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MARCH 2008: 100 BEST COMPANIES |
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BEYOND THE BENNIES
By Abraham Hyatt
The benefits offered by the companies at the top of the 100 Best list are, unsurprisingly, really, really nice.
Some companies pay 100% of medical, dental and vision premiums.
They contribute money to employees’ health savings
accounts and flexible spending accounts. They have education
funds for employees. There’s onsite daycare, paid gym
memberships and the ability to cash out unused vacation
hours.
At others, there’s no vesting waiting period for
matching 401K plans. There’s profit sharing. Massages.
Clothing allowances. Dry cleaning pickup and drop-off at the
office. Adoption and in-vitro fertilization reimbursement.
Endless parties, gifts, birthday presents and barbeques.
Bottomless free coffee. Oh, and paid time off for jury duty,
too.
The most important part of a benefits package, however, may
have nothing to do with what the actual goodies are. If you ask
100 Best Companies to give advice to businesses who don’t
have the greatest benefits, their answer may be surprising:
It’s not necessarily what you give your employees, but
that you let them have a say in which benefits the company
offers.
At its core, a good benefits package does several things.
First, it shows employees that they’re cared about.
“It has to cover people’s needs, like
medical,” says Lisa Rivet, HR manager at
PricewaterhouseCoopers (No. 5 Large Company) in Portland.
“It also has to cover life as it happens. It’s
about making people feel valued.”
Creating that feeling sometimes goes beyond offering sick
time, says Rhonda Waterhouse-Rosier, president and owner of
Beaverton’s Staff Finders Technical of Oregon (No. 1
Small Company). For her, that means paying, no matter what,
100% of employees’ health insurance premiums.
But showing employees that you care also goes beyond the
benefit you offer them, say companies on the 100 Best list. And
while it may sound illogical, that can actually be easier the
more employees you have.
Annie Hoy is the outreach manager at the Ashland Food Co-op
(No. 25 Small Company). Its package was developed and continues
to change based on input from employees. As the company has
grown over the last 30 years, Hoy says the process has gotten
easier.
“It’s challenging to get input from everyone, but
it works. And when you do make a change, everyone has had their
say. It makes it easier for people to accept change when
it’s not handed down from the top,” she says.
Waterhouse-Rosier agrees. Do a survey and find out
what’s important to workers, she says. That doesn’t
necessarily mean giving employees whatever they want. According
to Christa Summers, director of human resources at Edge
Wireless (No. 2 Large Company) in Bend, generational
differences between workers can create different priorities.
“If there’s a 20-year-old who doesn’t think
health insurance is important, we think it is, and so
that’s what we offer,” she says.
But no matter what the final benefits package looks like,
Summers says it’s crucial to keep communicating with
employees.
“The most critical thing is to follow up so that they
understand why you did and didn’t include something. They
have to feel like they’re a part of the process,”
she says. “You’re way ahead of the game if you do
that.”
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THE CARE PACKAGE
By Ben Jacklet
Nina Martin never would have kept her job, much less
made partner, if her company didn’t care about her as a
person.
Martin is a mother of three and an accountant at Pittman &
Brooks, PC, and she has benefited hugely from her
company’s commitment to building and operating an onsite
daycare. The Portland firm (No. 6 Small Company) draws
ample praise for perks such as an all-expenses paid annual
retreat and a well-stocked “feeding trough” to
power everyone through the tax season. But for Martin
nothing compares to the Darling Deductions Pre-School, which
has allowed her to walk downstairs and comfort her children as
needed, without missing a step professionally. “I would
have stopped working a long time ago if it weren’t for
the daycare,” she says.
The extras that add up to a shared sense that a company cares
about its employees don’t just keep good staffers around.
They also keep them happy, healthy and ready to reciprocate
with extra hours when it comes to crunch time. Martin says she
has no problem putting in the 80-plus hours per week required
as April 15 approaches, because she knows she’s getting
the support she needs.
An onsite daycare was a substantial investment for Pittman
& Brooks, but co-owner Randa Pittman-Brooks says it was
worth it to attract the best employees available. Besides, she
adds, “Work’s not the most important thing in the
world.”
Tina Bauer, a branch manager for Oregon Community Credit
Union, has a similar view. Her employer allows her to spend
every other Tuesday afternoon volunteering at her
daughter’s school as part of an extensive volunteer
effort that saw employees donate more than 2,200 hours of their
paid work time in 2007 to nonprofits and schools.
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That volunteer program was widely praised by employees of the
Eugene-based credit union (No. 19 Large Company) as one of
several efforts to make their work fun and meaningful. One
employee wrote: “This company genuinely cares about its
staff and community. My worst day here is 1,000 times better
than my best day at previous jobs.”
