Hewitt’s study involved 912 companies and 180,000 employees across eight countries. Hewitt also conducted qualitative interviews about the economic crisis with key companies during the first quarter of this year. We find our best employers have a longer-term, strategic view of their businesses, and they’re not having a knee-jerk reactions,” says Jo Reinhard, regional best employers lead consultant at Hewitt. Many mentioned travel cuts and freezing headcount. They’re cutting planned costs, but not cutting people and not cutting learning and development.

India’s management culture, meanwhile, has been moving away from a traditional top-down culture where age equals seniority toward a merit-driven system that promotes young achievers and strives to bring out the best in employees. Hewitt also produced a separate list of the five best hotel employers, the winners of this category are Four Seasons, Resort Langkawi, Malaysia, India’s ITC Hotels, JW Marriott Hotel Bangkok, The Conrad Bangkok and The Ritz-Carlton Millenia, Singapore.

According to Hewitt’s research, Hotels as an industry understands very strongly the link between the employee, the interaction with the customers, and business results.