Newsweek’s Most Loved Workplaces 2024 list recently was released. The companies in the top three spots are not household names, at least not in any households where I lived: First Watch, Sourcebooks, and Milos.
That the companies at the top of this list are not well known is not necessarily surprising. Counterintuitively, I noticed this phenomenon: As a company gets bigger and more powerful, it seems to become less, rather than more, generous and attuned to employee work-life balance.
A company in an aggressive growth mode may feel the need for stringent cost cutting to satisfy its ever-larger acquisitive appetite. The company could have its best year ever, but instead of maintaining good working conditions for employees, it will look for ways to double-down on growth, perhaps by bringing on additional investors. It may have to promise those investors incredibly hard-to-deliver returns. And those promises, to get the money needed to keep aggressively growing, can come at the expense of employee well-being.
A company with “most loved” potential may have to eventually decide what it is willing to sacrifice in its employees’ work lives to reach growth goals. Companies that decide to stay small or mid-sized may not feel the pressure for aggressive growth, or they may feel that pressure and decide the sacrifices necessary to attain that ultra-high level of growth are not worth it.
One thing that’s a proven delusion: The bigger and wealthier the company, the better the work life for employees. The greater earnings of a large company often do NOT go back into the organization to elevate the lives of employees. The money is more likely to go to the top executives and investors or, as mentioned, to feeding the growth monster.
So when an organization does decide to reinvest substantially to better employees’ work lives, what does it look like?
Caring About Professional Fulfillment
At independent book publisher Sourcebooks—#2 on the Newsweek list—each employee is given at least one opportunity every month that’s “relevant to their personal and professional development, including company-wide training, job shadowing and peer mentorship, and options to meet individuals’ particular needs and career goals, such as through external training. The company also says it has set a goal to invest in team members and strive to fill leadership positions internally,” according to Louis Carter, who wrote an accompanying article to the Newsweek list. Carter is the CEO and founder of Best Practice Institute and Most Loved Workplaces.
Looking Out for Employees’ Needs
A company that employees love will do more than ensure its employees are professionally fulfilled; it also will think about whether its people’s needs are being met. The company at the top of the list, restaurant group First Watch, offers back-up child caregiving options, for example.
It also ensures that employees get their need for recognition fulfilled. “The company works hard to make sure top-performing employees are recognized for their efforts, including honoring employees who had a positive impact on their co-workers with a ‘Legacy Pin.’ Additionally, First Watch prioritizes maintaining communication throughout the organization with what it calls a ‘continuous feedback loop’ to help employees feel heard and keep improving the working environment, including sessions run by its CEO,” Carter writes.
Beloved Employers and CEOs
It’s hard to find a company that’s beloved by employees without that company also having a CEO that’s beloved.
One company, which I have experienced working for, has a CEO that ChatGPT tells me is ranked in the bottom 5 percent of CEOs for similar-sized companies, with that sentiment strongest among particular segments of the employee population, such as women and some underrepresented groups. ChatGPT found that information about CEO rankings on Comparably.
Looking up how your organization’s CEO fares in Comparably’s rankings could be instructive. They may not be as beloved as you think!
“At the top companies, the CEOs are often deeply involved in building the company culture. For instance, at information technology company Supercharge—which ranked sixth overall—the CEO gets a coffee with every new employee,” Carter writes.
Your organization may be too large, and the CEO too busy, to get coffee with every new hire, but there are ways to tweak that idea to make it work. One alternative: Once a month, an employee is randomly selected to have coffee with the CEO. That would require the CEO to devote just one hour per month, or even just one half-hour per month. The random nature of the drawing means the CEO would be just as likely to have coffee with a senior executive as a frequently overlooked middle manager or entry-level employee. It would allow them to keep their thumb on the pulse of employee sentiment—if that’s something that matters to them.
The Human Resources and Learning team could work with the CEO to create a few incisive questions to ask each employee. At least one of those questions should be: “How are we treating you? What can we do to be a better employer?”
Many employees will be too scared to answer honestly. However, a small number will tell the truth:
“It’s been a decade since my last meaningful merit-based salary increase.”
“I understand that you want to save money, but this new office space you moved us into is a big step down from our last office.”
“You say in your quarterly updates to the company that we’re doing well and recently had our best year ever, yet you also are emphasizing aggressive cost cutting. Could you explain that paradox?”
Hearing the questions and dissatisfaction directly from a different employee every month may make a CEO finally see the impact high-level business strategies and decisions have on employees’ lives.
How do you gauge how much employees love your company, or if they love it at all? What improvements have you made to do better as an employer based on their feedback?