Oddly enough, such comments rarely mention money. But
that’s not to say that money doesn’t matter. One
less glamorous but equally appreciated way a company can show
its employees it cares is to allow them to make the same amount
of money in less time. That’s what has happened at Jordan
Schrader Ramis, a Lake Oswego law firm (No. 8 Small Company).
Numerous employees there applauded management’s ability
to promote a healthy balance between life and work that is
elusive in the world of law.
Bev Root, chief operating officer, says the firm has worked
hard to create a non-hierarchical environment where paralegals
are empowered to act as case managers rather than underlings,
freeing up attorneys to interact with clients and go out to
bring in work.
“We turn things around quickly because we’ve got
the right people doing the right jobs,” says Root.
“The firm generates more money per employee, so our
people don’t have to work endless hours to make the same
amount of money.”
Another way to balance work with life is to make the workplace
a home away from home. That’s the philosophy at McKinstry
Co. LLC (No. 6 Large Company), a Seattle-based mechanical
contractor with a growing Portland office, that earned high
grades for its barbecues, movie nights and chili
cook-offs.
At the January barbecue, the family-style cohesiveness of the
Airport Way McKinstry office was fully evident, as employees
swapped stories of fishing trips taken with work buddies and
how much the kids enjoyed the holiday party.
David Allen, executive vice president, says these perks are
hardly incidental. McKinstry launched a “preferred place
to work” campaign in 1996, and he says the results have
been measurable. “We do more value at a higher percentage
net than ever before,” Allen says. “Becoming
employee-centric has improved our bottom line.”
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FROM THE TOP DOWN
By Ben Jacklet
On a sharp winter day, when the sun pours in through
the big windows and illuminates a 12th-story view of
Portland’s waterfront and Mount Hood, it’s easy to
see why the employees of Grady Britton advertising agency enjoy
coming to work. They get to listen to the music they like
— it’s their job to be creative, after all —
and their offices are spacious and cozy, with big posters on
the walls showing off their boldest, funniest work. And then
there’s their boss, Frank Grady, the firm’s
founder, owner and, most recently, king.
Grady’s 22-person staff gave him the royal promotion last
year in recognition of his benevolence, his modesty and his
love of spoof. He’s even listed as “king” on
his business card. Asked how he likes his new position, he
grins and quotes Mel Brooks: “It’s good to be the
king.”
But real leadership at the workplace is no joke. It can be as
big as the difference between retention and high turnover, or
between an inspired workforce and a resentful one.
The employees of Grady Britton (No. 5 Small Company) praised
their boss up and down in their written comments, mentioning
him by name as a source of inspiration. One employee, asked
what makes Grady Britton a great place to work, wrote,
“two words: Frank Grady. Our President/CEO is among the
kindest, most ethical, generous human beings I’ve ever
met! I’ll work here as long as he does.”
If that sort of praise strikes you as too hyperbolic to be
true, try asking employees of Medford-based United Risk
Solutions, what they think of their boss, Jackie Anderberg.
“Jackie has to be the best person to work for in the
whole nation if not in the whole world,” says Linda
Shaddon, a senior account manager who has known and worked with
Jackie for 16 years. “You can’t help but bask in
the reflected light.”
The love apparently flows in both directions at United Risk
Solutions (No. 2 Small Company). Anderberg has just as many
great things to say about her employees as they do about
her.
“We hire the best and the brightest and then we get out
of their way so that they can do their jobs.” says
Anderberg. We make sure that people know that if they have a
great idea they can always come and talk to me about
it.”
When her company lands a big account, Anderberg gathers
everyone in the office to play the “money game.”
She stuffs envelopes randomly with 10s, 20s, 50s and 100s, and
everyone gets to choose an envelope and open it. She also
presents frequent “genius awards” with personal
notes from Albert Einstein himself to employees who come up
with ideas to make the company more efficient. The perks she
offers range from free fruit and chocolate to 37.5 paid hours
of bereavement time for the death of a relative.
Of course, the ideal of the friendly boss with the
open-door-policy presents a larger challenge when employees
number in the hundreds rather than the dozens. When Don
Wilson of Canby-based Wilson Construction Co. inherited a
business specializing in power-line construction and
maintenance from his father, Matt, in the 1980s, it was a small
operation run from home. Today he oversees 300 employees and a
fleet of four helicopters. But workers at Wilson (No. 17 Large
Company) say their boss is as personable as ever. They credit
him with fostering an atmosphere that emphasizes friendly
competition, whether it means foosball tournaments in the
warehouse or a collaborative contest to improve and redesign
the technical tools of their trade.
