You will notice that here at Corporate Essentials we talk a lot about building a great company culture by providing excellent office coffee and a superior break room environment. This might leave you wondering what exactly marks a company culture as exceptional in today’s workplace.
It is time we explained what makes the difference between a good place to work and a great one. It can be hard to explain something like this without real word examples, so today we are highlighting ten of the best company cultures in the nation. In no particular order, these are our picks for the nation’s top companies in terms of workplace culture.
Huge Inc.
To kick things off, let’s start with one of our coffee clients at Corporate Essentials, Huge Inc. If there is a single word that encapsulates the company culture at Huge, it has got to be equality. Founded in Brooklyn on the cusp of the new millennium, Huge is an agency that prides itself on a flat organizational structure. Sure, bosses are still bosses, but there is a focus on keeping teams small and ensuring all parties involved in creative discussions and consultations are at ease in presenting their ideas and feedback.
Their corporate mantra is, “make something you love”, which is much easier to do when you are in an environment that truly fosters collaborative thinking. Huge offers employees the opportunity to engage in a truly “flat” work environment, provides well-stocked employee kitchens and the unique opportunity to work on campaigns and products for some of the most exciting brands around.
For creatives, these are the hallmarks of the best company cultures and go a long way to explaining the competition over vacancies in Huge offices worldwide.
The sheer variety of reasons we have included Twitter on our list of best company cultures would never fit in the regulation 140 characters. In the tech community, there are few workplaces that rival the cachet of Twitter. The little blue bird offers employees everything they could wish for, from catered breakfast and lunch to free on-site dry cleaning services and an “untracked” vacation policy that allows employees to simply take the time off they want or need on demand.
In poll after poll for 2014, Twitter ranked at or near the top of “best employer” surveys due to the amazing raft of benefits, but also because of the people. When asked what makes Twitter such a great place to work, employees listed the company culture, smart coworkers, friendly people and great teamwork among the things that make Twitter a place they look forward to coming to work at every day.
Google manages to keep itself in the “best companies to work for” lists by being consistently amazing – providing employees with legendary benefits, one of the best corporate campuses you could imagine and a bevy of perks that are simply amazing. But more than this, Google has worked to create one of the best company cultures, it has an allure that seems irresistible.
It is an engaging, transparent, flat organization with clear objectives. Employees are routinely recognized for their contributions, encouraged to be open and respected for their honesty. Sure, the subsidized massage and volleyball breaks are a bonus, but being part of a company that rewards employees with solid benefits, a true commitment to community and a philosophy that includes the phrase “don’t be evil” has a definite appeal.
Stella & Dot
While many will immediately think of Stella & Dot as a multi-level marketing company that soccer moms buy and sell trendy accessories through, Stella & Dot is a gem of a San Francisco company, holding a place in the Forbes top 100 fastest-growing companies. With founder Jessica Herrin in Inc.
Magazine’s top 10 female CEOs and CCO Blythe Harris winning a recent Rising Star award from Fashion Group International, Stella & Dot has grown leaps and bounds from the initial trunk show Herrin hosted in Austin.
The brand’s success is attributable to providing a fair compensation package to direct-sales staff, but more to the fact that Herrin started her sparkle-studded empire as she intended to carry on: with people as the focus of the entire operation.
Again and again in interviews, Herrin has reiterated the value of women in the workplace, whether as members of the management table at Stella & Dot or as individuals taking their first shaky steps as stylists. “…women are still trying to navigate the dual responsibility of being the linchpin of all matters in the home and achiev[ing] career[s] worthy of their brains and ambition,” she told the Huffington Post last summer.
Creating a company that is an instrument for social good and a path to empowerment for many is a noble endeavor; adding flexible management strategies, room for growth and a truly responsive atmosphere is what gets them a spot in our list of today’s best company cultures.
Edelman PR
No one becomes the world’s leading public relations firm on an empty stomach, and employees at Edelman are very well fed. Their minds are fed with a series of rewards for innovation, their integrity is fed by corporate policies that boil down to an old axiom anyone can get behind: we’re all in this together.
With main offices in both NYC and Chicago, along with 50 offices in key cities around the globe, it is easy to assume that Edelman’s corporate culture embraces and celebrates diversity. And you would be correct; the company’s values include standard terms like quality, integrity, respect and citizenship, but with the twist that these values apply both to internal and external contacts.
This is part of what makes the world’s largest public relations firm tick. By providing legendary staff support, cultivating a challenging environment and providing a broad vision for the future, Edelman ticks all the right boxes to find themselves on our list of the best company cultures.
