Dec 10, 2003

Best Utah Companies to Work For

My Family chosen as one of Utah's Seven Best!

by John Blodgett

Smart companies know that worker benefits offer just as much benefit to the employer as they do the employee. This was shown by authors Richard Hadden and Bill Catlette, who in their book Contented Cows Give Better Milk wrote that companies known to be “a great place to work” outperformed their competition in revenue growth by more than 50 percent, and earned more than $70 billion more in net income.

The mix of benefits that can have such an effect on the bottom line varies. Some are traditional, such as 401(k) plans and employer-subsidized health insurance coverage, but more and more non-traditional benefits that reflect a company’s personality or a region’s demographics are being offered. In Utah, for example, there is a strong focus on family life as well as the balance between work and play. And corporate philosophy is no less important.

Utah Business has chosen the following seven employers as examples of companies who understand the value of maintaining high employee morale by just being an all-around great place to work.

Regence BlueCross BlueShield of Utah

Regence BlueCross BlueShield of Utah (Regence BCBSU) provides for the health and well-being of its employees — and their families — as much as it does for its clients.

“We have an on-site fitness facility with a fitness instructor who provides custom workout routines,” says spokesperson Kevin Bischoff. Employees pay just $8 a month for use of both the facilities and trainer, he says, and their fitness options don’t stop at the gym. “Our cafeteria has a complete salad bar and deli that offers low-fat alternatives to fried foods. [Plus] each employee receives a chart every year so they can catalog the number of servings of fruits and vegetables they have every day.”

Employees receive a 35 percent discount on all food items, and the cafeteria is located right next door to the Caring for Kids day care center, allowing working parents a chance to share lunch with their children and get a 30 percent discount on day care facilities (both the cafeteria and day care are open to the public and are often used by other employees located in the Cottonwood Corporate Center).  Prices are determined by age of the child and whether they are in day care full time. A “cottage worker” program allows stay-at-home parents and other employees a chance to work remotely as claims processors; almost 10 percent of the workforce takes advantage of this opportunity to work a flexible schedule defined by the individual.

Regence BCBSU has long been recognized for its focus on the family, winning for four consecutive years the Work/Life award from the Utah State Department of Work Force Services, identifying Regence as one of the state’s top 10 family-friendly companies.

Redmond Minerals

With offices in Redmond and Springville, Redmond Minerals is best known for RealSalt, mined near Redmond and touted by the company as an “all natural, gourmet sea salt.” Other products include agricultural salt, clays and de-icing products. According to marketing director Rusty Anderson, Redmond Minerals is a peculiar place to work. He says this with sincere appreciation.

“The culture of Redmond is worth a lot in today’s dog-eat-dog world,” he says. “Redmond Minerals’ values are consistent with my own.” Such values include the importance of bettering employees’ lives through the support of family activities, and through tuition reimbursement.

Other employees are just as free — and consistent — with the accolades. “[Redmond Minerals] is a place where you don’t mind taking your job home with you,” says office team leader Doug Anderson.He acknowledges, “If this sounds unusual, it is.” Boyd Jewkes, mill team leader, cites the unique family-like atmosphere of the company as a plus, but finds it difficult to compare the company against other employers. “I don’t know exactly how to explain it, but all I can say is, I love working for Redmond Minerals,” he says. Jeremy William, who works in product packaging, is more matter-of-fact, stating simply, “This is the number one company.”

Tuition reimbursement — 100 percent for pre-approved coursework — is just one of the benefits. Employees may set their own hours, so long as their job gets done. Children are a frequent fixture as they follow parents to work, and the Springville office even has a room set aside for them, complete with toys, books and movies. And benefits extend to the community at large — every year, employees can take up to 28 hours of paid leave to perform community work.

“[Redmond Minerals’] bottom line is developing human potential and helping people find the place where they can add the most value,” explains Jason Nielsen, vice president of marketing. “Profits are looked at as a means to that end as opposed to people being the means and profit the end.” Nielsen goes on to explain that decisions are made at the team level in a flat, as opposed to hierarchical, corporate structure, in which associates are given responsibility usually reserved for management in other companies. “This type of flat structure is not for everyone,” he acknowledges, “[but] some people thrive in it.”

