Editor’s Notes: The 2010 100 Best Companies


Who are the 100 Best Companies to Work For in Oregon? The 2010 list was revealed last night at a grand party of 700 at the Oregon Convention Center. The envelope, please:

For months we’ve been surveying, crunching, preparing for this moment and the class of 2010 is an amazing group of dedicated employers. We’ve devoted the March issue of Oregon Business to celebrating those great workplaces in our 17th annual edition of the 100 Best Companies. Nearly 20,00 employees from 303 companies participated in the free, anonymous workplace satisfaction survey. This is not a beauty pageant. The satisfaction scores from those surveys are calculated by independent research firm Davis, Hibbitts & Midghall to come up with the 100 Best rankings.

The event last night was frosting on the cake for these 100 companies, who out of sight of the spotlight have spent enormous energy to make their business a place that strives every day to treat their employees with respect, openness and trust. They found large and small ways to tell their workers that they care.

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Who are the 100 Best Companies to Work For in Oregon? The 2010 list was revealed last night at a grand party of 700 at the Oregon Convention Center. The envelope, please:

For months we’ve been surveying, crunching, preparing for this moment and the class of 2010 is an amazing group of dedicated employers. We’ve devoted the March issue of Oregon Business to celebrating those great workplaces in our 17th annual edition of the 100 Best Companies. Nearly 20,00 employees from 303 companies participated in the free, anonymous workplace satisfaction survey. This is not a beauty pageant. The satisfaction scores from those surveys are calculated by independent research firm Davis, Hibbitts & Midghall to come up with the 100 Best rankings.

The event last night was frosting on the cake for these 100 companies, who out of sight of the spotlight have spent enormous energy to make their business a place that strives every day to treat their employees with respect, openness and trust. They found large and small ways to tell their workers that they care.

The event and coverage is a small way in which Oregon Business says thank you for providing not only jobs and paychecks, but for also providing a great work environment where employees feel happy to come in each day and give their heart and soul.

Want to know how the Top 10 Companies create a winning workplace? We interviewed all of them and found that it’s as big as paying 100% of health care insurance and as small as a contest for the ugliest shirt.

Want to know some of the characteristics of being a winner? We crunched the numbers and found that this group offers premium offsets for health care and employ a surprisingly high number of workers under 35.

And if you’re wondering how these great employers kept their employees engaged and satisfied in a horrible economy, we found that one trait the top performers share is inspired, committed leadership. It’s hard enough to do that during a good economy, much less in troubled times.

I said it last night, and I want to say it again: Just keeping the doors open and keeping people employed makes every one of these companies a hero to me. But then to go the extra mile for their employees despite the economic turmoil … I guess that makes them superheroes.

But don’t take my word for it. Read all about it in this month’s March issue. And if you didn’t participate this year, I hope you consider taking part when we open the 2011 100 Best Companies survey in late August. You are probably a hero, too, and you deserve a little of the spotlight.

Robin Doussard is Editor of Oregon Business.