What Makes a Great Place to Work

What Makes a Great Place to Work
Each year, Fortune magazine publishes its list of best companies to work for using a standard set of criteria that includes factors such as the quality of their leadership and perceived credibility based primarily on employee feedback. Three companies that have received this award over the past 5 years include Quicken Loans, Methodist LeBonheur Healthcare and AFLAC. This paper examines how these three companies achieved this noteworthy status by first reviewing the relevant literature to describe the methodology used by Fortune magazine to select recipients of this award, followed by an analysis of their specific and unique company benefits, culture, and human resource management (HRM) practices. Finally, a description of this author’s personal philosophy of HRM and corresponding relevant biblical principles is followed by a summary of the research and key findings concerning these three companies and their HRM practices in the conclusion.
Review and Analysis
Background and overview
The winning organizations of each year’s “Great Place to Work U.S.” award offered by Fortune magazine are evaluated on a number of factors, including the level of trust, credibility and respectful leadership as well as measures such as employees’ level of pride in their word and camaraderie (Award methodology, 2018). Besides other sources of industry information, Fortune interviews and surveys more than 300,000 employees to develop their list of annual award winners. In this regard, Fortune reports that, “Each company is scored on our analysis of anonymous employee responses to more than 50 survey questions on our Trust Index Survey, together with our evaluation of company programs and practices as measured through our Culture Audit assessment” (Award methodology, 2018, para. 2).
In order to be considered for the Best Places to Work award, organizations must have at least one thousand employees and receive a sufficient number of survey responses to provide a 95% confidence level with a maximum 5% margin of error rate (Award methodology, 2018). In sum, Fortune magazine evaluates and compares the manner in which people are actually treated on the job using irrefutable primary data provided by their employees, making the Fortune magazine award highly prestigious, timely and noteworthy. As noted above, three companies that have achieved this lofty status include Quicken Loans, Methodist LeBonheur Healthcare and AFLAC which are discussed below.
Quicken Loans
Although many consumers struggled with Quicken software, the overwhelming majority of Quicken Loan customers report high levels of satisfaction due primarily to the company’s dedicated workforce. Founded in 1985, this Detroit-based company has approximately twelve thousand employees and competes in the banking and credit services sector, generating more than $3.6 billion in annual revenues (Phillips & Phillips, 2015). The designation as one of the best places to work is based on Quicken Loan’s unwavering commitment to engaging its employees at every opportunity. In this regard, Phillips and Phillips (2015) advises that, “At Quicken Loans, employee engagement is not a process, a department, or survey. Engagement is part of the business strategy and culture of this intentionally flat organization” (p. 100). All employees at Quicken Loans are called “team members” and everyone in the organization is tasked with identifying problems and developing appropriate solutions. This responsibility extends from the company’s CEO to its newly hired team members, and is one of the reasons for Quicken Loans designation as one of Fortune’s best places to work.
Indeed, team members at Quicken Loans are provided with an annual update of a book of so-called “Quicken Loan-isms” that represent the essential elements of the organization’s corporate culture. According to the description provided by Phillips and Phillips (2015), “The Quicken Loans ‘ISMs’ booklet is a physical embodiment of team member engagement at the company. ISMs are simple, easy-to-digest principles that form every business decision at Quicken Loans” (p. 100). A sample page from this booklet is depicted in Figure 1 below.
Figure 1. Page 14 from Quicken Loan’s “ism’s” booklet
https://image.slidesharecdn.com/
The booklet specifically describes acceptable behaviors and practices at the company as well as the lofty expectations that are in place for all team members. The essential point made throughout this guidance is that Quicken Loan team members are expected to “hit the ground running” from their first day on the job and should not wait on approval or a specific process in order to do what needs to be done or to resolve what needs resolution, including returning every email and telephone call every time (Phillips & Phillips, 2015). Although the “isms” list is updated each year, the 2015 version featured the following list:
· Always raising our level of awareness.
· The inches we need are everywhere around us.
· Responding with a sense of urgency is the ante to play.
· Every client. Every time. No exception. No excuses.
· Obsessed with finding a better way.
· Ignore the noise.
· It’s not about WHO is right, but WHAT is right.
· We are the “they.”
· You have to take the roast out of the oven.
· You will see it when you believe it.
· We will figure it out.
· Numbers and money follow, they do not lead.
· A penny saved is a penny.
· We eat our own dog food.
· Simplicity is genius.
· Innovation is rewarded. Execution is worshipped.
· Do the right thing.
· Every second counts.
· Yes before no (as cited in Phillips & Phillips, 2015, p. 100).
In order to help all new hires become proficient as quickly as possible, the company conducts an 8-hour orientation session that includes presentations by the CEO and chairman of the board of directors concerning the importance of the organizational culture. Moreover, it is especially noteworthy that each booklet includes the personal email address and telephone number for Quicken Loan’s CEO in case new team members have questions (Phillips & Phillips, 2015).
Methodist Le Bonheur Healthcare
Although not as well known as Quicken Loans or AFLAC (discussed below), Methodist Le Bonheur Healthcare rates as a great place to work for many of the same reasons. Operating a network of seven tertiary health care facilities that generate more than $1.1 billion in revenues each year, this company places a high priority on its HRM practices in order to attract and retain talented workers in an increasingly competitive industry characterized by critical shortages of many occupational specialties. As a result, Methodist Le Bonheur Healthcare ensures that pay levels for clinical and nursing positions remain competitive with industry averages to provide the best possible health care outcomes for its patients (Shorb, 2016).
