Workers' paradise: to get and keep good people, Tar Heel companies unwrap some out-of-this-world employee packages.

• Author: Brown, Kathryn
• Position: North Carolina - Cover Story

Tar Heel companies have always competed for business, but now, with the jobless rate so low, they're waging war over workers. Winning means making them an offer they can't refuse.

"You gotta have the basics: good salary, health, dental, vacation and Christmas time, or you won't even get people to come in for interviews," says Dan Cable, a professor at UNC's Kenan-Flagler Business School. But to get - and keep - quality people who are mulling over four or five other offers, you've got to be creative and come up with something the guy up the street doesn't have.

"You can pay people competitively, but you have to do things that go beyond pay," says Kelly Mollica, a professor at Wake Forest University's Babcock Graduate School of Management. Says Cable: "It's now more about freedom, freedom for flexible schedules, to work at home sometimes, to bring your pet to work if you want to."

Ah, freedom and flexibility, the favorite buzzwords of human-resource types these days. Welcome to the New Age workplace, where employees are not employees but "associates" or "human capital." This is the era of the kinder, gentler corporation - at least until the next recession.

There is more at work here than supply-and-demand market dynamics. Companies are undergoing, as Cable calls it, "human-resource sophistication." It's not that they've suddenly become enlightened to their workers' plight. Simply, they have learned that it makes good business sense to keep workers happy - and productive. "The whole playing field has changed," says Roger Herman, a Greensboro management consultant who co-wrote Lean & Meaningful: A New Culture for Corporate America. "Younger workers don't care where they work. If they don't get what they want with their company, they leave."

Not all companies have caught on. "A lot of employers think people will stay forever," Herman says. "They used to say, 'I've got this whole line of people waiting to work.' They're treating employees with that same command and control management style. Employees today don't respond to that, so companies are having to change their style."

So what makes a good place to work? There are many factors - salary, health insurance, retirement plans, job security, training, advancement opportunities, work atmosphere, family-friendly policies. Using those as guides, BUSINESS NORTH CAROLINA came up with a list of the five best Tar Heel companies to work for - at least among the biggest based here. It's a diverse group - drug maker, software maker, engineering company, bank and utility. What they have in common is that they all go beyond the basics with lavish benefits, unique perks or lively work environments. (One even has a VP of fun.) There's a culture of camaraderie and a consideration for what matters to the people who work there.

Want to work three days a week instead of five? Ask your supervisor at BankAmerica Corp. to get you on a flex schedule. Feel like having lunch with your toddler? Pick him up at SAS Institute Inc.'s child-care center, then stroll over to the company cafe. Want to get those endorphins flowing before work? Duck into one of Glaxo Wellcome Inc.'s five fitness centers. Worried about saving enough for retirement? Defer 4% of your pay to the 401(k) at Kimley-Horn and Associates Inc., and the company will kick in 11%. Afraid to walk to your car after work? Catch Carolina Power & Light Co.'s parking-lot shuttle, which runs until 10 p.m.

As a group, the Fab Five pay 87% of employees' health-care premiums, and their retirement and profit-sharing plans are generous. Some give gobs of time off. Some give big bonuses. Some give massages - really. You can get a...