Southwest Airlines
Darling of the Dallas skies, Southwest Airlines does not have to tout its reputation as world’s largest low-cost air carrier – it speaks for itself. What’s more their corporate culture is propped up with a rich tradition of celebrating employee success and straight-forward motivational values for employees, including the notions of:
- Warrior spirit: because we all should be empowered to do our jobs well.
- Servant heart: because respected customers become repeat customers.
- Fun-loving attitude: because taking everything (including yourself) too seriously can be a real drag.
Perks like free flights, a management training program and an annual chili cook off are just a few of the unique things that keep Southwest employees engaged in their workplace, and bring Southwest airlines into our list of the best company cultures.
Intuit
It is difficult to find fault with a company whose core values include a point solely entitled: “deliver awesome”. Intuit has been described as a 30-year-old startup by CEO Brad Smith, and true to the innovation and fresh-thinking that you would expect from a start-up company, Intuit continues to push the envelope for customers in the finance market.
They succeed at this by creating one of the best corporate cultures, a place where new ideas can flourish. This includes reinventing the corporate headquarters in Mountain View, CA to include typical halo company perks like an on-site fitness center and subsidized catering.
More than this, Intuit employees continually praise the firm for its respect of the precarious work-life balance, as well as dedicated time each week that employees can spend working on innovation projects. By providing staff with opportunities to flex their creative muscle on work time, and effectively enforcing a healthy work/life split, Intuit frequently finds itself listed among the top companies to work for by various publications.
Buffer
The challenge of being a startup is huge, add to the complexity of surviving the startup gauntlet when your team is scattered across the world and Buffer stands out as remarkable purely for making it this far. As one of the lesser-known names in this list, it might be hard to fathom how such a small firm can make our list of best company cultures.
Sure, the Buffer team isn’t huge, but staff members enjoy the flexibility of working from home wherever they are and that can make laying on some of the more traditional startup or tech perks a little awkward. Instead, Buffer provides perks that anyone can use anywhere they might be (perks like a Jawbone fitness tracker and a Kindle with infinite free book access) as well as laying on a series of retreats where all staff gather in a single space to work, play and reflect on what it means to be part of a tight-knit group that produces a social media tool with close to 1.5 million users. Buffer does not have “working hours” nor do they care where you get your work done from, so long as your keeping people posted.
TOMS
Putting the less fortunate before yourself might not seem like the obvious way to build the best company culture, but it is an approach to business that has paid dividends for TOMS founder Blake Mycoskie. From its inception, LA-based TOMS was based on the one-for-one model: you buy a pair of shoes, they give a pair to someone less fortunate; you buy a pair of sunglasses or frames, they give a pair to someone without adequate access to vision services; and most recently, you buy a bag of fresh-roasted coffee and they give a week of safe drinking water to a person in need.
If that is not enough to make employees feel good about the fruit of their labor making a difference, TOMS also provides staff with great standard benefits, as well as perks like on-site lattes and happy hours, fun company retreats, sports clubs and the opportunity to be part of something bigger than themselves in the best possible way.
The ethos of doing something good attracts a certain kind of person to the company, pair this with the fact that customers generate more positive buzz for the company (and its good work) than you could buy in the mainstream press, and you have a truly unique operation that merits a place among our best company cultures.
As you might imagine, working for the social media juggernaut that is Facebook definitely has its privileges. Facebook employees enjoy an amazing array of free restaurants, shops and cafes around the company’s Menlo Park, CA headquarters. The entire campus was engineered by Disney consultants to mimic a down-to-earth village, complete with places where employees can take music lessons, grab a snack or learn woodworking.
Facebook’s campus is a great example of all that makes the best company cultures shine: develop a space where everyone can feel at ease; and, if there is anything they need, from headphones to a bike to ride home, it is easy to find it right there at work.
The challenge of running a successful business in any industry can be difficult – you find yourself competing for everything from office space to clients, but with a bit of foresight and attention to detail, you can create an atmosphere that people will want to come to work in…an atmosphere that eliminates the competition. Lessons you can pull from this short list of firms with the best company cultures include:
- Focusing on people, both internally and throughout the community.
- Providing an environment with the right balance of challenges and comforts for the mind and body.
- Offering unique perks that appeal to staff and potential recruits.
- Fostering a positive company culture you can muster with the resources your business has to offer.
Creating an Awesome Company Culture
While we are not in the business of telling you how to run yours, we can certainly help you provide some of the things that underpin the best company cultures we have highlighted here – it all starts with a feeling of community and value. If you are ready to take the next step toward getting your firm into our list of best company cultures, contact our team of experts today. We love what we do, and we’re sure you will too.
Image courtesy of Huge Inc.
