Munich, February 13, 2008 – ESPRiT Consulting is delighted to have received the award “Germany’s Best Workplace 2008”. Yesterday evening this prestigious prize was presented by Olaf Scholz (SPD), the German Secretary of Labor, at a gala ceremony at the Ritz Carlton in Berlin.

The determination of the ranking was based on an anonymous survey of ESPRiT employees, with sections on credibility, respect, pride, fairness, and camaraderie. An additional criterion was an audit on the corporate culture, as well as measures, programs, and concepts in the field of human resources at the company. The results proved to be exceptionally good for ESPRiT in the following areas:

Managers are greatly trusted:

• 96 percent of those asked think managers at the company are competent
• 95 percent are of the opinion that the managers trust their staff to do good work without the need to keep checking up on them

Exemplary corporate culture:

• 93 percent of those asked stated that they are treated as valued members of staff, irrespective of their position in the company
• 97 percent of the employees are prepared to do additional tasks in order to get work done on time
• 94 percent of participants think that special occasions are celebrated in a fitting way

Outstanding teamspirit:

• 97 percent of those asked vouched for the friendly atmosphere at ESPRiT Consulting
• 91 percent of the employees enjoy coming to work

“This is the first time we have participated in the competition, and to be ranked 34^th is really an outstanding achievement. The results of the employee attitude survey have demonstrated to us that we are getting things right with regard to our corporate culture, which stresses personal responsibility and teamspirit. The positive overall result is confirmation that we are on the right track, but at the same time, it also provides us with an incentive to keep on improving our HR work,” explains Karsten Höppner, the CEO of ESPRiT Consulting.

ESPRiT also takes a leading role with regard to the way that the corporate management responds to the heterogeneous make-up of its staff, and makes use of this to the benefit of all employees. In short, ESPRiT excels at diversity management: All the employees surveyed gave the consulting firm top marks for treating all employees absolutely equally, regardless of nationality, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or gender. As the IT and management consulting firm is planning to increase its staff size to 260 this year, the issue of integration of new employees continues to play a major role. In this section, the respondents were also quick to praise ESPRiT: 96 percent stated that as new employees, they had felt good about working at ESPRiT. This is also backed up by Frank Hauser, the manager of the Great Place to Work^® Institute in Germany: “The survey has shown that ESPRiT Consulting is a particularly good employer, and that ESPRiT employees identify with their company far more than is normally the case.”

About the competition:

The competition “Germany’s Best Workplaces” has been carried out every year since 2002 by the research institute psychonomics AG and the Great Place to Work^® Institute, in cooperation with the business magazine Capital. It covers companies across all sectors of the economy, and companies of all different sizes. This year 252 companies took part. Bavaria was the best-represented federal state, with 61 participating companies. The results of the study were published by the business magazine Capital on February 14, 2008.

The companies that received awards will now progress on to the next stage: They are automatically eligible to take part in the Europe-wide competition, when the respective national champions from various EU countries are measured against each other. At the end of March, the Great Place to Work^® Institute Europe, in cooperation with its media partner, the Financial Times, will be awarding the prize for “Europe’s Best Workplace”, as well as special prizes for “life-long learning”, “equal opportunities with regard to gender”, and “diversity”.

There are already plans for a worldwide competition in the coming years.
A complete list of the most highly-ranked companies can be found at www.psychonomics.de/deutschlands_beste_arbeitgeber_2008.pdf