Fortunately, according to Doug Anderson, employees are encouraged to take risks when given responsibility. “No one will criticize you for trying to do something better, even if you fail trying,” he says. “I have worked for large companies as well as small, and I can absolutely say that Redmond Minerals is the best place I have ever worked.”

MyFamily.com

Apparently, no one thought to tell Provo’s MyFamily.com, Inc. that the dot-com bubble burst shortly before the turn of the century. Not only has the online provider of genealogical data doubled in size since 2001, adding more than 160 employees in 2003 alone, but these employees enjoy a wide variety of sometimes quirky perks that other companies have had to cut in order to survive the economic downturn.

Take hip-hop dance lessons, for example. Offered free of charge every Friday during the summer months, spokesperson Mary Kay Evans says the company chose the activity because it invigorates both the mind and spirit of employees — and because they didn’t have to search far to find a qualified instructor, who goes by the name “Money.” “We happen to have one of Utah’s top hip-hop dance instructors working for us here,” says Evans. “By day, [she is our] online marketing manager; by night, hip-hop dance instructor.”

Summer is also the time when weekly picnics are held, but the free weekly lunch is offered year-round, simply moving indoors from October through March. The break room features classic dot-commer diversions such as foosball, air hockey and satellite television, and when employees return to their desks for work they have the chance to maintain a flexible schedule that allows them to attend to personal errands that would otherwise only occur during work hours.

It’s not just all fun and games, however. Every other week, 15 employees are chosen alphabetically to attend a group question-and-answer session with CEO Tom Stockham. “The idea is to get a small enough group in front of Tom so that one-on-one conversations can take place — and to make every employee feel they have a voice,” says Evans. And the “Critique the Manager” program is a chance for managers to be evaluated by their employees, subordinates and superiors. The resulting anonymous feedback is used to design a training course to work on areas of improvement; in addition, management consultants are brought in to coach as well.

Employees aren’t the only people who benefit from MyFamily.com. “The work we do is uplifting,” says Suzanne Russo, who works in content acquisition. “We are striving to connect and strengthen families, and that is a positive thing in a world of shifting values.” And once a year, employees take a day off to give back to the local community with a day of service; past efforts have cleaned up the Provo River Trails and Provo cemetery.

Chums

Think there aren’t many benefits to working in Hurricane? Think again.

“The commute is a breeze,” says Suzanne Cashin, director of human resources at Chums, a manufacturer of eyeglass retainers and assorted other clips and holders. “There is no traffic here.” And, of course, Zion National Park is only minutes away. “Many of our employees love the outdoors adventure this [proximity] provides, as well as the rest of the natural beauty that surrounds us.”

 Cashin explains that the company is small enough — about 60 employees — that everyone knows each other on a first-name basis, and owner Charles Ferries prioritizes and encourages familial tendencies in other ways as well. “On several occasions [he] has given the entire company an additional day of paid holiday leave to spend with families,” she says. Employees treat one another as family, too, for example going so far as to fill in for a parent, on leave in Iraq for the National Guard, at his children’s school events. That employee was also guaranteed his position and salary upon his return, in addition to being paid an entire month’s salary after his first month of active duty.

“We have awesome people here,” says Cashin. “We work together to achieve success for our employer and to help each other.” Making Chums, well, rather a chummy place to be.

Sunshine Terrace Foundation

Sunshine Terrace Foundation, a Logan nonprofit healthcare organization that specializes in adult and assisted living care, has discovered that sometimes the smallest employee appreciation gestures are the sweetest.

All employees receive a box of candy on their birthday from Sunshine Terrace CEO Sara Sinclair. Sinclair and her staff also hand out treats every quarter to all shift employees, who enjoy monthly staff breakfasts as well. “The point is not the candy,” Sinclair explains. “[It] is a very small token of our great debt of gratitude to them for their fine work.” Keeping employees happy and feeling appreciated is especially important, as much of the staff is tasked with seeing to the emotional and physical needs of elderly clients who require assistance with their daily lives.

The “Caught Ya Doin’ Something Right Board” is another example of a simple gesture with far-reaching consequences, in which employees post positive comments about fellow employees on a board every week. It never fails to fill up.

Such seemingly small tokens of appreciation appear to be doing something right — turnover at Sunshine Terrace is half the national average in long-term care, even in light of the fact that the foundation hires many college students who move on after graduation.

