Like to work for a company that gives every employee a bonus of $100,000? Or one that takes all employees and their guests for a weeklong trip to a Mexican resort, complete with performances by LL Cool J and Sublime? Or one that caps its top executive salary at 19 times that of the average annual wage--when CEOs at the largest U.S. firms average more than 300 times the pay of their workers?
Welcome to the 19th annual installment of Fortune's 100 Best Companies to Work For. As you read through this list, you'll find companies with remarkable perks. But eye-popping perks are only the tip of the iceberg. What really makes a workplace a great place to work are the people practices that forge trust across the enterprise. That's the kind of thing that doesn't show up on company benefits lists. We select the firms on our list primarily based on the results of what employees tell us anonymously about their workplace culture. (Click here for the methodology.)
This year we were struck by the prevalence of egalitarian practices at all 100 companies. Take Hilcorp, the Houston-based oil and gas company that doled out $100,000 bonus checks after it met some daunting five-year financial goals. In December the company's president, Greg Lalicker, defended spreading the wealth as crucial to the company's success: "In order to create better alignment across all employees, our bonus structure treats everyone equally. We have a culture that we are all in this together."
The big bonus checks at Hilcorp stand out because of the dollar amount, but the inclusive attitude expressed is what we see at many, if not most, companies on this list. Nationwide, the $36 billion mutual insurance and financial services giant, raised the minimum wage of its call-center workers to $15 an hour from $10.50. Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff made good on his commitment to gender equity by reviewing the salaries of every Salesforce employee and earmarking $3 million to shore up the paychecks of underpaid women. And according to the National Center for Employee Ownership, employees of six of the 100 Best Companies own all or a majority of the shares of their firms: Burns & McDonnell, PCL Construction, Publix Super Markets, Robert W. Baird, W.L. Gore, and TDIndustries.
As we compared the results from this year's Great Place to Work Trust Index employee survey with those of our 1998 list, we saw that measures related to fairness showed the biggest improvements: The number of employees who said yes when asked if they felt they were "paid fairly for the work they do" jumped 13%; there was a 17% increase, likewise, in employees who believe they are "treated as a full member here regardless of my position"; and a 26% bump in those feeling that they have an equal "opportunity to get special recognition."