Fairway's Winning Strategy: Building a Stellar Employer Brand and People-First Culture
Objective
Gain valuable employee feedback and promote employee engagement
Solutions
Workplace Survey, Premium Media Kit
Results
Strengthened culture, employer brand, employee feedback, recruitment, and competition
With over 500 branches and 8,000 employees nationwide, Fairway Independent Mortgage is a leading mortgage lender and customer service provider. Fairway uses Top Workplaces employer recognition to attract top talent, stand out against their competitors, and earn client trust.
“By leveraging Energage tools and Top Workplaces awards, Fairway has strengthened its employer brand, gathered valuable employee feedback, gained insights from benchmarking data, and earned recognition for its people-first workplace culture. These efforts collectively contribute to attracting top talent, improving recruitment outcomes, and fostering employee retention and satisfaction, especially during periods of rapid growth.”
Julie Fry
Chief Human Resources Officer at Fairway Independent Mortgage

“By leveraging Energage tools and Top Workplaces awards, Fairway has strengthened its employer brand, gathered valuable employee feedback, gained insights from benchmarking data, and earned recognition for its people-first workplace culture. These efforts collectively contribute to attracting top talent, improving recruitment outcomes, and fostering employee retention and satisfaction, especially during periods of rapid growth.”
Julie Fry
Chief Human Resources Officer at Fairway Independent Mortgage

How Fairway has benefitted from the Workplace Survey
Learning our engagement scores and hearing from our employees is important to us at Fairway. We have benefited greatly from obtaining employee feedback on our benefit offerings, our engagement events, processes, and procedures to enhance productivity and efficiency. We strive to improve every day, to make our employees feel valued, and help our organization grow and prosper.
Fairway’s engaged company culture is the result of employee feedback
Listening to employee feedback fosters a culture of respect, open communication, and continuous improvement, which enhances company culture and boosts employee engagement. Fairway has experienced these firsthand and understands the value it can create within an organization.
Listening to our employees drives many of our company culture-related decisions. If employees are working from home, we strive to make them feel included and part of the team. We focus on engagement activities to make long-term employees and new hires feel equally at home whether they are at work or working remotely. We sponsor regular virtual events and in-person events whenever possible.
At Fairway, we build employee feedback into our processes, procedures, and programs wherever possible. Our culture is all about our valued employees. We work to provide an inclusive environment that fosters growth and development personally and professionally.

“Being seen as a Top Workplaces USA winner is quite an achievement, and we do not hesitate to say how proud we are of our employees and how happy their positive feedback makes us feel – that is a strong tool in recruiting those who are being recruited by our competitors!”
Julie Fry
Chief Human Resources Officer at Fairway Independent Mortgage
Being seen as a Top Workplaces USA winner is quite an achievement, and we do not hesitate to say how proud we are of our employees and how happy their positive feedback makes us feel – that is a strong tool in recruiting those who are being recruited by our competitors!
Julie Fry
Chief Human Resources Officer at Fairway Independent Mortgage

Employee feedback and employer recognition improved Fairway’s recruitment and retention efforts
By leveraging Energage tools and Top Workplaces awards, Fairway has strengthened its employer brand, gathered valuable employee feedback, gained insights from benchmarking data, and earned recognition for its people-first workplace culture. These efforts collectively contribute to attracting top talent, improving recruitment outcomes, and fostering employee retention and satisfaction, especially during periods of rapid growth.
Winning the Top Workplace USA award three years in a row has greatly helped our recruitment efforts because it’s based solely on employee feedback. The award shows that Fairway is an employer of choice.
Our high scores, our executive team’s engagement in all aspects of the organization, and our inclusivity efforts have all benefitted from placing the Top Workplace award badges on our website and mentioning it in our conversations with prospective employees.
Showing that our employees value Fairway, enjoy coming to work here, and want to retire at Fairway, says a lot to prospective employees.
Top Workplaces awards help Fairway to stand apart from competitors
Being a recipient of Top Workplaces awards has helped Fairway stand out by enhancing its employer branding, which creates positive differentiation in the marketplace, and has provided excellent public relations opportunities. These advantages contribute to Fairway’s success in the mortgage industry and position us as a preferred employer against the competition. We have been able to recruit large, successful sales teams and high achieving employees because of word of mouth mentions of Fairway as a Top Workplace and it has only served to enhance our reputation in the industry.
Being seen as a Top Workplaces USA winner is quite an achievement, and we do not hesitate to say how proud we are of our employees and how happy their positive feedback makes us feel – that is a strong tool in recruiting those who are being recruited by our competitors!
How being a Top Workplace benefits Fairway’s employer brand
Being named a Top Workplace promotes brand awareness and helps us stand out. Our brand is as much about our employee experience as our customer experience. In fact, one of our core values is, “Create an AMAZING experience for you!” Because the Top Workplaces award is based entirely on employee feedback, it shows us that employees value our company culture and core values, and that’s the heart of Fairway.
Fairway Independent Mortgage Company's recent Top Workplaces awards


