Baby, it’s cold outside and the economic heater is sputtering. Instinct says to be conservative, save your energy, cut back on your plans and hunker down.
Baby, it’s cold outside and the economic heater is sputtering. Instinct says to be conservative, save your energy, cut back on your plans and hunker down. But I think the smartest thing a business can do when the economy shrinks is to finds ways to grow. What better time to gain in the marketplace?
I guess it’s time for the business editor to put her money where her mouth is, so we’re gearing up for 2009 to be a year of new projects, new formats and new events for Oregon Business.
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Many of you are familiar with our venerable 100 Best Companies to Work For in Oregon. For 15 years, that project has surveyed employees at hundreds of companies to find out which company is truly a great place to work. It’s no beauty contest. The survey is anonymous and the company also has to provide a detailed account of its benefits. The annual ranking is under way and will be revealed Feb. 26 at our awards dinner at the Oregon Convention Center, and in the March issue.
But uncovering truly great Oregon companies isn’t going to stop there. We’ve been working for the better part of the past year on two new extensions of that signature project.
In June, we will launch the 100 Greenest Companies to Work For in Oregon. We asked participants in this past 100 Best survey to rank their companies’ efforts at sustainable practices, such as recycling, energy efficiency, or support for mass transit. We then asked those companies about their green practices and then came up with our ranking. We’ll devote the June issue to green topics and reveal who the Greenest Companies are in a special event in early June. Sustainable practices have become part and parcel of doing business in Oregon and to spotlight those companies who excel in this area, as judged by their employees, will be an important distinction.
We also will launch, along with our nonprofit partner TACS, the 100 Best Nonprofits to Work For in Oregon in October. There are many thousands of nonprofits in the state, and they employ many more thousands. Yet their mission base and nonprofit status makes them a bit different than other companies. They, too, deserve a special spotlight, so we’ve developed a survey just for nonprofits, and will feature them in our October issue and in an awards ceremony in early October.
We also are going to grow the magazine’s reach. Keeping up with technology is imperative in the magazine world, so with this January issue we are making a digital edition available. It allows us to reach a wider audience and it allows readers to access the magazine in the format that best suits them. And it’s kinder to the environment. To sign up, go to oregonbusiness.com and click on “digital subscriptions” in the upper right-hand corner, then click on “digital magazine edition.” Fill out the contact information and then wait each month to get OBM delivered to your computer.
My New Year’s resolution: Keep moving forward. I hope you do the same.
