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LinkedIn Ranks the Most Sought-After Companies

Richard Kadzis

Commentary: Where would you like to work, if you could have the ideal job with the ideal employer?

LinkedIn recently provided some insight.

As the leading social media channel for business and professional networking, LinkedIn is essentially a job search engine, so it’s able to distill extensive career related information using its own data analytics.

Based mainly on total views of job postings by thousands of companies, LinkedIn published its most sought-after companies findings in May, ranking the top 50 employers nationally.

Not surprisingly, Google, or Alphabet as it’s now branded, came out number one.

The top 10 employers are:

Google

Amazon

Facebook

Salesforce

Uber

Tesla

Apple

Time Warner

The Walt Disney Company

Comcast NBC Universal

Click here to view the entire list.

For all of the companies in the top 50, LinkedIn gauged the rankings using three key data points from its more than 500-million members:

- Interest in a company’s jobs

- Interest in a company’s brand

- Employee retention

What are drivers of workplace appeal and satisfaction?

Cool work settings, amenities and flexible workplace practices all combine to make for attractive jobs, but it’s much more than that.

Meaning Matters More

Google is known for its athletic facilities, foosball, coffee lounges and great – often free – food. Yet, the average Googler will tell you, the main reason they enjoy working there is the constant challenge of innovating and tackling massive problems ranging from creating self-driving cars to impeding extremism.

Scratch the surface, and you will find several core elements coming into play, each of them representing key psychographics of work that tell us why we like or don’t like working where we do.

These include feelings like meaning, purpose and a sense of belonging. I’ve done extensive research into the millennial mindset finding how these kinds of intangibles are more important than salary. The chance for career advancement is also valued more, especially among younger workers.

Companies like Google that give their employees a seat at the table and a voice in the process have created employee-stakeholder cultures that promote engagement and lead to higher productivity including continuous innovation, which is THE key to competitive advantage in today’s information age and knowledge-sharing economy.

I had the chance to work closely with Google’s director of Global Workplaces and Real Estate, David Radcliff, in a think-tank exercise focused on effective workplace design and practices, resulting in a best-selling book, Change Your Space, Change Your Culture.

We were meeting with a group of thought leaders inside the National Research Energy Laboratory in Golden, Colorado. It’s an impressively designed place where a lot of innovation surrounding energy management takes place, usually based on partnerships between the government and corporations.

Although the NREL campus produces all of the energy it consumes, making a net-zero facility of more than a million square feet, something was missing.

David pointed to the extremely quiet and near-empty office spaces that we toured, saying the campus lacked the energy, interaction and collaboration needed to sustain high-level innovation. The human side of the experience was lacking, despite the physical surroundings.

So it comes down to the question: What employers treat their employees like adults, emphasizing thinking space over physical work space?

The Super Nucleus

Chances are, the 50 companies recognized by LinkedIn, understand the value of treating work as a social experience and treating their employees as stakeholders.

It appears that about two-thirds of those companies including Google have direct or indirect impact on workplace experiences for countless numbers of other employers. For example, CBRE and Jones Lang LaSalle appear in the LinkedIn rankings.

They are commercial real estate providers who also advise the Fortune 1000 on workplace location, design and practice, which is another reflection why real estate and workplace departments inside major companies are gaining more influence and clout at the management table.

The same holds true for HR and IT departments. Some companies are even combining their real estate, human resources and technology groups into a “super-nucleus” supporting the needs of the entire business.

Corporate real estate, and the workplaces it houses, is now more integral to many corporate bottom lines, viewed as strategic assets, not as cost centers. As LinkedIn is showing us, the employee experience within those workplaces are often more valuable than buildings and land.

Richard Kadzis is expert on workplace practices, location strategies, sustainability, and other disciplines impacting productivity. His career spanned more than 35 years of advocating for corporate responsibility.