Britehouse companies occupy top IT spots

PRESS RELEASE
29 September 2009

The results of the annual Deloitte ‘Best Company to Work For Survey’ were announced in Sandton this week. Britehouse Specialist Microsoft Division, trading as 3fifteen and Britehouse Specialist SAP Division finished 6th and 9th respectively in the Small Company Category (50 – 300 employees).
Another Britehouse company, Auto-Mate, who are an application solutions provider to the African automotive industry, finished in 26th place overall – 26 places up from last year. Collectively, the Britehouse companies occupy 2nd, 3rd and 5th places out of 48 entrants in the IT Industry Sector,
Britehouse Holdings CEO, Scott Gibson, says the company is extremely pleased with this result, in light of the fact that this is only the second year the Britehouse Group has participated in the Deloitte survey.

“Our SAP Division’s achievements - jumping 12 places from last year to 9th place - are even more impressive given that they have merged, consolidated as well as rebranded 3 businesses within the last year. This demonstrates true commitment and strength of the Division’s executive leadership and management teams that have driven both the operational integration and rebranding,” Gibson says.

“Our goal is to be a Group that attracts talent to our organization and having our two primary businesses in the top ten demonstrates that we offer an exciting and rewarding place to work. We listen to our staff and aim to address their personal development requirements. Participation in this survey is now an essential HR process whereby we validate these initiatives and identify areas where changes or adjustments are required. All Britehouse subsidiaries took part in the survey and, whilst not all of these achieved a top ten placing, they either improved their position significantly or stayed the same.” he says.

Benchmarking the Group companies against its peers in the IT sector and other industries is an essential component of confirming that efforts are bearing fruit and assisting in attracting new talent.

“Britehouse currently has a staff complement of 490 people spread across our SAP, Microsoft and Auto-Mate offerings with offices in Johannesburg, Cape Town and Durban,” Gibson says.

“And with our sights strongly fixed on growth, an external validation of our efforts to become a workplace provider of choice is critical.”

3fifteen MD, James Baber, says “we had a 98.5% participation rate. Our staff recognise that this is an important survey and that we take it seriously and apply the various learnings that the survey identifies. Our high ranking is an affirmation that our culture is attractive and our policies are relevant”.

Britehouse Specialist SAP Division CEO, Paolo Masselli, says “our staff have experienced significant change in the last year as we merged three companies into one. We made sure that they were fully engaged throughout the process and I believe our ranking indicates that we got this right. We continue to drive towards our goal of employing the best SAP skills in the country and clearly our current complement of skills believe that we provide them with a challenging and enjoyable employment choice”.

Gibson says that the Britehouse Group companies are all committed to continuing participation in the survey and improving their rankings in future years.

“Our business is about people and skills attraction and development is therefore our key priority. We want to further embed the Britehouse Group as an employer of choice in our industry,” he concludes.