AGA Today

What Makes a Company a Great Place to Work  

By: Sue Shellenbarger
The Wall Street Journal
October 4, 2007; Page D1

Tis the season for workplace rankings, with "best-workplace" lists sprouting everywhere this fall.

From Working Mother magazine's "100 Best Companies" to Business Week's "Best Places to Launch a Career," judges are sizing up employers' flexible scheduling and other perks as criteria for coveted top-employer rankings. And family-friendly companies are looking very different today than they did a few years ago. The waning of boomers with their uptight ways, and the rise of the we-want-it-all millennials, are spurring major shifts in employer programs.

Here's a look at what's hot:

• Wide-open flexibility: Workers want a new, more fluid flexibility in work practices -- versatile routines that work "whether you're 20-something and trying to earn another degree, or over 30 and taking care of children," says Carol Sladek, a principal at Hewitt Associates, Lincolnshire, Ill. Although Kevin Bourke, 30, general manager for a holding company, is still single, for example, the freedom to work from his Atlanta home was critical in selecting an employer; he wants flexibility to see his fiancée and parents, who live nearby, as much as possible, he says.

At a Wilmington, Del., unit of AstraZeneca, more than two-thirds of the 30 employees in a medical-resources group are regular users of alternative setups tailored to their needs, says Donna Holder, the unit's manager; "we don't have set hours" for being in the office.

The 50 employees at Motorola's technology-acceleration group in Chicago all work flexible hours from home, the office or elsewhere, says Jim O'Connor, a Motorola vice president. And at Abbott Laboratories' Columbus, Ohio, nutrition unit, where 75 percent of 108 employees are on flexible work setups and the rest have day-to-day flexibility, the only day everyone has to be in the office is Wednesday, says David Deis, director of research services.

• Broader programs: Among the most popular benefits are those that extend family-friendly programs beyond women to encompass men. Paid paternity leave is one example; Phoenix Cos. and Pfizer, among others, have added it recently.

Enviro-perks, or amenities to make the office more alluring: Young workers tend to be cubicle-averse; "if I could get the Gen Y-Millennial group all in one room and promise them anonymity, they'd all look at me and say, 'Why do I have to come to this place, ever?'" says Cali Williams Yost, a Madison, N.J., flexibility consultant. Dressing up the office with fitness centers and comfy cafes can help.

• Vacation time: High on the list of alluring perks for top recruits such as Andrew Malkin, a recent MBA from Northwestern University's Kellogg School, is lots of vacation, starting in Year One. In today's jobs, "taking long weekends doesn't do enough. You need to be off work seven days before you feel like you're really unwinding," says Mr. Malkin, who weighed competing job offers before signing on as a vice president in New York for a publisher. Xerox last year began allowing workers to buy an extra vacation week through payroll deductions; 7 percent of its employees jumped at the chance, a spokesman says.

What's not so hot:

• Rigid policies on flexibility -- a "top-down, 'here's our policy, check the box'" approach, with a set menu of fixed options such as part-time work, Ms. Yost says. Too often in the past, only a favored few women won those accommodations. Today, the best employers make access to flexibility "a conversational process" with all employees, Ms. Yost says.

• Services that step in and perform family tasks so employees can stay at the office longer -- such as errand-runners who buy and send Grandma's birthday present. These were in vogue in the 1990s, when employees were more inclined to sacrifice family time for work. While concierges are still prized for routine errands, what workers want more now, Ms. Sladek says, is flexibility to take care of important family priorities themselves.

• The outlook on corporate child care is mixed; it's still a powerful retention tool, and some companies are expanding their offerings. Citigroup, New York, opened an eighth child-care center in Jacksonville, Fla., in July.

However, the proportion of employers offering on-site care has been stagnant since 2004 at 4 percent to 6 percent, says a Society for Human Resource Management poll of 590 firms. And hard times recently led Ford Motor Co. and its union to shutter seven child-care centers. Growth in this area will depend on labor-market trends and the course of the economy.