Grinnell Mutual named 2021 Gallup Exceptional Workplace Award winner

Grinnell Mutual has received the 2021 Gallup Exceptional Workplace Award (GEWA). The award recognizes the most engaged workplace cultures globally.

By connecting employee engagement to every aspect of their culture, these organizations fuel the motivation and innovation that drive business results far beyond their competition around the world, and give people what they really want from their careers and lives: belonging, learning and growth, recognition, a great manager, and the opportunity to do what they do best every day.

In a year filled with unprecedented challenges ranging from the COVID-19 pandemic and civil unrest to one of Midwest insurers’ most destructive and costly weather events, the Aug. 10, 2020, derecho, Gallup found that Grinnell Mutual demonstrated extraordinary commitment to its employees and its corporate culture.

“In 2020, organizational cultures saw historic threats. It took an exceptional amount of resilience for organizations, and their employees, to make it through,” said Jim Harter, Gallup’s chief scientist of workplace management and wellbeing. “The abundance of well-managed and highly inspired teams inside Gallup Exceptional Workplace Award-winning organizations puts them in a particularly strong position to adapt quickly to meet the needs of their customers.”

Jeff Vogts, Grinnell Mutual’s vice president of Talent Development, said the company’s culture of trust and respect has always been a draw for potential talent. “Grinnell Mutual is a company that actually lives its core values and treats its employees as what they truly are: the most important factor in all of our business successes,” Vogts said.

“The deep commitment we have to our employees and keeping the promises we make to customers is fundamental to the way we do business. How we rose to the challenges of 2020 and emerged not only whole, but even stronger as both an employer and an insurer, confirmed what we have always known,” he said. “If you build a business around doing what’s right — for the company, the customers, and each other — not only does employee engagement reflect that, the bottom line does, too.”

For GEWA winners, the ratio of engaged employees to actively disengaged employees is 14 times higher than the international average, at 73 percent. Worldwide, only 22 percent of employees are engaged and committed to their work and connected to their workplace. Just 39 percent of employees in the U.S. workforce are engaged.

“It’s amazing what can be accomplished when you have a collective vision and purpose. Throughout the pandemic, and in the face of the devastating Midwest derecho, our staff remained focused on protecting each other and providing outstanding customer service,” said Grinnell Mutual President and CEO Jeff Menary. “They truly care about their company, their customers, their communities, and their co-workers. I believe the work and successes of our employees during 2020 is the model of how businesses should operate for decades to come.”

Gallup’s meta-analysis on team engagement and performance is the most comprehensive workplace study ever conducted, with data on more than 2 million employees in 276 organizations across 54 industries and 96 countries.

Organizations with highly engaged employees significantly outperform their peers in important business outcomes, including customer ratings, profitability, productivity, turnover, safety incidents, shrinkage, absenteeism, quality, wellbeing, and organizational citizenship.

See all the 2021 winners here.

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