I really am planning on getting to the Lencione book on signs of a miserable job, but I saw something else that connects to it. Fortune Magazine recently released their "100 Best Companies to Work For". The list is pretty interesting to look at, from #1 Google to Starbucks (interesting, given their recent troubles and quotes from some employees that the company had lost its way) to Whole Foods, etc. It got me to think - what does Fortune think is required to make a great company to work for? Obviously, its a very subjective thing - ask 100 people and get 100 answers.

In looking at the site, they chose to partner with Great Place to Work Institute and use an extensive survey with 407 of the 1500 companies inquiried actually responding (maybe the ones who didn't were too busy hating their job to answer!). About 100,000 employees answered a 57 question survey, 400 randomly selected ones from each company. 2/3 of the total score was from these questions. The questions asked items such as attitudes and management credibility, job satisfaction, and camaradery. The other third was based on the Institute's "Culture Audit". This apparently asks demographic makeup questions, pay and benefits, and "open-ended questions about the company's management philosophy, methods of internal communications, opportunities, compensation practices, and diversity efforts, etc".

Being a great company to work for is so subjective, and that certainly matches what the "Culture Audit" apparently addresses - very subjective. And it may be management who answers those, so their view may be different than the lower level grunts. My concern about any such survey is that it will ask questions designed to elicit what the creator of the question thinks makes a great job. I prefer approaches like Marcus Buckingham's work in "First, Break All the Rules." They looked at companies where employees were happy and unhappy and went backwords to find out what made them different. As a technical, academic oriented person, that type of research is more meaningful to me.

For instance, I strongly dislike (read that as hate, abhor, or any other word you like) useless meetings. So if I'm making up questions, I might unintentionally slant my questions towards the number and effectiveness of meetings. In reality, that might not mean anything to a lot of people's job satisfaction. The questioner always influences his respondents, purposefully or not.

Next up - Patrick Lencioni's view of how job satisfaction can be improved.