The best place to work rankings is very important. It was how I chose the first tech company I went to work for (they even had a Great Place To Work Department), and the ranking not only helps attract top talent like a magnet it helps reduce employee churn by showcasing the grass isn’t always greener on the other side. While being anyplace on this list is important, being in the top ten, particularly in a competitive market like Silicon Valley is extremely so and against a firm that isn’t on the list should provide a significant staffing advantage. More important, this ranking particularly appeals to those who aren’t financially driven and will move from company to company for an increase in salary showing little loyalty or specifically the kind of employee companies don’t want. Cisco’s 4th place ranking in the Nation and 1st in Silicon Valley should bode well for their future, and it further supports why their CEO was named CEO of the decade.
Let’s talk about the importance of having a high Best Place To Work Ranking this week.
Why Employee Care In A Vendor Is Important
I have several degrees I’ve picked up over the years, but the one that best reflected my personal view when I was young was my BS in Manpower Management. My goal was to work for a company that cared about its employees and to help those employees be the best they could. My financial needs were modest, and I thought that was the single best use of my life. I still believe that companies that care more about their people than the perks their executives earn tend to be far better corporate citizens and far better partners than those that don’t.
The reason I think they are far better partners is that you build relationships with the people you work with, not the firms irrespective of the people. At some future point, when we get to general-purpose AIs, that will change, but that event is still a decade two in most of our futures.
These company representatives learn our companies, learn our needs, and, over a period of years. Often become almost like one of our extended families. But if the vendor has a lot of churn, then our reps are always learning on our time, aren’t particularly loyal to their own companies, let alone ours, and are mostly looking at us like money mines and not colleagues or friends.
This last is incredibly important because we often stake our reputations on the vendors we recommend or choose, and if that vendor doesn’t perform, it reflects on us as much as it reflects on the vendor. Certain companies that I’ll note aren’t on this list, have reputations for executing policies that are hostile to customers, which stresses their employees and, while this isn’t absolute, is likely to keep the firm off the list.
Personally, I would tend to favor vendors who treat their employees well and are ranked highly over those that don’t even make the list.
Why Employee Care Is Important In An Employer
Like a lot of you, I’ve worked for a lot of companies. Unlike a lot of you, I have a degree in Manpower Management and know that poor employee care can result in shortened lifespans, lower health, more failed marriages, and a higher potential for violence. I’ve been in close proximity on two occasions where poor employee treatment resulted in either a spouse or the employee themselves showing up armed, and, in one of those instances, there were several deaths. While the likelihood of this happening to you is exceedingly small when it does happen, it is a life changer and not for the better.
There is a quality to our lives, and while high salaries and good benefits are certainly important to our lifestyle, more important is our mental health and in abusive environments that health is threatened. I, and I know, most of you are particularly concerned now about the treatment of minorities and women and firms that rank highly on this list tend to be known for creating an environment where both groups are generally treated with respect and nurtured.
In a firm that treats its people well, you tend to leave with a time well spent and friends that are with you for decades. That is an asset that is often overlooked but speaks to the quality of our lives, and I believe that quality of life is more important than almost any other metric.
Wrapping Up:
Given we are all employees of someone, I think we should take into consideration the care and feeding of our peers more seriously. Executives tend to prioritize resources based on sales performance, and if we all favored vendors that treated their employees well, there would be a lower chance we’d have a Union in our future and a higher chance that our remaining years as employees would be good ones. I know this is self-serving, but if we all valued employee treatment more highly, there is a far higher probability that we, and those we care about, would also be treated well. Something to think about this week.
