Ownership has its privileges at the Newport Beach office of McCarthy Building Cos.
Since the longtime family business turned over ownership to workers in 2002, the St. Louis-based construction company has seen its employee-owners benefit during the industry’s boom years.
McCarthy also has seen employees band together during the down economy.
“We’re all in it together,” said Mark Mardock, executive vice president and head of McCarthy’s education services division in Newport Beach. “People take responsibility not to drop the ball.”
The Newport Beach office of McCarthy, which counts about 400 field and administrative workers, ranked No. 3 in the large company category—250 employees or more—in the Business Journal’s second annual Best Places to Work list.
The list was compiled for the Business Journal by Harrisburg, Pa.-based Best Companies Group, an independent workplace researcher that managed the registration process, conducted surveys, evaluated data and selected companies for the list based on overall scores from queries of management and employees.
It’s the second year that McCarthy—Orange County’s largest construction company by revenue with $895 million of work done here last year—has been on our list.
McCarthy’s employee ownership leads to robust pay and benefits, executives said.
The compensation package is “far and away the best plan that I am aware of,” said Steve Mynsberge, executive vice president and head of McCarthy’s local healthcare services operations.
It’s not uncommon for employee-owners to make more from annual performance bonuses and stock gains than salary, officials said.
Company Condos
But it’s more than ownership that makes workers happy, according to employees.
They also cite the company’s education and training programs, philanthropic efforts and perks, such as the use of company-owned condominiums in Orlando, Fla., Brecken-ridge, Colo., the Ozarks and Park City, Utah.
There appears to be plenty of money to spread around at McCarthy. The company is the nation’s 10th largest builder and the largest contractor in California. McCarthy had nearly $3 billion in revenue last year.
Generous pay and benefits lead to a lot of continuity. Mardock’s been at the company for 25 years. Mynsberge has worked at McCarthy for 31 years.
When local executives opt to leave the company to start their own ventures—as has happened a few times recently—it isn’t a snap decision.
“There isn’t a lot of turnover,” Mardock said.
Workers at McCarthy average about 15 years at the company.
Constant evaluation is a core part of the company’s style. Unlike other businesses, executives and owners aren’t “sitting on the beach, drinking pina coladas,” Mardock said.
That mentality has helped the company make it through one of the toughest markets for the construction industry in decades.
“We’ve had to work harder, and smarter,” Mardock said.
McCarthy’s California division largely has held up during the downturn thanks in large part to big contracts it won before the market slowed down a few years ago.
Recent healthcare projects have included a $563 million patient care tower at Children’s Hospital of Orange County in Orange, and a $153 million patient care tower at Mission Hospital in Mission Viejo.
“We had a lot of (healthcare) backlog going into the downturn,” Mynsberge said.
More recently, a venture the company’s involved in with Maryland’s Clark Construction Group LLC won a $451 million bid to build a half-million-square-foot hospital at Marine Corps Base Camp Pendleton over the next four years.
Recent local education projects include a 91,487-square-foot middle school and a 25,438-square-foot underground parking structure in downtown Los Angeles.
Giving Back
One benefit of having employees with lots of experience is that they’re adaptable to new roles. When one business line is slower, employees can be moved to others that are doing better, like healthcare is now.
The company’s big on community giving.
It regularly donates its skills to projects for Habitat for Humanity, schools and hospitals and is a longtime sponsor of the American Heart Association’s Orange County Heart Walk.
McCarthy employees in Southern Califor-nia also participate in an annual, company-paid “community day” where employees do work for various causes.
