Warning: No matter how much you might like where you work, you’re bound to find something to be jealous of at the companies on the Business Journal’s inaugural Best Places to Work list.
And if you don’t like where you work, the stories of fully paid healthcare, onsite gyms, catered lunches and break rooms with “Rock Band” and other video game diversions might just infuriate you.
But it’s not all about flashy perks.
The 40 companies on our Best Places to Work list also are big on employee development, stock ownership, profit sharing, performance evaluations and matching retirement contributions.
At insurance brokerage CBC Benefit & Insurance Services in Lake Forest, the office shuts down for a day in December for employees to discuss their professional development goals.
The input is used to forge the company’s overall goals for the coming year.
The Newport Beach office of San Francisco-based architecture and interior design firm Gensler is big on career building.
That includes paying for classes and certifications, offering courses within the company, sending designers to conferences, paying for group memberships or connecting an employee here with the right people from Gensler’s other offices.
“There is amazing support,” said Kim Graham, a senior associate in Newport Beach. “People call you back.”
At Precept Inc., an Irvine insurance brokerage, employees meet every third Wednesday of the month for a “town hall” meeting led by executives.
They get updates about the company’s financials and briefings on issues impacting their industry. They also get to ask anything they want.
“I like the fact that the management is so open,” said Lexi Ruben, who’s been with the company for six years in the marketing and communications department. “You don’t have executives in big offices behind closed doors.”
A combination of generous benefits and perks, employee development efforts, worker flexibility and independence marks the 40 companies on our list.
Some are smaller and can afford to do things like pay all of an employee’s healthcare costs, a rarity among businesses these days.
The big companies on the list offer opportunities for employees by cross training them for positions they could be promoted to or by allowing them to work in different parts of the company if things get slow in their main area.
“People here are able to change hats,” said Bruce Nelson, vice president of business development at the Newport Beach office of McCarthy Building Cos.
The list is broken down into three segments: large companies with 250 or more workers (at 21 entries); medium companies with 25 to 249 workers (at seven entries); and small companies with 15 to 24 workers (at 12).
It was compiled for the Business Journal by Harrisburg, Pa.-based Best Companies Group, an independent workplace researcher that does similar lists for publications across the country.
The list was nearly a year in the making and started late last year with calls by the Business Journal for companies to participate in a lengthy interview and evaluation process by Best Companies Group.
Our list was open to just about any employer in OC: companies based here, those based elsewhere with operations here, publicly traded companies, privately held businesses, governments, schools, nonprofits, hospitals and others.
Employers had to have at least 15 workers to be considered. They also had to be in business for at least a year.
The companies are ranked by Best Companies Group’s propriety scoring system based on responses from two sets of surveys.
Three-quarters of a company’s score was based on a 67-question employee survey used to evaluate their experience and a company’s culture.
A quarter of the company’s score was based on an employer questionnaire used to gather details about benefits, policies, practices and other general information.
The two sets of responses were analyzed and scored to come up with the 40 companies on our list.
In all, about 100 companies took part in the process. A handful was eliminated for incomplete responses. The others, while likely good employers, didn’t score high enough to make the final cut.
The survey and evaluation process was free to companies, which received a summary report from Best Companies Group. They also had the option to buy a full employee feedback report from Best Companies Group.
For the Business Journal, the goal was to highlight strong workplaces here as part of our ongoing coverage of businesses in the county.
For years, we’d considering doing a Best Places to Work list but rejected the idea as too subjective and too hard to quantify.
We found the Best Companies Group process to be the most complete way of gauging a best place to work and felt comfortable that the company’s standards were up to our own high expectations.
Doing the list during the recession was a little tricky. Some companies surely opted not to take part as they went or are going through layoffs and other cuts that impact the quality of work life for employees.
For those that participated, it was a chance to let people know their workplaces are among the best in the county, even during tough times.
To those on our list come bragging rights and a chance to show customers, vendors and prospective employees that the values that have made their workplaces great remain intact.
Ten of the companies on our list—four large, three medium and three small—were honored at a luncheon hosted by the Business Journal in Irvine. They’re profiled in this Best Places to Work special report.
We also take a look at a particularly compelling employer from our list—Irvine’s Blizzard Entertainment Inc., No. 12 on the large company group—on page 1 of this week’s paper.
The remaining 39 employers appear on our list on pages 18 and 20.
Of course, our list is far from absolute. We know there are many great employers out there that don’t appear here. As with all our lists, we look forward to growing our Best Places to Work list next year and in years to come.
