The Great Place to Work Institute is an organization that seeks to rank which companies or organizations are the best to work for. For their rankings they don’t look at things like salary or culture; they look at the culture of the organization. They do this by doing three things:
- They survey employees at companies worldwide.
- They ask management at these companies to tell them about programs and practices at their company.
- They compile their rankings.
They have found that the best companies are spread across a number of different industries. The information they compile isn’t useful for just job seekers. They market their services to companies to help those companies assess and improve their workplace.
After reading a few of the profiles of the top companies from the Money Magazine Top 100 Companies to Work For list that this institute compiled, it seems that the companies all had one thing in common: they tried to make their employees’ lives better, instead of asking the employees to make the company better (though I’m sure that happened naturally along the way). The companies provide amenities that help the employee’s family (one of the most commonly mentioned ones: child care).
While I don’t feel that this list holds a lot of value for me right now, it won’t be long before I’m looking for an internship (and not long after that, a job), and I would love to work for one of these companies that would help to make my life better!
(Another common theme between the companies: layoffs were non-existent or minimal during the recession.)