It's official: Nearsoft is honored to be among the Top 20 Great Places to Work in Mexico among IT and Telecom companies.  We're pretty excited that we placed #17 in the list, right next to well-respected companies like Nokia, SAS, HP, Dell, Symantec and SAP among others.

This list is published every year by the Great Place to Work® Institute, Inc (GPTWI), the same folks who publish Fortune's 100 Best Companies to Work for.  They run a very tight ship and do quite a thorough job of surveying employees to get a complete, in-depth picture of what it's like to work at these companies.

This is the second year in a row that Nearsoft makes it to the top ranks of this list.  Last year we placed as #8 in the category of companies with 50 to 500 employees.

Five Dimensions

The GPTWI evaluates companies on five dimensions, including 1) Credibility, 2) Respect, 3) Fairness, 4) Pride and 5) Camaraderie.

Source: Great Place to Work® Institute, Inc.

By their definition, a great place to work is one in which you,

1. Trust the people you work for
2. Have pride in what you do
3. Enjoy the people you work with

As a result of this survey, we have become very keenly aware of how well (or not so well) aligned we are on company strategy, how our HR practices are working and, overall, how well is the company working for its employees, even at times of stress.

As part of the survey, we get metrics on Leadership, Strategic Alignment, HR Practices and Engagement. 

Building a Great Organization

Building a successful organization is a long journey.  Mistakes will happen, but the key is how well we clean up after ourselves.

I heard Ivan Koon, CEO of YouSendIt.com say that a great organization is one that acts and behaves like an organism.  As he pointed out, when you walk, your left foot does not have to ask the right foot to move; each foot does what it has to do, when it has to do it.

Great organizations get to be great because they constantly improve their performance while learning to behave more like an organism.  The GPTWI survey is a great instrument for organizations that want to perform more like an organism.

Financial Impact

Our original motivation at Nearsoft for going through this process was not for financial reasons.  Primarily, we wanted to know how good a job we were doing at creating a fun place to work.

It is not secret that really good software engineers are driven by more than just making a living.  They want to have an impact beyond the four walls of the companies they work for and they want to enjoy themselves while doing it.

We are in the innovation business and we need to attract and retain people who can contribute big in that space.

As it turns out, there is a very big financial benefit that accrues to companies that create trusting, safe places to work, where people are treated with respect, as adults.

According to the GPTWI, these companies “consistently outperform major stock indices.”  These results have been measured since 1998 and have held consistently since then.

Fortune "100 Best" vs Stock Market 1998-2008

Source: Great Place to Work® Institute, Inc.

For our clients, this means that they can rest assured that they will work with great people, who work in an environment they enjoy and produce great results.  They don’t have to worry about turnover, retraining or any of the other maladies that are endemic to companies in our space.

Congratulations!

Our congratulations to all the people who participated in these surveys and in particular the other Top 20 companies!