Time for a guessing game. We’re playing “Who am I?” Here are the hints:
I get nearly free health care and pay only a pittance (relatively) for great child care. My cost for education is small. Since I work on average, 35 hours a week, I have time for my family and recreation, which includes free gym access and a summer camp for the kids. Oh and I have no fear of being laid off.
So who am I? Did you say citizen of Sweden or some similar place? Nope. I’m an employee with SAS, America’s best place to work, as declared by Fortune magazine.
Fortune’s annual list of the “100 Best Companies to Work For” was announced last week and is published in the Feb. 8th issue of the magazine. Not a lot of surprises on the list, though NetApp dropped to seventh place, probably because of its layoffs. That opened the way for SAS, which has never had a layoff, to claim the top place.
Fortune has been producing this list for 13 years and SAS has been on it every time. It’s the first time SAS was ranked #1, though the company is regularly in the top five or 10 best companies.
Last year’s second place winner, investment firm Edward Jones, held onto the spot. One of the few financial firms not to have had layoffs, it did sell its British unit and froze salaries, but managed to continue profit sharing.
The listings and the short corporate synopses highlight benefits and pay. Fortune doesn’t forget to mention the little things that help define a company culture. Things like executives at Nugget Market washing the cars of associates at an employee appreciation event, and how loyal animators are to the collaborative spirit and openness at DreamWorks Animation, which, incidentally, catapulted from 47th last year to 6th.
Fortune also highlights six of its top 100 companies that have never had a layoff.