“Our sales are in excess of $100 million a year, but we
still hold onto that small company feeling, and a lot of that
has to do with Don,” says Debbie Greene, who has worked
with Wilson for 25 years. “People know they can go into
his office and talk to him in confidence, and he’ll
listen.”
Furthermore, adds Tony Helbling, Wilson’s logistics
manager, the boss understands that mistakes are a part of
innovation: “I’ve worked with other companies where
if you screw up you’re out of there. Not here. It’s
not what you do wrong; it’s what you do next.”
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THE RIGHT STUFF
By Jamie Hartford
At Portland-based technology staffing firm EdgeLink,
they ring a bell when one of their candidates gets hired.
It’s not the dainty tinkling of a Christmas bell, either;
more like the hearty clanging of a dinner bell, followed by
hoots, hollers and high-fives.
For employees at EdgeLink (No. 3 Small Company), these are the
sounds of a job well done, a mission accomplished. But all
hoopla aside, they know some of the clients they have best
served are those for whom the bell doesn’t toll.
“Sure, we want to close deals and place people as much
as possible,” explains business development manager Mark
Schacter. “But we always have to consider, is it the
right match?”
Though part of their pay is based on how many positions they
fill, EdgeLink employees know it’s not the quantity of
hires they achieve that matters. It’s the quality.
“We’re not sugarcoating things just to get a
transaction,” Schacter says. “When any of us reach
a crossroads, we make the right decision every time. It could
be something as simple as advising a hiring authority that a
person might not be the right fit for that culture.”
Clients, he says, appreciate their honesty.
“They respect our opinion because of it,” he says.
“It becomes a proven thing.”
That respect is only rewarded to companies committed to doing
the right thing, even when it doesn’t better the bottom
line. While profits are important, a business will ultimately
succeed or fail based on its reputation, forged through
adherence to a strong code of ethics and values, and EdgeLink
and other 100 Best companies understand that. They are willing
to look beyond business as usual to better those they serve, no
matter what the cost, and it pays off in the end.
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Take, for example, Bend Metro Park & Recreation District
(No. 35 Large Company), where they decided that saving the
environment was worth more than saving a few bucks. In the past
several years, the district, which maintains and operates more
than 2,000 acres of parkland, has started programs to recycle
its own yard debris and use organic fertilizers, even though it
cuts a little deeper into funding.
“We spend more money per acre doing it the way we do it,
but the environmental benefit, to us, is worth it,” says
natural resource manager Paul Stell. “It isn’t just
about the financial bottom line. It’s about the
environment and the community.”
At the Portland office of GVA Kidder Mathews (No. 3 Large
Company), a full-service commercial real estate firm, they know
they’re selling more than just property when they take on
a client. In every transaction, their reputation is on the
line.
“The best kind of business is repeat business,”
says senior vice president Tony Reser.
And in the commercial real estate game, you get that by being
up front in all your dealings, says Steven Klein, also a senior
vice president with the company.
“It’s an honesty issue,” he says.
Reser agrees.
“The aspect of always putting the clients’
interests first, which doesn’t always dovetail with our
interest, that’s not easy to do when you’re a
straight commission salesperson,” he says. “But
professionalism, integrity and honesty are more important than
making a million dollars a year.”
The key to putting those values to use in the workplace is to
focus not on short-term goals, but on the bigger picture, says
Dan Farrington, president and owner of Keizer-based Sunrise
Medical Consultants (No. 18 Small Company), a provider of
independent medical examinations for insurance companies.
“I look at what do you leave behind,” he
says. “What are they going to say about you? That’s
very important.”
His employees buy into that mentality, too — in part
because they know their boss is also looking at the bigger
picture. He understands that they have families and lives
outside of work and encourages them to focus on their
performance not just as employees, but also as people. The
result, says Carol Rabenstein, lead transcriptionist and
quality assurance coordinator for the company, is employees who
do more than punch in and out.
“You want to do a better job,” she says.
“When you found a company on those kinds of principles,
you’re going to be successful.”
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NO PLACE LIKE WORK
By Ben Jacklet
When you envision the perfect work environment, a job
caring for the terminally ill probably doesn’t come to
mind. Spend an afternoon with the employees of Hospice &
Palliative Care of Washington County, however, and you may
change your mind, or at least open it.
The Hillsboro nonprofit (No. 20 Small Company), rated second
among small businesses in the sub-category of work environment,
even though it performs some of the most emotionally draining
work imaginable, meeting the physical and psychological needs
of terminally ill patients and their families. Yet the
hospice’s employees beam with pride as they describe
their work environment, the culture they’ve built, the
sense of teamwork and compassion, and the flexible,
non-judgmental leadership of CEO Christine Larch.
