COMPETITION IS THE NEW UNION

American corporations have spent decades slashing jobs, cutting benefits and putting shareholders before employees. But guess what: The Just 100 companies that pay and treat their workers well outperform those that don’t. With unemployment near 4%, the pe

American corporations have spent decades slashing jobs, cuting benefits and putting shareholders before employees. But guess what: The Just 100 companies that pay and treat their workers well outperform those that don’t. With unemployment near 4%, the pendulum is swinging back to the workers. This time, it should pay off for investors, too.

Almost two years ago, Intel CEO Brian Krzanich made the kind of headlines no company wants: In the process of restructuring the storied chipmaker, he was eliminating 11% of its workforce—12,000 jobs. But far more quietly, Krzanich was focusing on something seemingly contradictory: cranking up a program to prevent the workers the company wanted to keep from walking out the door. The retention initiative was launched as part of a diversity push. In 2015, Krzanich had pledged some $60 million a year to boost underrepresented groups at Intel, yet in that year the company treaded water: 584 African-Americans, Hispanics and Native Americans were hired, and 580 from those groups departed. Ed Zabasajja, a Ugandan-born, Auburn University-trained engineer who oversees internal diversity analytics, was keen to acquire data to figure out why employees left—before they did.

Thus was born WarmLine, whose touchy-feely name hasn’t prevented more than 10,000 workers from reaching out. More than just a data-collection operation, WarmLine quickly developed into a way to address problems such as finding colleagues for isolated workers to bond with, mediating management disputes, arranging transfers and even asking for raises. And it also became an outlet for the entire company—roughly half of WarmLine’s users have been white and Asian men.

“There’s a limited number of people who can do many of these technologies,” Krzanich says. His product, ultimately, relies on talent.

Zillow, the online real estate marketplace, has gone even further to keep its key employees. CEO Spencer Rascoff sees recruitment and retention as the company’s leading priority and has a new “internal mobility” team focused on top performers. After one star recently decided during a six-week

cover photograph by ethan pines for forbes style Director: Joseph Deacetis; stylist: regina cherepinsky. Wool suit ($11,500), cotton shirt ($850), silk tie ($260). anD crocoDile belt ($2,800) by stefano ricci. Spencer Rascoff, CEO of Zillow Group. His company is No. 51 on the Just 100. tim pannell for forbes