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Posted 08.01.2008

Best companies to work for in Colorado 2008

Edward Jones and Infinity Systems Engineering rate the best among 40 finalists judged for having great workplaces in the state

It’s that time of year again when the editors of ColoradoBiz go green. We’re not talking about that overused buzzword for sustainable business practices. We’re talking a much deeper green.
        Envy.
        For the third year, ColoradoBiz has joined with the Colorado State Council of the Society of Human Resource Management and Jobing.com, an online employment advertising service, to produce a list of the best companies to work for in the state.
        Sure, we have it pretty darn good here at WiesnerMedia, the privately held parent company of ColoradoBiz. For the second year in a row, our company picnic included the announcement of summer hours on Friday — which means the place clears out after 2 p.m. We have good benefits, flexible hours and comfortable working conditions. (Just don’t mention the office Olympics to our CEO; Dan Wiesner is still driving an electric cart around the office, thanks to a volleyball-induced injury to his Achilles tendon.)
    But, um, where’s our fully stocked kitchen with all the free food we want? At Crestone Capitol Advisors in Boulder, you can even make a request for your favorite food or beverage, and it’ll be in the next week’s grocery package. I’d like some Haagen-Dazs to go with my Starbucks, please.
    How about a link on our desktop to regularly updated financial information about the company? Buffalo Supply in Lafayette lets employees tap into that to see how they’re meeting financial goals — and employees share the profits through bonuses of up to $1,500 a month. (Yearly bonuses last year averaged 39 percent of salary for non-executive employees.)
    In other words, folks, if your employee incentives include little more than a pat on the back and an employee-of-the-month certificate, you need to ramp it up. Even in this wobbly economy, plenty of Colorado companies realize the key to keeping their workers motivated and successful is spreading a little TLC — and some of the wealth — around the office.
    Forty companies made this year’s Best Companies ranking and are profiled here. The 15 largest companies have 250 or more employees. The 25 companies in the small- to medium-size category include those with work forces under 250.
    To participate in the rankings, companies paid from $575 to $1,165 to sign up with Harrisburg, Pa.-based Best Companies Group Inc., which partners with Modern Think, a workplace-excellence consulting firm.
    Employee responses to 65-question surveys account for about 75 percent of the rankings, according to Best Companies, which surveys all employees up to 250. For larger companies, it surveys a random selection of employees, peaking at 400 for employers larger than 2,500 workers.
    If you feel like you’re ready to jump ship after reading about these companies, good luck: These guys get flooded with resumes.
                                                                                                                                                                                                                              — Mike Cote, ColoradoBiz editor

BEST COMPANIES TO WORK FOR IN COLORADO 2008

Large companies

(250 employees or more)

1. Edward Jones
2. Pinnacol Assurance
3. AlloSource
4. Mercury Payment Systems
5. Alpine Bank
6. Pricewaterhouse Coopers LLP
7. Merrick & Co.
8. Cheyenne Mountain Resort
9. Quest Diagnostics Inc.
10. Education Sales Management
11. CoBank
12. GE Johnson Construction Co.
13. T-Mobile USA — Colorado Call Centers
14. Baxa Corp.
15. Hercules Industries Inc.

Small/medium companies
(25 to 249 employees)

1. Infinity Systems Engineering
2. Rally Software
3. PCL Construction Enterprises Inc.
4. Moneytree Inc.
5. The Staubach Co. Front Range
6. Memolink Inc.
7. Buffalo Supply Inc.
8. Maptek
9. IP5280 Communications
10. ReadyTalk
11. Stern Elkind Curray & Alterman LLP
12. Magpie Telecom Insiders
13. Blu SKY Restoration Contractors Inc.
14. SOS Staffing Services Inc.
15. NetQuote
16. New Frontier Bank
17. Design Workshop
18. Crestone Capital Advisors LLC
19. E Source
20. ViaWest Inc.
21. Administaff Inc.
22. Rothstein Kass
23. Work Options Group
24. Denver Metro Chamber of Commerce
25. Aztek Networks

Best large companies to work for

1
Best company winner
Edward Jones

    Edward Jones is a company accustomed to ranking someplace around the top of “best company” and “best customer service” lists.
    One year ago, J.D. Power & Associates ranked Edward Jones first among full-service brokerage firms in investor satisfaction for the third straight year. In another field, Edward Jones this year ranked No. 4 in Fortune magazine’s “100 Best Companies to Work For” list.
    There are two reasons Edward Jones — with 9,560 U.S. branches, 258 in Colorado — consistently finishes high in these sorts of surveys. Both reasons are embedded deep in the company’s business model, which places the highest priority on the personal touch.
    First, there is the typical Edward Jones office. Unlike the big brokerages, these almost always consist of one Edward Jones financial adviser/broker and one branch office administrator. Part of the importance of the office manager is that he or she handles most of the bushels of paperwork today’s financial folks are obligated to fill out.
    Among other virtues, this enables the financial advisers to get out of the office. This literally means pounding the pavement. Edward Jones offices are distributed geographically, and advisers often go door-to-door to solicit new business, as well as meet with clients. Conversely, the office-in-your-neighborhood model allows convenient access to advisers for clients and prospects.
    “We feel that we’re making an impersonal world more personal,” says Denver-based financial adviser and regional leader Dan Large (who, as regional leader, has not one but two branch office administrators in his office).
    The second award-winning part of the Edward Jones model is internal. One potential flaw of the Edward Jones office model is that it could tend to isolate advisers from their colleagues — and in a fast-moving industry, this could be deadly. Edward Jones strives to minimize this possibility by bringing advisers and staff together in frequent meetings that often double as rewards for a job well done.
    Large, for instance, sat down for this interview just after a four-day confab in Steamboat Springs that asked about 60 advisers to attend morning meetings, but left afternoons free for themselves and their families. (About 45 spouses and 60 children attended, too.)
    “Our summer regionals are a family event. We all put our Blackberries away,” Large says. “We do these types of things to get together so that people don’t feel isolated.” The company also hosts monthly adviser meetings and other gatherings.
    Another internal incentive involves rewards for performance. For instance, the company awards financial advisers up to two yearly “diversification trips” to five-star international resorts — not for sales, but for properly diversifying clients’ portfolios. In 2007, more than half of all advisers won a diversification trip.
    So why work for Edward Jones? “You’re going to run your own office and you’re going to be your own boss,” Large says. “Ted Jones was a pretty smart guy. He knew people would work harder if they were working for themselves. For the right person, this is the greatest thing in the world.”
2007 rank: No. 2