SAS was just named the best employer in the U.S. by Fortune Magazine in its annual Best Companies to Work for survey. While the award is limited to very large companies, there’s a lot we can all learn. A few facts:
- SAS is the world’s largest privately held software business, with revenues of $2.3 billion.
- When Google, an SAS customer, was putting together its own campus freebies some years ago, it used SAS as a model.
- SAS has been on Fortune’s list of Best Companies to Work For every one of the 13 years the magazine has been keeping score.
- The average tenure at SAS is 10 years; 300 employees have worked there 25 years or more. Annual turnover was 2% in 2009 compared with the software industry average of about 22%.
- Women make up 45% of its U.S. workforce, which has an average age of 45.
CEO Jim Goodnight is quoted in the Fortune story as saying the company’s policies make good business sense. “My chief assets drive out the gate every day,” he says. “My job is to make sure they come back.”
What’s so great about SAS? According to Fortune:
- A gymnasium, weight room, billiards hall, sauna, hair salon, manicurist, aqua kickboxing in the Olympic-size pool, Swedish and orthopedic massage are available to employees.
- A massive solar farm that SAS built sells electricity back to the local utility.
- SAS has the highest salaries in the industry (though there are no stock options or equity grants to any employees, which is not so good).
- A typical work week is 35 hours, and there is no human resources department to monitor sick days.
- Two subsidized day-care centers for 600 children, and a summer camp, too.
- Dry cleaning, car detailing, a UPS depot, a book exchange, a meditation garden, and an in-season tax-prep vendor are other perks.
- Three subsidized cafeterias serve 500 breakfasts and 2,300 lunches a day — and provide takeout to bring home for the family.
- A free health-care center operates from 8am to 6pm most days, with a staff of 56, including four physicians, 10 nurse practitioners, nutritionists, lab technicians, physical therapists, and a psychologist.
- Work/life programs cover family issues, adoption, divorce, special-needs children, and raising teenagers.
OK, that gives us all something to work towards. It’s quite amazing what capitalism at its best is capable of. Thankfully there are some less expensive ways to build loyalty and community at work detailed in The Responsibility Revolution, the new book I wrote with Bill Breen. They may not include free dry cleaning, but they’ll build the kind of community that’s capable of building the strongest possible company.