Patagonia Ranked 24th by Magazine
Flexible work schedules. On-site child care. And a long history of environmental activism.
These are among the reasons cited for Ventura-based Patagonia Inc. being ranked 24th in Fortune Magazine’s inaugural list of the 100 Best Companies to Work for in America.
“What’s extremely important about Patagonia and makes it such a good place to work are the kind of freedoms they allow people,” said Robert Levering, who with coauthor Milton Moskowitz collaborated with Fortune to compile the list for its Jan. 12 issue.
“They are a company that is definitely into flex-time, they have an on-site child-care center--it’s a very family friendly place,” Levering said. “Women hold more than half of the top-paying jobs and that’s definitely unusual. . . . And another important factor has to do with being environmentally friendly.”
The outdoor clothing company, which opened in 1973, ranked higher than any other catalog and retail outfit, beating out L.L. Bean, which ranked 36th, REI at 37th, Eddie Bauer at 41st and Lands’ End at 43rd.
The only other Ventura County company that made the list was Amgen of Thousand Oaks, ranked 74th.
“Patagonia is a fine company, just as we are and very family friendly--it’s hard to find fault with them,” said David Kaye, associate director of Amgen corporate communications.
Kaye credits medical benefits, profit-sharing and year-end bonuses at Amgen--which opened in 1980 and has nearly 4,000 employees--as the reason for his company’s ranking in the top 100.
The on-site child care at Camp Amgen has also been a lure for many.
“Staff members are encouraged to come visit their children, have lunch with them or stop in and read a book during the day,” Kaye said.
Ten other California companies made it to the top 100 list. Those included Kingston Technology in Fountain Valley, which ranked 2nd; PeopleSoft in Pleasanton at 20th; Granite Rock in Watsonville at 23rd; and Cisco Systems in San Jose at 25th.
To be eligible to participate in the survey, a company had to be at least 10 years old and have a minimum of 500 employees.
Levering and Moskowitz, who have been tracking America’s best employers since 1981 and have written books on the topic, searched their database of more than 1,000 companies and came up with 238 as the most viable candidates for the list.
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Of this group, 161 agreed to distribute a 55-question, anonymous-employee survey to evaluate trust in management, pride in work and camaraderie. Also, company staff members completed a 29-page questionnaire designed to evaluate workplace practices.
The surveys were randomly given to 225 of Patagonia’s 598 employees nationwide, about 350 of whom are based at the firm’s Ventura headquarters. An additional 85 employees are located throughout Europe and Japan.
“It begins with our commitment to quality, integrity and respect--respect for the fact that it is hard to balance work and a personal life,” said Lu Setnicka, Patagonia spokesperson. “The culture here is one that recognizes that there is a need for balance in these two areas and there is a genuine interest in helping colleagues here manage that.”
On-site child care, flexible work arrangements and paid child-care leave for mothers and fathers, he said, are a few examples of Patagonia’s commitment to this work-life philosophy.
“To know your children are being well cared for while you’re working helps you to be more focused on your job,” Setnicka said, adding that there have been measurable effects of the work-family programs.
Although providing on-site child care, parental leaves and insurance coverage cost the company between $361,000 and $541,000 a year, total savings above these costs from new parents returning to work as well as special tax credits came to between $133,000 and $300,000 a year.
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But co-owner Malinda Chouinard says it’s not the benefits but the employees who make Patagonia such an attractive place to work.
“They are fun to be with and they all like each other,” Chouinard said.
Patagonia has had work-family programs in place for more than a decade.
“All of us had our babies at work and soon there were too many and it was too noisy,” Chouinard said. “I think we began to think about it when someone had a basinet on top of a brand-new computer and everybody started to worry about how the electric currents in the computer might not be too good for the baby.”
In addition to Patagonia’s work-family programs, the company said it has a history of environmental activism, pledging 1% of sales or 10% of pretax profit, whichever is greater, to the preservation and restoration of the environment.
“We originally got into the environmental aspect of it because all of our equipment and clothing are for outdoors activities,” Chouinard said. “It just came naturally that if you didn’t have an outdoor environment, you didn’t have anywhere to use your stuff.”
Chouinard said an environmental foundation, rather than her children, will eventually inherit the company.
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“If you’re really not into environmental work, it’s sort of a boring place to work,” she said.
In fact, Patagonia even pays their employees to spend up to two months of any one year working for an environmental nonprofit. Others chose to spend their vacation time assisting environmental causes.
“The whole reason I’m here is because of the environmental work we do,” said John Sterling, who filled out one of the 225 randomly distributed questionnaires.
“It’s a fun place to be too,” Sterling said. “It’s pretty relaxed, although it can be pretty intense and people work really hard. But there’s a sense of humor and people relax when they need to.”
