Version 1 is Ireland’s #1 Best Large Workplace™

Everyone here at Version 1 is delighted to share the news that we have been named Ireland’s #1 Best Large Workplace™ for 2023. Before jumping into our thoughts on receiving this phenomenal recognition, we would like to thank every Version 1 person, past and present, who has worked on our remarkable journey to becoming Ireland’s #1 Best Large Workplace™, Ireland’s largest home-grown technology employer, and a truly one-of-a-kind place to work.

When we set out on this journey in 2010, with 300 people and one acquisition completed to date, we knew we were building something truly special at Version 1, that we were different. With ambitious goals on our horizon, we wanted to double down on preserving the heart of Version 1, building an enriching culture and working environment for our people to ensure we retained, engaged, empowered and developed our people in addition to attracting like-minded people to join us on our mission to make a real difference to our customers’ businesses.

As our ranking consistently rose and we continued to climb year after year, our peers would ask, “what’s the secret?”… The truth is there are no shortcuts to successfully building a special workplace. There’s no elevator to the top, you have to take the stairs. Every step of the journey involves dedication, hard work and investment in addition to fostering and rewarding our core values and how we treat each other daily.

As part of engaging and investing heavily in being a Great Place to Work®️,  our people have been surveyed internally by Version 1 for forty-eight consecutive quarters to find out how we are doing as a workplace and externally for twelve straight years by the Great Place to Work®️ organisation. It’s important to recognise here that we don’t have any hand as an employer in unfairly influencing external survey outcomes – perception is reality, and there’s no hiding how our people authentically feel.

No amount of branding, advertisement or lavish parties will change the authentic experience of our people. Every step on our climb up the Best Workplace™ rankings has been the result of forty-eight consecutive quarters spent studying our people’s feedback. Forty-eight quarters of taking action if satisfaction, engagement, empowerment or psychological safety dipped in any area.

Ireland’s Best Workplaces™ 2023 took place on Wednesday, the 22nd of February 2023. It was a notable year for the awards, having scaled up hugely over the years to now recognise Ireland’s top 100 Best Workplaces™.  The Version 1 team was well represented, with Tom O’Connor, Louise Lahiff, Susan Grant, Amanda Kelly, Niall O’Donaill, Amy Carannante, Lok TungThan, Keith Bernard, Neha Rawat, Siobhan Brennan, Denis English and Samrat Paul attending on the night and enjoying the celebrations.

What Does It Take to Be a Great Place to Work®?

Great Place to Work® is a global authority on high-trust high-performance workplace cultures and showcases organisations that hold a steadfast focus on ensuring their workplaces are the best that they can be. This is based on real and honest feedback from the partaking companies’ employees, provided as part of an extensive and anonymous third-party annual survey about the authentic workplace experience. This process, combined with an in-depth cultural audit of the employer’s workplace, provides a clear picture to the Great Place to Work® committee as to how the employer is genuinely performing. The awards are a testament to all the employers and employees in Ireland relentlessly striving to set the standard for positive work environments, something Version 1 is highly committed to.

We are thrilled to announce that Version 1 is Ireland’s Best Large Workplace™. There’s no big secret I can share as to how we’ve built a #1 Best Workplace™, it’s the result of our team’s efforts across dozens of Employee Engagement initiatives, hundreds of people-focused improvements and how we treat each other in thousands of daily interactions in our workplace. I would like to thank every Version 1 person, past and present, who has worked on our remarkable journey to becoming Ireland’s #1 Best Large Workplace™, Ireland’s largest home-grown technology employer, and a truly one-of-a-kind place to work. We are growing rapidly, and my team and I welcome people seeking a company with exciting career advancement opportunities due to rapid growth to consider joining us on our exciting journey going forward.

– Louise Lahiff, Director of Strategy, Planning and People at Version 1