2014 Best Places to Work

    Insider

    How do you define what makes a place to work great?

    Air guitar contests, unlimited snacks and beverages, steak dinners once a month at the boss’s house, paid days off for volunteering, and go-cart races—those are the stuff of headlines.

    But when it comes right down to it, the real perks of any profession in the Capital Region are these: feeling valued in an organization, having confidence in the company’s leadership, feeling a sense of progress and knowing that your employer truly cares about their employees’ well-being.

    Those are just some of the findings in this, our first annual, Best Places to Work in the Capital Region special edition.

    Business Report partnered with the Greater Baton Rouge Society for Human Resource Management and the Louisiana Workforce Commission to discover what makes a great workplace in our community, as well as provide participating employers insight into what their employees think.

    The independent national firm Best Companies Group surveyed companies that chose to participate. For-profit or nonprofit publicly or privately held entities with a facility in Baton Rouge and a minimum of 15 full- or part-time employees working in the nine-parish Capital Region were eligible to participate. Contract employees were not included in employee surveys or employee counts.

    To ensure credibility, organizations with fewer than 25 employees were required to have an 80% or better response rate on the employee survey.

    The first portion of the assessment involved a questionnaire about company policies, practices, demographics and benefits. The second part went to a randomly selected group of each firm’s employees, who responded—anonymously—to 78 statements on a five-point agreement scale, as well as a handful of open-ended questions and demographic inquiries.

    Best Companies Group analyzed and ranked participating firms on eight core focus areas: leadership and planning; corporate culture and communications; role satisfaction; work environment; relationship with supervisor; training, development and resources; pay and benefits; and overall engagement.

    For information about the program and to sign up for the 2015 Best Places to Work survey, go to bestplacestoworkbr.com.

    Read about Baton Rouge’s top five Best Places to Work:

    No. 1: Methanex

    No. 2: YP

    No. 3: Sigma Consulting Group

    No. 4: Envoc

    No. 5: Capital Valve & Fitting Co.