TOP WORKPLACES
The Courant honors the top 60 local companies and organizations.
The Hartford Courant named 60 local companies and organizations to its Top Workplaces list for 2019, led by Liberty Bank, Talcott Resolution Life Insurance Company and Slalom as top winners in their size categories.
The ninth annual Courant Top Workplaces awards event was at the Aqua Turf in Southington.
Liberty Bank, with 87 branches and offices in Connecticut, including its new Middletown headquarters, finished No. 1 among 11 winners in the large employers category, with at least 500 employees in Hartford, Tolland, Middlesex, Windham or New London counties. The bank won the top prize in its category two years ago and has been on the list eight times.
In the midsize category, with 17 winners, Talcott Resolution Life Insurance Company in Windsor emerged on top in its first year on the list. The company was established in 2018 in a spinoff from The Hartford.
Among small employers, with 50 to 149 employees in the area, Slalom, a consulting firm with an office in Hartford, was No. 1 among 32 winners. It was the sixth year the company made the list.
The awards are based on employee surveys administered in the spring by Energage, The Courant’s partner, which works with dozens of media companies nationwide and has surveyed 20 million employees.
The top leadership award in the small employers division — recognition for the executive who scores highest in confidence measures by his or her employees — went to Pete Rappoccio, the founder of Sign Pro in Southington.
Bob Ensminger of the Arthur G. Russell Co., a Bristol manufacturer of machines primarily used to make medical equipment, was the leadership winner in the midsize category.
In the large employers’ category, Rich Leone, CEO of COCC, a company that provides financial software to banks and credit unions, won the leadership award. He has been at COCC, in Southington, since 1991 and became CEO in 2002. Leone also won the top leadership award for large employers in 2015.
First-time winners this year included EnsignBickford Aerospace & Defense Co. in Simsbury, Finalsite in Glastonbury, iDevices in Avon and Sign Pro.
Seven employers have made the Top Workplaces list all nine years. They are COCC; InterCommunity Health Care Inc.; Physical Therapy and Sports Medicine Centers; Standard Builders, Inc.; InCord; Integrated Rehabilitation Services and Gowrie Group/Maritime Program Group.
Complete coverage of t he awards is at www.courant.com/topworkplaces. A special magazine section about the winners will be in Sunday’s Courant.