There are other attractions that sweeten the mix of benefits. Flexible hours allow employees, many of whom take classes at Utah State University or Bridgerland Applied Technology College, to set a schedule that works best for them. The exercise equipment in the rehabilitative room is available for employee use during off-peak hours, and employees can take part in a mentoring program to learn new job skills from co-workers with more or different experience.

Sinclair believes such benefits affect morale in a positive way: Of employees polled in the 2002 employee satisfaction survey, 96 percent indicated that they enjoyed their jobs. And the benefits extend outside the foundation’s buildings, as employees volunteer more than 50,000 hours every year throughout Cache Valley.

Though Sunshine Terrace pays competitive wages, Sinclair acknowledges that healthcare is not a field that makes one wealthy. But riches here come in a different form. “Our mission takes heart, and is gives great satisfaction to employees when the work is well done. Our clients and their families are very grateful for our care.”

Gastronomy, Inc.

Restaurants are commonly known as a place to get a job, often part-time and short-term, to help pay for school or to supplement another income. At Gastronomy, employees have a habit of staying — and moving up the ranks.

Nearly 140 employees have been at Gastronomy more than five years, notes Catherine Randak of human resources. “Of those, 62 have been here over 10 years and 11 over 20 years.” Randak herself has worked for Gastronomy since 1979, when she started as a server and hostess at The New Yorker to help pay her way through school. Gastronomy currently employs about 650.

“Gastronomy is a place where you can grow,” says Mark Robbins, who started during school as a server for Market Street Broiler in 1985 and is now general manager of the Market Street Grill at Cottonwood (22 of 27 managers in the chain began as hourly employees). “[I’ve gone] from struggling student to single guy to married guy to married guy with four children — I’m always amazed that one company could meet my needs through all those phases of life so perfectly.”

Randak says the company never lost its “family feel,” even after expanding from one restaurant to eight. The operations director holds weekly meetings with all general managers to keep them in touch with companywide matters, she says, and individual managers are granted decision-making autonomy. “And when decisions are made, the execution is fast,” Randak says. “There’s not a lot of red tape.”

A great attitude is of utmost importance to be hired at Gastronomy. “You don’t have to have experience to work here,” Randak says. “We will hire on attitude. Much attention is paid so that qualified people get hired. It’s nice to work around others with a similar work ethic.”

Mark Robbins acknowledges that Gastronomy can be a demanding place to work, but that’s part of what has kept him with the company for 19 years. “Their passion for success and quality are worth working for,” he says.

1-800-CONTACTS

There’s no such thing as a free lunch at 1-800-CONTACTS, but it sure comes close — employees pay only $2 for a lunch prepared by a professional chef. When was the last time you could buy ahi tuna, stuffed pork chops or sea bass at your office?

“[Chef] Byron Newton used to work at Royce’s Canyon Racquet Club, Brumby’s and Squatters,” says spokesperson Jan Hemming. “[Jonathan Coon], one of the founding executives, created the restaurant as a perk.” Professional trainers at the on-site fitness center — free of charge to employees — help employees make wise eating decisions and work off their calories as part of a company-wide healthy lifestyle campaign, Hemming relates.

Other perks help balance life with work. Employees can make free long distance phone calls when on break and can arrange a flexible work schedule that allows time for seeing to family matters or dealing with last-minute emergencies. Special “quiet rooms” allow employees to take a reading, music or nap break, or they can choose to have a free chair massage.

Hemming says that employee salaries are structured like athletic contracts, which provide incentives for team and personal performance that can increase salaries by as much as 30-35 percent a month. Gifts such as digital cameras, mountain bikes and video games reward employees for longevity.

In turn, employees reward 1-800-CONTACTS with loyalty unheard of in the call-center world. “The company is only able to hire 4 percent of all job applicants because there is so little turnover,” Hemming says; in an industry that averages 200 percent turnover, which means the workforce turns over every six months, 1-800-CONTACTS boasts only 60 percent. “The company hasn’t had to advertise for call center jobs in two years because the waiting list of applicants is so abundant,” she says.

Regular Utah Business contributor John Blodgett recently relocated to Idaho, where he is now a staff writer at the Boise Weekly.