The best place to work?

By Dick Hughes  

SEPTEMBER 10, 2010 12:30 p.m. (0)

Senior executives of Elliott Davis spent a long night recently at Clemson University to share with faculty the company’s priorities for new employees and to hear what was happening in Clemson’s programs.

Although the fatigued Elliott Davis officers were at their desks bright and early the next day, it was time well spent and an example of management’s commitment to recruiting young talent to the Greenville accounting and consultancy firm, said Bob Wilson, chief human relations officer.

Wilson was asked to cite key practices and policies that have identified Elliott Davis as one of the “best places to work in South Carolina” in a quantitative analysis of company practices and policies combined with surveys of employee attitudes about the workplace.

Elliott Davis was one of seven companies with 250 or more employees that were named finalists in the evaluation sponsored by the South Carolina Chamber of Commerce, the Society for Human Resource Management and the publishers of SC BIZ Magazine.

Elliott Davis has been in the top tier since the program began five years ago to identify and recognize “South Carolina’s most innovative and top-notch employers.”  Last year, it was ranked No. 2 behind Edward Jones of Florence.

SynTerra Corp., a Greenville environmental engineering and science consulting firm, also is a regular finalist for companies with 15-249 employees, and last year it came in No. 2 statewide.

“This is the fourth year in a row that SynTerra has been selected as one of the Best Places to Work in South Carolina, so we must be doing something right,” said Christine Stapleton, HR director.

She said office space in the Innovate building was “deliberately designed to allow employees to collaborate. Our open-door practices enable continuous management interaction with employees.  We have an internal instant messaging system that allows all employees to communicate very easily.”

“Collaboration, trust and respect are core values at SynTerra,” Stapleton said.

Emphasizing and upholding values of integrity from the top down was cited by several HR executives and senior officers of companies interviewed.

Herb Dew, president of Human Technologies Inc., a human relations consulting firm based in Greenville and a regular as a top place to work, said a key to retention and recruitment is “having moral integrity, having values employees share and can see.”

For example, he said, as a private company HTI is not compelled to make financial information public, but he makes regular financial reports to employees to keep them informed even when it is can be uncomfortable.

As do other company officials, Dew said companies with a positive working environment encourage “honest conversations” between employees and supervisors and those with unhappy and unmotivated workers typically discourage dialogue, and “they don’t listen.”

While wages and benefits are important, they all said, they are not the most important factors employees value in judging a working environment.

”Obviously, compensation and benefits are important, but I know they are not long-term” inducements to retaining workers, said Wilson.  “If you pay them well and treat them poorly, they are going to leave anyway.”

What really counts, he and others said, was that employees receive fair compensation and benefits, that they perceive compensation policies as fair, see opportunities to advance in responsibilities and income and are given coaching, training and opportunities to move ahead.

Wilson said Elliott Davis strives to compensate employees fairly and to give them opportunities “ to control their income based on their talent, and we have to help them through coaching to identity their interests and then give them training to get them where they want to go.”

“Employees today want their employer to care about them and not treat them like a machine,” said Steve Nail, vice president for HR at Hubbell Lighting, a past winner of the Best Place to Work award.

In hard economic times, such as exist today, companies that have to reduce their workforce must make an extra effort to be transparent not only with employees affected by layoffs  but with the remaining workforce, he said.

“Employers need to explain why the reductions are necessary and why they were handled the way they were,” he said. “Also, if outplacement and/or severance were given, surviving employees need to be made aware that these benefits were given to ease the transition for those caught up in reductions.”

Companies that cut back have to make extra efforts at teambuilding to “help reassure employees and make them feel as confident as possible about their future with the organization,” Nail said.

In good times and bad, team building is another common strength. As with SynTerra, creating a “family friendly environment” is nurtured by being flexible in work schedules, handling personal issues with compassion and encouraging social interaction that “allows all of our employees to get to know their co-workers families.”

Fostering a team environment, sharing values and caring about employees were cited by employees of Rosenfeld Einstein, the Greenville insurance broker and consultant in employee benefits and financial planning, which is consistently cited as a Best Place to Work.

“This is an organization that is owned and managed by … people who truly care about the health and well-being of their ‘associates.’ They value truth and hard work and share their rewards with their associates,” said an employee in the survey portion of the evaluation process.

The competition has been narrowed to seven companies with 250 or more employees and 18 companies with 15 to 249 employees.

From the Upstate, Elliott Davis is among the large companies as a finalist.  In the smaller company category, Human Technologies, Rosenfeld Einstein and SynTerra Corp., all of Greenville are finalists.

The top winners will be announced at an awards dinner in Columbia on Oct. 28.