What it means to be ranked as a Bay Area Top Workplace
We decided to reach out to a few of our past Bay Area Top Workplaces and get some feedback from them about what it means to be recognized as a Top Workplace. This comes at a time when we are encouraging employees to nominate their companies to be ranked as a 2020 Bay Area Top Workplace at www.mercurynews.com/nominate.
The numerous benefits that come with making it onto the list go well beyond just bragging rights. There is no cost to participate and a whole host of perks to be gained if your company attains a spot on the list. If you’re still trying to decide about nominating your company, read what these past Top Workplaces say about why you should nominate your company today. Top Workplaces share their stories Seneca Family of Agencies
“Being recognized as a Top Workplace by Bay Area News Group demonstrates our commitment to attracting and retaining the best talent possible, and is a testament to the ways we engender a positive and fulfilling work culture.
“This year, we were thrilled to see our ranking among large businesses improve from No. 6 to No. 4, landing us in the Top 10 for the 5th year in a row. We’re proud to share that we’ve been named a Top Workplace in the Bay Area for five consecutive years, and we showcase our Top Workplace seal on the Seneca website, recruitment collateral, and social media platforms.
“At Seneca, we value transparency by always encouraging open and honest feedback from our staff whenever possible. We do this both internally, through individual and group supervision, and externally, through social review sites like Glassdoor and Indeed, as well as through an anonymous annual survey completed by Energage. We use our employees’ responses to identify the areas that are working as well as those in need of improvement, ensuring changes are made and victories are celebrated so that all Senecans thrive in the workplace.”
“In a nonprofit organization, employee satisfaction helps to create the sense of team, which is absolutely necessary in doing the work that we do,” shared Ken Berrick, Seneca’s founder and CEO. “This award validates that we are an organization full of gifted and compassionate people and my greatest wish is that in the future, our staff will be able to say they helped to break the cycles of poverty, isolation, disconnection, abuse and neglect that has impacted our children, their families and our communities for generations.”
A few direct quotes from Seneca staff members about what it means to be named a Top Workplace: “This award validates what I’ve already known about Seneca for years; my co-workers and supervisors are the most hard-working, humble, supportive and fun group of people I have ever worked with!” “It is inspiring to work for an agency that is able to simultaneously fulfill the mission of bettering the lives of the children and families we work with, while also ensuring the employees behind the work are not forgotten.” “Being a Top Workplace means that the care, compassion and collaboration of all employees is recognized and appreciated. It feels good to work for an agency that respects its employees and extends the same support to them as the clients they serve.” Periscope Data
“We’re very honored to be ranked as a Top Workplace in the Bay Area for the 3rd year in a row. From our perspective, the Top Workplaces award serves two main purposes.
“First, it gives our employees cause for celebration and recognizes the hard work we’ve put in to develop not only a thriving business but also a strong culture. Our Head of People Ops Melanie Tantingco often talks about how culture is designed into and a consideration for everything we do at Periscope Data, including something as simple as the layout of our conference rooms and the places where we conduct interviews. The little things matter when it comes to company culture. We use our culture as the lens to think through multiple viewpoints on every decision we make, and I think that’s part of what has made us stand out as a Top Workplace.
“Second, it serves as a great recognition of how we are realizing our company values — at Periscope Data, we are kind, positive, inclusive, helpful, fast, transparent, datadriven and customer-focused. And the Top Workplaces survey questions in many ways reflect those values — the responses show us that values aren’t just something we write on our walls, our employees see us following through and living them on a regular basis. Our founders often talk about the importance of investing in building your culture and values early. Here’s a quote from our founder Harry Glaser on that:”
“Our first seven employees were white men and I could feel the culture starting to drift toward a place where not everyone would feel included. I’ve worked at places in my career where there’s not been that same level of commitment to diversity and inclusion, and it becomes a problem in the culture where people are excluded and the culture can turn negative. At that early stage, I had a conversation with every one of our employees at that point about how we wanted to make diversity and inclusion a priority, and luckily they were all aligned on that goal. We started focusing on that in hiring and being more demanding on our recruiters to build a diverse pipeline. If you hire well, it becomes easier to hire well over time. Getting the first 10 to 20 people right