Receiving a ranking of #13 on Fortune magazine’s “Best Companies to Work For” list, DPR Construction—with a large healthcare portfolio—is sharing the spotlight with brand names like Google and Mercedes-Benz USA.
No newcomer to the coveted list, DPR was ranked #22 in 2011, and #57 in 2010. While scoring is largely based on input from employees, DPR Co-Founder and President Doug Woods believes that it’s his company’s culture of trust, freedom, flexibility, empowerment, and innovation that has enabled it to stand out.
“During the hiring process, we look for individuals who share our company values and have created a company culture based on two beliefs: respect for the individual and we can change the world,” Woods explains .
Fortune’s ranking process utilizes corporate America’s most extensive employee survey, conducted with the Great Place to Work Institute, which polls employees about their company culture, credibility of management, individual respect, fairness, job satisfaction, and camaraderie.
In DPR’s case, 911 of the company’s 1,265 employees opted to participate in the survey, resulting in a 95% average score across the survey’s six categories.
While the survey results account for two-third’s of a company’s score, the other third is culled from responses to the Institute’s Culture Audit, which examines pay and benefit programs, hiring, communication, training, and diversity.
One example of the contractor’s progressiveness in this arena is a fairly new DPR Innovation Group, which helps promote employee ideas on a national level, as a DPR employee was quoted in Fortune as saying, “If I have a good idea, I am empowered to move it forward.”
With such entrepreneurship being encouraged, Woods believes this is one of the reasons why DPR has been at the forefront of several important industry trends including sustainability, building information modeling, and integrated project delivery.