This concern, though, is not limited to Methodist Le Bonheur Healthcare’s patients, but extends to its human resources as well by treating all staff members as respected professionals (Methodist Le Bonheur Healthcare, 2018). In fact, a majority (>80%) of this company’s employees report that their leaders are honest and ethical with a firm commitment to operating world-class health care facilities. In addition, this company’s leadership has a proven track record of ensuring that all employees have the tools and resources they need to do their jobs and empower them to make the day-to-day decisions that are needed for optimal clinical outcomes (Methodist Le Bonheur Healthcare, 2018). Likewise, another majority (86%) of this company’s employees report feeling that they receive significant peer support from colleagues who are “consistently caring” and almost as many report feeling “comfortable truly being themselves at work” (Methodist Le Bonheur Healthcare, 2018, para. 5). Besides the day-to-day support provided employees, this company hosts an annual Healthcare Week where employees receive gifts as well as numerous company-wide picnics. In addition, the company hosts an annual Nurses Week to specifically express its appreciation for the more than 3,500 professional nurses it employs (Methodist Le Bonheur Healthcare, 2018). One current nurse employed at this company summed up its HRM practices thusly: “They understand that happy employees equate to great patient care” (as cited in Methodist Le Bonheur Healthcare, 2018, para. 7).
American Family Life Assurance Company (AFLAC)
The American Family Life Assurance Company, better known as AFLAC, has received the Fortune magazine's award for America's Most Admired Companies as well as the Best Companies to Work For award numerous times (Zoltners & Prabhakant, 2009). Like Quicken Loans, the organizational culture at AFLAC is centered on “doing things the AFLAC way” which translates into placing a priority on the provision of high quality customer service each and every time. While many organizations boast that their most important resource is the people who work there, AFLAC puts its money where its corporate mouth is and rewards and respects employees for their efforts since its founding in 1955. Indeed, according to Zoltners and Prabhakant (2009), “The company's founders, brothers John, Paul, and Bill Amos, believed that if the company took care of its employees, then the employees would take care of the company” (p. 124), and this corporate philosophy has consistently been extended to AFLAC’s employees as well as its 69,000-plus independent sales agents. Besides providing in-house training programs for these sales agents to help them grow their businesses, AFLAC also ensures that success is rewarded in kind. In this regard, Zoltners and Prabhakant (2009) report that, “There are literally thousands of sales contests and awards for agents and sales managers, including an annual convention trip for top-performing agents, special recognition for successful new agents, awards for the best sales managers” (p. 124). In addition, winners of awards are publicized in the company’s quarterly sales agent magazine and are featured on the company’s Web site where sales agents can also see how they stack up against their competition nationwide (Zoltners & Prabhakant, 2009).
Personal philosophy of HRM
Notwithstanding the enormous amount of scholarship that has been devoted to identifying optimal HRM practices over the centuries, one of the overarching issues involved that tends to be overlooked is the basic need for treating others like you would want to be treated yourself – in other words, the so-called “Golden Rule.” In his Sermon on the Mount, Jesus Christ clearly articulated what would become known as the “Golden Rule” when He stated, “Therefore all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you do ye even so to them” (Matthew 7:12). Indeed, some HRM authorities argue that many best HRM practices can be boiled down to the Golden Rule. In this regard, Fitz-Enz (2009) emphasizes that, “The irony of this flood [of information] is that we don’t know much more about leadership and management of people today than we did 2,800 years ago. The Golden Rule and common sense seem to be as good as many recent theories, and better than most of them” (p. 230). It is reasonable to suggest that the HRM practices at Quicken Loans, Methodist LeBonheur Healthcare and AFLAC all share this fundamental attribute even if it is not specifically included in Fortune magazine’s list of criteria for its best places to work award.
Conclusion
Most people not only need to work to make a living, they want to work – and work hard -- because it is just part of human nature to want to make some type of meaningful contribution. Employers that recognize this want and need are clearly better situated to use their human resource management practices in ways that can help them achieve and sustain a competitive advantage as demonstrated by the three companies reviewed above. Although the three companies reviewed above compete in completely different industries, the research showed that they all shared some common features that ranked them ahead of their competition in the Fortune magazine’s award calculations, especially in terms of the quality of leadership and the amount of respect and trust afforded employees.



References
Fortune 500 methodology. (2018). Fortune. Retrieved from http://fortune.com/best-companies/.
Methodist Le Bonheur Healthcare. (2018). Great Place to Work. Retrieved from http://reviews. greatplacetowork.com/methodist-le-bonheur-healthcare.
Phillips, J. J. & Phillipos, P. P. (2015). High-impact human capital strategy: Addressing the 12 major challenges today's organizations face. New York: AMACOM.
Shorb, G. S. (2016, Fall). The quality/cost pressures on healthcare providers. Business Perspectives, 18(1), 14-17.
Zoltners, A. A. & Prabhakant S. (2009). Building a winning sales force: Powerful strategies for driving high performance. New York: AMACOM.