How Extraordinary Job Satisfaction can be achieved

Every year, the business magazine Fortune publishes its list of the 100 Best Companies To Work For®. For this purpose Fortune partners with the global research consulting firm Great Place to Work Institute® to conduct the “most extensive employee survey in corporate America” [1] with 407 participating companies this year. Only companies that are more than seven years old and have at least 1,000 employees are eligible. A company’s score in this ranking is based on two factors. One is a 57-question survey sent to a minimum of 400 randomly selected employees, asking for things like attitudes towards the management and job satisfaction. This survey accounts for two thirds of the score. The other third is based on a Culture Audit, capturing detailed demographics, pay and benefit programs, management philosophy, methods of internal communications, opportunities as well as compensation and diversity issues [1].
When looking at the results of this ranking, one immediately notices that the same company names have appeared over and over again among the top ten or top twenty over the previous years. This paper takes a deeper look at some of these companies, their corporate culture and the way they treat their employees. Furthermore, it tries to determine whether some measures or ideas exist that are common to all these companies and help increasing job satisfaction. From that, propositions are given of how these measures can be applied by other companies, independent of the industry they are doing business in.