LocationsYesterday Fortune Magazine announced their annual 100 Best Companies to Work For, with North Carolina business intelligence pioneer SAS at the top of the list.
In response, Jim Davis, SAS’s CMO and Senior VP, published a blog post titled “Fortune says SAS is the best company to work for in America. So what?”. He’s not dismissive—he’s interested in exploring why it does matter:
Satisfied employees stay longer, get better at their jobs, learn more about SAS products and the ways people use them, develop stronger relationships with our customers, and are ultimately better able to do the work that provides real value for our customers.
He cites SAS’s growth and the cost-effectiveness of its great benefits, concluding succinctly that “the award is positive recognition not only of how much we value our employees, but of how much we value our customers.”
One theme that emerged for me as I read about each of these companies: for many, what made them “best companies to work for” was how they kept employees informed through hard economic times. Many avoided layoffs or reduced their impact by taking executive pay cuts, but the real key to keeping employees feeling engaged and happy was communication (for instance, Fortune points out that after layoffs at NetApp, “top execs visited 26 offices in 13 countries to brief employees on the changes.”). Despite a wide range of industries, sizes, and corporate cultures, many of these companies sustained employee engagement simply by letting them know what’s going on, which in turn made them feel valued.
All of this hit home, since we had a company-wide update at Projectline just yesterday. With all three founders in the room, we talked about how the 2009 went, what our goals for 2010 are, and how we can all pitch in. It’s obvious that Projectline agrees heartily with SAS’s Jim Davis—engaged employees lead to happy customers.