How a company can become a Top Workplace
It all starts by nominating your company today!
During our search for the 2019 Bay Area Top Workplaces, we asked companies that made the Bay Area News Group’s list to tell their stories about their path to becoming a Top Workplace. We wanted to share with readers some of the responses we got as we encourage everyone to nominate their company for a spot on the 2020 Top Workplaces list. Top Workplaces share their stories
Actenviro
“Actenviro is proud to share our story on how we have become a Top Workplace in the Bay Area. The company has become a Top Workplace through a comprehensive approach to ensuring the best work environment for our employees. Not only do we pride ourselves in providing outstanding benefits, competitive compensation, and perks to our employees, we also strive each year to improve. In addition to benefits and compensation, Actenviro also takes a very proactive approach to ensuring a strong work/life balance for employees.
“In regards to growth and recognition, Actenviro has steadily increased these aspects as well. In addition to tenurebased rewards, the company now recognizes employees for many different reasons. Safety, teamwork, and following our core values are all areas in which employees can be recognized and rewarded. Additionally, the company has developed a comprehensive mentorship program to help grow and develop our employees into being our next leaders in line. Our leadership team always looks to promote from within when possible before looking for someone externally. Our company truly searches for employees who will buy in to our great culture and help develop and maintain the core values we strive for every day. Every employee has an opportunity to become a part-owner of the company with the employee stock purchase program.
“Being a Top Workplace is something Actenviro has strived for every year, winning many awards for our culture and the way we treat employees. We strive for these awards because we want to ensure we are developing and maintaining the best environment and culture every day. We are proud to say that we can use these awards to attract the best talent and to provide an outstanding culture for our employees. We wear the Top Workplace designation as a badge of honor and will continue to earn it every day!”
Branch Metrics
“Our motto is ‘Build Together. Grow Together. Win Together.’ and that encapsulates so much about our values. The most important thing about winning an award like this is that it recognizes what the entire Branch team has built together. Culture isn’t about pingpong tables or snacks, it’s about how everyone at the company values and treats each other and about how we make decisions when no one else is watching. We interview for values alignment, base our performance reviews and promotions around it, talk about it and celebrate it. That commitment to our core values, even as they have evolved as we’ve scaled, has been central to creating a diverse and passionate culture that has really powered the company forward.”
Dudum Real Estate Group
“We have received the Top Workplace honor for a few years now and we do not take this special recognition lightly. We feel that it only reinforces our efforts within our company and the spirit we all strive to embody each and every day. We all work very hard and yet we truly enjoy and promote the fun aspects of real estate. Our company is an amazing group of fierce and enthusiastic real estate agents and staff. We strive for excellence and we are guided by the Mahatma Gandhi quote, ‘A customer is the most important visitor on our premises.
He is not dependent on us. We are dependent on him. He is not an interruption in our work. He is the purpose of it. He is not an outsider in our business. He is part of it. We are not doing him a favor by serving him. He is doing us a favor by giving us an opportunity to do so.’
“Our pride in receiving this amazing recognition is evident in how we share it with our community and celebrate it with our agents and staff. This award has benefited us in many ways we probably are not even aware of, as we use it in our recruiting, and advertising. People have shared with us that they are very impressed that we have won the award year after year. Our broker/ owner, Julie Del Santo, is such a caring, giving, fun, and respected leader in the real estate industry and the goodness and excellence she exudes trickles down to all of those in the company and thus to all of our clients, as well. So our clients benefit from Dudum Real Estate Group being a Top Workplace, too! This award gives us that much more incentive to keep doing the things we know have helped us achieve this and work even harder to earn the award in the future!”
id Tech
“To us, being honored as a Top Workplace is about much more than bragging rights. It’s a symbol that our year-round team is happy, healthy and deeply committed to maintaining the awesomeness that defines our work life. From our team outings and potluck contests, to our dress-up days and annual Summit in the Sun, the bonds we make — and the fun we have — are second to none!
“As the world’s leading summer STEM program, we’ve always known that ‘happy staff equals happy campers.’ And it’s not just a catchphrase. The upbeat, quirky, encouraging culture at our Silicon Valley headquarters is passed on to our summer staff at 150 locations worldwide, making a lasting impact on our incredible students.”
How to nominate your company
Now that you’ve read about the advantages of being one of the Bay Area’s Top Workplaces, here’s how you can nominate your company today:
• All organizations with 35 or more employees in the Bay Area are eligible to enter. This includes public, private, nonprofit and government sectors.
• Each workplace is assessed by its employees via a brief 24-question survey.
• Each company will be surveyed from November 2019 through February 2020.
Nomination deadline
Because you’re in it to win it, here’s how to enter:
• Nomination deadline is December 20, 2019.
• Please submit online nominations at www.mercurynews.com/nominate.
• Phone nominations can be submitted at 408-841-7554.
• The entire process — from nomination to survey — is completely free of charge.
• The winners will be revealed in June.
Energage, our Top Workplaces research partner, will conduct the employee surveys. They have surveyed more than 2.6 million employees at nearly 7,500 organizations in 2018 alone. Energage, based in Exton, Pennsylvania, conducts this survey in partnership with Bay Area News Group. The Top Workplaces list is entirely based on employee feedback through the survey process. In 2018, the survey generated responses from more than 16,000 employees in the Bay Area.
Employees are asked 24 questions, and the employer may add five more. The questions measure employee opinions in the areas of engagement, organizational health and satisfaction. The identity of employees is kept anonymous. When the results are complete, each participating company receives a free summary report.