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You may have seen Fortune’s recent listing of the “Ten Best Companies to Work For.” Personally, I love lists and find the “Ten Best” to be among my favorite kind. It’s always interesting to me what qualifies something as one of the ten best out of all the options out there. Of course, working in internal communications, this particular list really piqued my interest.

This year, the number one company on the list was SAS, a company that has often made the list but is enjoying its first year at the top. The story lists a number of reasons why SAS employees are so happy: discounted massages, on-site gym, you name it. Other companies on Fortune’s list include investment advisor Edward Jones (who hasn’t had a layoff in 94 years, despite even this terrible economy), Dreamworks, a number of grocery chains and, of course, Google.

I’m sure that by now we’ve all heard that Google is the “Heaven of the workplaces.” Breakfast, lunch and dinner available to employees free of charge, free massages on-site and a million other perks. I recently had a friend start at Google and, from what I hear, it’s all true folks.

So all this got me to thinking: what really makes the perfect job, “perfect?” I have to say that free massages and catered meals would be pretty nice, and I’m guessing most of us would not turn those down. However, to me, those things mean more than just free grub and smaller spa bills – they say that the employer truly values and respects their employees. That’s something I would say should be on the top of every employees’ “workplace heaven” shortlist. 

As I read over the article about the amazing things that some companies are doing for their employees, I found my passion for lists merging with my passion that employees should be treated like one of your company’s most valuable possessions. At the end of the list of the “Ten Best” is a quote from SAS John Goodnight, “My chief assets drive out the gate every day. My job is to make sure they come back.” Now that is some number one thinking.

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 28th, 2010 at 11:29 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.