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Fortune's Best 100 companies — it's all about fulfilment
American business magazine Fortune has just published its annual survey identifying the 100 companies that are "great places to work" in the USA.
It provides some fascinating detail on the huge array of benefits on offer to employees. You might have imagined that some of the quirky perks we've become accustomed to hearing about would face a bleak future as the US economy shifts into a lower gear. Yet, despite the economic slowdown, companies are still desperate to woo and retain labour and are perpetually under pressure to offer the best benefits and the most congenial work environment.
Cushy perks
There was a time when the benefits package was a fairly straightforward thing. But there seems no bounds to what perks companies on Fortune's annual list are prepared to offer to lure the best and the brightest:
26 of the top 100 offer a on-site day care
29 give concierge services like dry-cleaning pick up
31 offer fully paid sabbaticals
47 offer domestic partner benefits to same-sex couples.
According to Fortune, SAS Institute is "the closest thing to a workers’ utopia in America". You name it: onsite childcare, health centre with physicians and dentists, massage therapist, wooded campus and profit sharing.
Culture
But financial perks aren’t the big story here. So, what really gives companies the edge in the battle to seduce scarce talent? Robert Levering and Milton Moskowitz, the co-authors of the report, have a simple message: fulfilment.
"Nice perks may help somewhat in recruiting, but to keep people here we've got to demonstrate that we offer a culture where they are respected and treated as adults, one that shows people that we really care about them," says Patricia Brown of First Tennessee Bank, a leader in innovative family-friendly benefits.
Dallas-based Container Store, a small retailer that sells just about everything for organising the home, was again this year’s winner, with SAS Institute, the software developer the runner-up.
Survey details
Title: "The 100 best companies to work for", by Robert Levering and Milton Moskowitz, Fortune, 22 January 2001.
Methodology: A third of the scoring is based on a lengthy questionnaire filled out by participant companies and corporate documentation. But two-thirds of the scoring is based on a 57-question employee attitude survey — the "Great place to work trust index". This year, 36,106 employees completed the questionnaire.
Survey sample: 234 companies competed for a slot this year.
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www.fortune.com/fortune/bestcompanies/stories/0,9391,CS,00.html