Edward Jones and infinity systems engineering rate the best among 40 finalists judged for having great workplaces in the state.

• Author: Cote, Mike
• Position: '08 BEST COMPANIES to Work For in Colorado - Editorial - Company rankings

It's that time of year again when the editors of ColoradoBiz go green. We're not talking about that overused buzzword for sustainable business practices. We're talking a much deeper green.

Envy.

For the third year, ColoradoBiz has joined with the Colorado State Council of the Society of Human Resource Management and Jobing.com, an online employment advertising service, to produce a list of the best companies to work for in the state.

Sure, we have it pretty darn good here at WienerMedia, the privately held parent company of ColoradoBiz. For the second year in a row, our company picnic included the announcement of summer hours on Friday--which means the place clears out after 2 p.m. We have good benefits, flexible hours and comfortable working conditions. (Just don't mention the office Olympics to our CEO; Dan Wiesner is still driving an electric cart around the office, thanks to a volleyball-induced injury to his Achilles tendon.)

But, um, where's our fully stocked kitchen with all the free food we want? At Crestone Capitol Advisors in Boulder, you can even make a request for your favorite food or beverage, and it'll be in the next week's grocery package. I'd like some Haagen-Dazs to go with my Starbucks, please.

How about a link on our desktop to regularly updated financial information about the company? Buffalo Supply in Lafayette lets employees tap into that to see how they're meeting financial goals--and employees share the profits through bonuses of up to $1,500 a month. (Yearly bonuses last year averaged 39 percent of salary for non-executive employees.)

In other words, folks, if your employee incentives include little more than a pat on the back and an employee-of-the-month certificate, you need to ramp it up. Even in this wobbly economy, plenty of Colorado companies realize the key to keeping their workers motivated and successful is spreading a little TLC--and some of the wealth--around the office.

Forty companies made this year's Best Companies ranking and are profiled here. The 15 largest companies have 250 or more employees. The 25 companies in the small-to medium-size category include those with work forces under 250.

To participate in the rankings, companies paid from $575 to $1,165 to sign up with Harrisburg, Pa.-based Best Companies Group Inc., which partners with Modern Think, a workplace-excellence consulting firm.

Employee responses to 65-question surveys account for about 75 percent of the rankings, according to Best...