Who are 2014’s best employers?
Organizational culture has received, over the last decade, increased attention for being a key component of a company’s growth, prestige and productivity. The working environment and employee benefits exert such a great influence on a company’s overall success that they become the main ingredients for creating a list of top companies worldwide. These rankings not only influence company prestige and desirability, but they also create a model for smaller, developing organizations to follow.
Fortune magazine compiles a yearly American company ranking, namely Fortune Best Companies, using a methodology mostly based on employees’ opinion regarding their workplace. Their evaluation model, as stated by the developer, Great Place to Work, is derived “from our definition of a great workplace as one where employees trust the people they work for, have pride in the work they do, and enjoy the people they work with.” These parameters form five dimensions for expressing the employee – employer relationship: “Credibility, Respect, Fairness, Pride and Camaraderie.”
According to the same model, companies receive 2/3 of the total score based on employees’ perception of the workplace and the rest of 1/3 of the score is represented by management representatives’ evaluation. The tools employed are the Trust Index Survey, designed for employees, and the Culture Audit, applied to managers.
After applying the above-mentioned tools, USA’s best employers in 2014 were determined, namely:
- Google Inc. (IT);
- SAS (IT);
- The Boston Consulting Group (Professional Services – Consulting);
- Edward Jones (Financial Services & Insurance);
- Quicken Loans (Financial Services & Insurance);
- Genentech (Biotechnology & Pharmaceuticals);
- Salesforce.com (IT);
- Intuit (IT);
- Robert W. Baird & Co. (Financial Services & Insurance);
- DPR Construction (Constructing & Real Estate).
As expected, companies in the IT industry have been crowned again as the indisputable rulers of the American company ranking. Google Inc. has been assigned the number one position for the fifth year in a row. The Silicon Valley software company, founded in 1998, has reached, in 2013, over $1,000 per stock. Their image as a company is famous for its headquarters and approach towards the employees. The premises, dubbed the “Campus,” is populated with bicycles, electronic cars, restaurants and gyms. Last year alone, Google put out as many as 4,236 new jobs, mainly for software engineers.
SAS, business analytics software and services provider, ranked second best in spite of having just 94 job openings during the entire year. However, among the benefits of working for SAS there is the onsite childcare it offers and onsite fitness centers. One intriguing feature of the company is that it has 42.20% female employees, a rather high number for an IT company, as compared to other similar organizations.
The bronze medal in 2014 went to the Boston Consulting Group, which ranked third on the scale, up one number since last year’s top. The company put out 1,000 new job opening last year and hired 238 new employees, mostly consultants. Although they do not offer daycare or onsite fitness centers, Boston Consulting Group covers 100% of the healthcare costs and offer compressed work weeks (fewer than 5 days) and job sharing (two people share a job on part-time schedule).
Organizations can increase their overall performance with knowledge regarding how these top companies managed themselves and their workforce, the mentality they promote and the ideas they stand for. Ultimately, no one reached the top without having a role model first.
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Tags: Individual Performance, Performance in USA, Top Employers