“The level of support we get here is just
incredible,” says Sophie Bryer, a social worker.
“We’re all part of a team, and we take care of
each other,” adds Rhonda Spencer, director of clinical
services. “If people want to talk and share their
feelings, they can. If they don’t want to talk they
don’t have to. But we’re always checking in to make
sure everybody’s doing OK.”
When one of the hospice’s nurses needed time off to
recuperate from the floods after her hometown of Vernonia was
swamped in January, her co-workers pooled their extra vacation
time and donated five weeks’ worth.
Workplace surveys leave little doubt that work environment is
tied directly to morale, a company’s ability to recruit
the best candidates and an employee’s willingness to put
forth extra effort. But there is little consensus as to what
the phrase work environment even means. For the hospice team,
it is a communal phenomenon that has little to do with their
physical workspace, a nondescript suite in a suburban strip
mall.
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Elsewhere, a comfortable workspace that serves as a
sanctuary from the daily barrage of stress can be crucial.
That’s the concept behind the inviting digs of Rose City
Mortgage Specialists (No. 4 Small Company).
Everything about Rose City’s suite space in
Portland’s John’s Landing exudes peace, from the
Buddha statues to the murals quoting Gandhi. Yoga classes are
routine. The conference room is more likely to be used for
acupuncture or a body-talk session than for a conference.
“This is a high-stress industry so it helps to keep our
office as calm and stress-free as possible,” says founder
and president Renee Spears. She started the company with the
idea of working from home in her sweats with her kids and dogs,
but “the referrals just kept coming.” She was
determined to make her office as inviting as possible.
That can be a challenge in times of economic downturn. Things
had gotten so bad in the mortgage industry by last September
that Spears decided to celebrate Christmas in October,
surprising her staff by decorating the entire office overnight
and having breakfast catered the next morning.
Her motivation is simple: “I’ve got great people
working for me. I want to keep them.”
That sentiment is echoed vigorously by the Oregon management
team of U.S. Cellular, the Chicago-based company that takes
first place again this year in the large business category for
the third year in a row — never mind that midway through
its winning run the company laid off more than 160 Oregon
employees when it closed its Medford call center in 2006.
Calvin Emigh, director of sales, says the company did all it
could to soften the blow and keep up morale. “The
associates who were impacted by the closing of the call center
were not just sent a letter. The CEO and his team came out in
person and explained what was happening and why. Every one of
those associates was offered a position at another call center.
We hired back as many associates as we could and we tried to
help with job placement for the others.”
Apparently it worked. Not one U. S. Cellular employee
mentioned the layoffs in this year’s questionnaire. More
common responses praised the benefits, the team atmosphere, and
the emphasis on making the workplace an enjoyable and
fulfilling place to be.
In that regard, people who sell cell phones seem to want the
same things as people caring for the terminally ill:
camaraderie, respect and trust.
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TARGET OF OPPORTUNITY
By Ben Jacklet
For Todd Anderson, an engineer with the Portland
office of Qualcomm, one of the best things about his work is
that it isn’t just work. It’s an opportunity to
delve deeply into the wide-open intellectual frontier of
wireless technology.
“Anybody who thinks they have great ideas and is excited
about putting those ideas to work, this is the place where you
want to be,” he says.
Anderson believes he has the best of both worlds: ample
support from “the mothership,” a San Diego-based
Fortune 500 company, combined with the local freedom to pursue
his curiosity and “exercise the brain.” His
enthusiasm is not unusual at Qualcomm (No. 8 Large Company),
which earned big accolades for its office culture of freedom
and opportunity.
“Our people are encouraged to do what they want to do
and to take it as far as they want to go,” says Qualcomm
recruiter Anita Bradel. “You can define what your job
will be. The basic idea is, if I give you a written expectation
of what your job is, that will only limit you.”
The workplace as a source of opportunity is nothing new, but
it is a concept that is growing increasingly important for
recruiting and retaining employees from an increasingly mobile
workforce. As employees become more entrepreneurial, the notion
of opportunity expands. Whether it’s opportunity for
advancement, for learning, to do the work you love, or to work
with people you respect, it’s a theme that employees
bring up time and again.
At the Portland office of Grant Thornton LLP (No. 4 Large
Company) employees get the opportunity to work for the
fifth-largest accounting firm in the world but with a
comparatively low 10-to-one ratio of staff to partners.
“People out of college like that ratio because they see
that as an opportunity to interact with people at the very
highest level of the organization,” says Tony Parke, a
Grant Thornton assurance partner.
