Best large companies to work for.

• Author: Jones, Edward
• Position: Company overview

1 BEST COMPANY WINNER

Edward Jones is a company accustomed to ranking someplace around the top of "best company" and "best customer service" lists.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

One year ago, J.D. Power & Associates ranked Edward Jones first among full-service brokerage firms in investor satisfaction for the third straight year. In another field, Edward Jones this year ranked No. 4 in Fortune magazine's "100 Best Companies to Work For" list.

There are two reasons Edward Jones--with 9,560 U.S. branches, 258 in Colorado--consistently finishes high in these sorts of surveys. Both reasons are embedded deep in the company's business model, which places the highest priority on the personal touch.

First, there is the typical Edward Jones office. Unlike the big brokerages, these almost always consist of one Edward Jones financial adviser/broker and one branch office administrator. Part of the importance of the office manager is that he or she handles most of the bushels of paperwork today's financial folks are obligated to fill out.

Among other virtues, this enables the financial advisers to get out of the office. This literally means pounding the pavement. Edward Jones offices are distributed geographically, and advisers often go door-to-door to solicit new business, as well as meet with clients. Conversely, the office-in-your-neighborhood model allows convenient access to advisers for clients and prospects.

"We feel that we're making an impersonal world more personal," says Denver-based financial adviser and regional leader Dan Large (who, as regional leader, has not one but two branch office administrators in his office).

The second award-winning part of the Edward Jones model is internal. One potential flaw of the Edward Jones office model is that it could tend to isolate advisers from their colleagues--and in a fast-moving industry, this could be deadly. Edward Jones strives to minimize this possibility by bringing advisers and staff together in frequent meetings that often double as rewards for a job well done.

Large, for instance, sat down for this interview just after a four-day confab in Steamboat Springs that asked about 60 advisers to attend morning meetings, but left afternoons free for themselves and their families. (About 45 spouses and 60 children attended, too.)

"Our summer regionals are a family event. We all put our Blackberries away," Large says. "We do these types of things to get together so that people don't feel isolated." The company also hosts monthly adviser meetings and other gatherings.

Another internal incentive involves rewards for performance. For instance, the company awards financial advisers up to two yearly "diversification trips" to five-star international resorts--not for sales, but for properly diversifying clients' portfolios. In 2007, more than half of all advisers won a diversification trip.

So why work for Edward Jones? "You're going to run your own office and you're going to be your own boss," Large says. "Ted Jones was a pretty smart guy. He knew people would work harder if they were working for themselves. For the right person, this is the greatest thing in the world."

2007 RANK: No. 2

--David Lewis

2 BEST COMPANY WINNER

Pinnacol Assurence

Pinnacol Assurance was a financial mess not too many years ago, with a disaffected work force to boot. Today the nonprofit is a stirring fiscal success story and a sterling example of enlightened employee policy. The two are not unrelated.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

Pinnacol is what used to be the Colorado workers' compensation company. It still is, technically, but it's more complex than that. While Pinnacol derives from state statutes, like other mutual insurance firms the company effectively is owned by its policyholders.

They must be a happy group: While Pinnacol suffered a $500 million deficit in 1990, since 2005 its turnaround has enabled it to return $227 million to customers. This year, Pinnacol distributed $55 million in dividends to 58,000 customers, namely Colorado businesses. Meanwhile, the company has dropped premiums 25 percent the past two years.

Meantime, employees get to work for a business that offers scads of exemplary benefits, and keeps coming up with new ones, such as an expanded telecommuting program.

Another example is the monthly "Coffee Talk with Ken" program, Ken being president and CEO Ken Ross.

"Coffee Talk with Ken" has two benefits: It allows staff to shoot questions at the CEO while eating a catered breakfast or lunch, and it can lead to further bennies.

For instance, Pinnacol formerly neglected to match employees' 401 (k) contributions. But it only took two Coffee Talk questions from concerned workers before Ross gathered his staff and changed...