Great Place to Work® Awards
Each year Great Place to Work® Institute selects 150 companies to appear on our U.S. Best Companies lists, the FORTUNE 100 Best Companies to Work For® and the “50 Best Small & Medium Companies to Work for in America.” While the lists rank the companies based on the scores of their Trust Index© employee survey and Culture Audit©, all of the companies on the lists – and many of those that do not make the lists – are extraordinary workplaces. These companies sport strong cultures centered on the values of Credibility, Respect, Fairness, Pride and Camaraderie, the five dimensions of the Great Place to Work® Model©, which together create the foundation of great workplaces and how we assess them.
The Great Place to Work® Awards recognize 5 companies with specific programs and practices that strike us as particularly distinctive and having a real and lasting impact on the employee experience. Award winners are selected by the following criteria:
- Appear on one of our U.S. Best Companies lists
- Enjoy an exceptionally high score on one dimension of the Trust Index© employee survey
- Detail a unique stand-out program or practice in their Culture Audit© submission
- Employee comments support the positive impact this program has had on the employee experience
The winners of the 2008 Great Place to Work Awards are:
Boston Consulting Group – Professional Development: Culture of Apprenticeship
Herman Miller – Strategic Efforts to Expand Diversity
Root Learning – Collaborative Decision-Making: Top/Down, Bottom/Up
Wegmans – Flexibility in Scheduling and Beyond
W. L. Gore & Associates – Hiring for Culture Fit
Awards will be given out at an Awards ceremony on Wednesday, April 2nd, 2008 at the Great Place to Work® Conference in St. Louis. The award-winning companies will be on hand to accept their awards and also deliver Best Practice Breakout Sessions.
2008 Great Place to Work® Award Winners
Boston Consulting Group
Great Place to Work® Award for Professional Development – Culture of Apprenticeship
- #11: 2008 FORTUNE’s 100 Best Companies to Work for®
- Professional Services – Consulting, Management
- Privately Held
- 1434 Employees
- Headquarters: Massachusetts
- President and CEO: Hans-Paul Bürkner
- www.bcg.com
“Management believes that it is their job to train and develop others”
Boston Consulting Group is being recognized for its professional development process, and more specifically for the culture of apprenticeship the company fosters. Far from a traditional training process, professional development at Boston Consulting Group involves pairing junior consultants and new hires with more senior consultants and experienced employees, which allows people to learn on the job through experience and observation.
Herman Miller
Great Place to Work® Award for Strategic Efforts to Expand Diversity
- #96: 2008 FORTUNE’s 100 Best Companies to Work for®
- Manufacturing & Production, Furniture
- Publicly Held
- 5867 Employees
- Headquarters: Zeeland, MI
- President and CEO: Brian Walker
- www.hermanmiller.com
“I believe and have experienced that Herman Miller values the full potential of each individual.”
Diversity has been a fundamental corporate value at Herman Miller since the company’s founding in the early 20th Century. More recently, the company has been working to build diversity into its system-wide strategy and operations in a meaningful and measurable way. The company’s Corporate Inclusiveness and Diversity Team is working to achieve specific metrics in five internal and external areas by 2010. Herman Miller is being recognized for this well-integrated approach to building diversity into the fabric of the company and its business.
Root Learning
Great Place to Work® Award for Collaborative Decision-Making: Top/Down, Bottom/Up
- #7 Small-sized company, 2007 50 “Best Small & Medium Companies to Work for in America”
- Professional Services, Consulting, Management
- Privately Held
- 90 US Employees
- Headquarters: Sylvania, OH
- President and CEO: James Haudan
- www.rootlearning.com
“Root is a great place to be because they trust and empower their people to be leaders regardless of what position they hold within the company.”
At Root Learning, employees from all levels of the organization participate in company decisions. Root Learning is being recognized for its collaborative decision-making practices, using their “top-down/bottom-up” process to involve all employees in company decisions. Root Learning makes it clear that all programs, plans, and initiatives affecting employees (“Rootizens”) are to be created using opinions and viewpoints derived concurrently from the top down (management-driven) and bottom up (grassroots-driven).
Wegmans
Great Place to Work® Award for Flexibility in Scheduling and Beyond
- #3: 2008 FORTUNE’s 100 Best Companies to Work for®
- Retail grocer, founded in 1916
- Privately owned
- Headquarters: Rochester, NY
- 90 sites
- CEO: Danny Wegman
“We are all treated as if our last name was Wegman.”
Wegmans is being recognized for supporting employees’ work/life balance through flexible scheduling. A demonstration of caring and respect for employees, flexible scheduling at Wegmans enables employees to pursue their dreams, take care of their families, support their colleagues, and provide the incredible customer service Wegmans is famous for.
W. L. Gore & Associates
Great Place to Work® Award for Hiring for Culture Fit
- #15: 2008 100 Best Companies to Work For®
- Privately Held manufacturing company
- 5,200 employees
- Headquarters: Newark, DE, 29 sites in the US
- CEO: Terri Kelly
“[Working at Gore] is full of unique challenges and opportunities that help and allow you to strive to be the best that you can be.”
W. L. Gore is being recognized for extraordinary effort in its hiring practices to ensure culture fit along with necessary talent and skills. Gore’s unique culture demands that associates be team-oriented, self-motivated, and able to succeed without traditional managers or a traditional structure. From extensive interviewing and reference checking to peer involvement and group problem solving exercises during the hiring process, W.L. Gore is diligent in ensuring that new associates will thrive in W. L. Gore’s unstructured environment.
Great Place to Work® Model®
The five honorees are selected with particular attention to a collection of best practices which exemplifies one of the five dimensions of the Great Place to Work® Model©: Credibility, Respect, Fairness, Pride, and Camaraderie – the key elements that distinguish and define great workplaces.
Previous award winners:
Note: 2003 and 2004 Great Place to Work® Awards were formerly known as the Innovations Awards.
|
