Logistics / courier services
Founded: 1987
Employees: 28
Male/Female ratio: 57% – 43%
Bermudian/Non-Bermudian ratio: 93% – 7%
Staff turnover (2017): 18%
FedEx Express puts just as great an emphasis on keeping employees happy as it does customers. This culture, instilled at global level, certainly shows up strongly in the logistics expert’s Bermuda operation, which has enjoyed more success than any participant in the history of the Top Ten Employers awards.
A four-time winner, FedEx missed out by a whisker on defending the number one spot that it held in 2017.
FedEx founder and CEO, Fred Smith espouses a “people-service-profits” philosophy and believes that “when people are placed first they will provide the highest possible service and profits will follow”.
This is no empty slogan. For example FedEx holds an annual employee satisfaction survey, which rates management’s performance and forms a basis for improvement through formal written action plans.
The ongoing conversation with employees is encouraged through FedEx’s Open Door programme, a process for dealing with employee questions or complaints regarding corporate policy. There is also a formalised structure for employees to have an issue heard, known as the Guaranteed Fair Treatment Procedure.
One employee said: “My current workplace really shows that it puts its people first before anything. Not only do we talk about safety, we practise it too, and the benefits are excellent as well. The opportunities are here if you’re willing to put in the work.”
FedEx’s employee-centric approach is also evident in its take on performance appraisals that it prefers to term “performance development discussions”. The focus of such meetings “should be on what the employee needs, and how the manager can support, to raise their performance to the next level”, FedEx states.
Employees can earn quarterly bonuses, as well as annual incentive compensation, tied to performance. Unusual staff benefits include FedEx’s online learning centre and special airfares for employees and their families.
What employees said:
“Our benefits program, our FedEx university classes, overall the growth we have to better ourselves to serve our customers”.
“They value their people and show this. For example, in the past year of hurricanes which greatly impacted the Caribbean region they sent in aircrafts with just supplies, generators, water, medicines for their employees”.
“We are allowed to do our jobs daily to the best of our ability without any micro managing”.
