm’s regular improvement cycle.
The bi-annual Nous Days are another opportunity for ‘Nousers’ to make suggestions. During these days senior leadership reports on progress against strategy and facilitate sessions to consider what Nous can do, or do differently, to drive the strategic priorities.
For Tim Orton, the Founder and Managing Principal of Nous Group, the recognition is also a testament to the collaboration and adaptability the company’s team had shown during the disruption of Covid-19. “The pandemic upended the way many of us work but it made more important than ever our five reasons for being: positive influence, intellectual stimulation, energy and growth, care and connection, and revenue and profit.”
“Our commitment to our reasons for being meant we thrived amid massive disruption. We did not have a single redundancy due to the pandemic and have been able to reward the dedication of our Nous team for their hard work hard during difficult times.”
The Best Places to Work 2021 award adds to a long list of top employer accolades Nous Group has bagged over the past years. The consulting firm has previously been honoured as a Best Place to Work four times in Australia (2013, 2015, 2017 and 2019) and twice in Asia (2016 and 2018). The recognition means the firm boasts a 100% score in the ranking – as the firm opts to enter the assessment every two years.