Grant Thornton employees also like the opportunities in
training and career development, which range from local
mentoring and national conferences to a global transfer
program, which enables employees to volunteer for two to three
years overseas and then return to the U.S. with expertise in a
specific country’s business environment.
Global opportunities are also opening up for employees of WRG
Design (No. 12 Large Company), a fast-growing Portland land
development company, which merged with the Australian firm
Cardno Limited in 2007. Cardno has an extensive global business
and receives grants from relief groups such as Portland’s
Mercy Corps to rebuild infrastructure after times of conflict.
The merger has already involved WRG staffers in one compelling
project in Dubai to develop artificial islands made by pouring
sand into the sea.
In the area of continuing education, WRG recently launched
“WRG University,” offering dozens of courses to
help employees further their careers. The program enables
workers to learn more about everything from sustainable site
design to hydrology drainage reports, on site and on company
time.
“We give our employees freedom, flexibility and
opportunity, and those three add up to an entrepreneurial
environment,” says WRG’s director of marketing,
Allison Dyer. “You aren’t just punching in and
doing your 9 to 5. You can be as ambitious as you want to
be.”
The same holds true for United Human Capital Solutions (No. 7
Small Company), a Lake Oswego medical staffing firm that
provides nurses and physicians for hospitals in need of
temporary or permanent help. Vice President Joel Slenning
explains that the company is structured to allow employees to
build what amounts to a specialized independent business within
the company. The employee takes over a specific segment of the
industry, for example pediatric care in Central California, and
is then free to expand as widely as possible — with no
cap on commissions for business brought into the company.
“It’s an opportunity for people to run a business
within a business, without taking a big risk or gaining access
to large amounts of capital,” says Slenning.
“We’ll share the risk with them, we’ll make
the investment, and we’ll train them. We provide all that
is needed to get their business going. They can continue to
grow their piece of the pie. And we will not cap anyone’s
earnings.”
TROUBLING TRUTHS
By Abraham Hyatt
“You know all that stuff about recognizing
accomplishments, building a good working culture, investing in
our employees, etc.? We talk all of that here, but we
don’t do it.”
At the very bottom of the 100 Best survey results —
several hundred spots below those coveted top rankings —
are a lot of unhappy workers. Managers and employers take note:
There’s a lot to be learned from these comments because
chances are, you’re making at least a few of these
mistakes.
In the anonymous comment section of their surveys, employees
wrote about the lack of good benefits and the lack of diversity
in management. They described how badly they needed help with
the high cost of insurance, and how they were tired of being
treated unfairly. They sounded angry, sad, and above all,
frustrated.
“Where do you start? No communication. No raises. No
training. Constantly put in bad situations and left on your own
to survive. Always trying to do the job with no support.
Management will promise items but never comes through. Worst
morale in a company that I have ever worked for.”
Some complaints would be relatively easy for management to
address. Like the workers at several different companies who
took issue with the office heating system: “Do you notice
everyone wearing sweaters, coats and blankets at their
desk?”
But to address one of the biggest complaints, bosses and
business owners are going to have to do some soul searching.
Some of your employees think you’re doing a terrible
job.
“Management is secretive, evasive, and are
micro-managers,” wrote one employee. “No clear
path, just knee-jerk reactions. Owner has virtually no contact
with staff. Not enough employees to handle growing business.
People are overworked, overstressed, unappreciated,
occasionally yelled at by the VP.”
Despite the anger, a majority of employees clearly wanted to
like their jobs. There were challenges to management:
“Give us something to be proud of in public.” There
were pleas for awareness: “This [work overload] eats away
at the morale of the staff who want so badly to be able to
succeed yet are unable to do that with the lack of appropriate
staffing and management understanding.”
As they typed or wrote out their complaints, fears and wishes,
the comments became a voice employees didn’t have during
their workday, the one chance to really ask for change.
It’s a lesson that any manager or owner can take to
heart: It takes a lot of leadership to become a 100 Best
Company.
“Don’t take this lightly,” one
employee wrote. “There are many of us in the company who
are often ashamed to have to tell people in the community that
we work for you. Your supposed ‘reputation’ as a
‘great’ company is something that only exists in
the minds of a handful of ‘comfortable’ senior
management.
“Will you choose to do what is right, or just sweep this
under the rug and continue to play the same old
games?”
INTRODUCTION TO LIST
TOP 50 LARGE COMPANIES TO WORK FOR IN OREGON
TOP 50 SMALL COMPANIES TO WORK FOR IN OREGON
ALPHABETICAL INDEX
100 BEST CATEGORY
WINNERS
METHODOLOGY
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