Best companies to work for in Colorado 2006: financial-services firm Edward Jones and Texas-based WR starkey mortgage rate the best among 25 finalists judged exemplary workplaces in the state.

• Author: Schwab, Robert
• Position: Cover story

Scott Cawood was a principal in The Great Places to Work Institute, the company that teamed up with Fortune magazine several years ago to create what is becoming a new industry in America: rating company workplaces around the U.S. as the best places for employees to work. Almost three years ago, Cawood left the institute and spun off a new company, Modern Think, with offices in New York, Washington D.C., and Wilmington, Del., to essentially do the same thing for smaller firms than are listed by Fortune, but also to advise those smaller firms on how to make money at putting their company in the ranks of "The Best Companies."

This year, for the first time, 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. Twenty-five firms made the list of finalists and are profiled here.

But only two, Edward Jones, the national financial-services company with 300 offices in Colorado, and WR Starkey Mortgage Inc., a Texas-based firm with just two Colorado offices, were named by Cawood's Modern Think as the No. 1 best workplaces in Colorado: Edward Jones in the large-employer category, with more than 200 employees; Starkey in the small-to-medium employer category, with anywhere from 25 to 199 employees.

In order for a Colorado competition to be recognized in what is essentially a paid-for counseling service for the firms, more companies than these 25 finalists had to sign up with Harrisburg, Pa.-based Best Companies Group Inc., which partners with Modern Think to provide the service. Companies paid a fee of from $575 to $1,145 for the third-party employee survey and "infrastructure and practices inventory" conducted by Cawood's Modern Think.

Each company is also coached in the results of the research by Modern Think, because, as Cawood said, the survey and inventory of the firm "does a really great job of picking up when leadership teams are getting along and functioning or whether they're off track and not functioning."

The Colorado State Counsel of SHRM, along with JOBing.Com and ColoradoBiz, will name all the finalists in the two categories at a "Best Companies to Work for in Colorado" awards luncheon and workshop event Aug. 3 from 8:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. at the Westin Westminster off Highway 36 in north metro Denver. The awards lunch will be held from 11:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m.

Best LARGE Company 2006

EDWARD JONES

Leave it to Geoff Leopold to trumpet the merits of Edward Jones, the largest financial-services firm in the country with nearly 9,000 U.S. offices--and the inaugural winner of the ColoradoBiz "Best Company to Work for in Colorado" among large firms.

Leopold joined Edward Jones straight out of college in 1994 and has been a broker or "investment representative" at his own branch office in Broomfield--one of about 300 Edward Jones offices in Colorado--ever since.

"Edward Jones is a partnership," says Leopold, 33, who grew up in Thornton. "The employees own the firm, so we're not publicly traded. That was very appealing. The structure and the philosophy of Edward Jones really allows me the freedom to do what I believe is in the best interest of my clients. That's kind of at the heart of Edward Jones--the ability to have a one-person office where you have the freedom and the autonomy to build the business the way that I want. I like going out and meeting people face-to-face. We certainly encourage that as a firm: that our investment representatives go out and meet with individuals within the community and help them identify what their financial goals are and then help them develop a plan to meet their needs."

Emphasizing professional development, Edward Jones offers its investment representatives opportunities such as firm-paid executive MBAs and a flex-time policy that allows employees to set schedules to maximize a life-work balance.

The first hint that Edward Jones might be a great place to work occurred to Leopold when he was interviewing for a position--with a rival financial-services firm.

"The manager there asked me what I was looking for in a career opportunity in this industry," Leopold recalls. "I told him I wanted to work for an ethical company, to have the freedom to build the business the way I wanted, to have autonomy, yet have support from the back office to make sure my clients' needs were taken care of. I wanted to make sure I never had to sell any proprietary products; I didn't want to be told what I had to offer to a client, and I wanted to be able to be my own boss.

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"And right about that time he said, 'We can go ahead and stop this interview right now, because this is not the firm you want to work for, but'--and he turned around, reached into his Rolodex and pulled out a card. And he said, 'Edward Jones is the company you want to work for.' That's how I first found out about Edward Jones."

In addition to advising about 500 clients, Leopold is also a "regional leader" in charge of training for Edward Jones' 65 investment representatives in northern Colorado offices and roughly 90 employees. This role allows him to encourage the same kind of mentoring he found when he joined the firm. "We are colleagues, we're not competitors at Edward Jones," Leopold says. "We help each other out. Investment representatives in my region get together at least once a month and share ideas. We have a mentor program in which investment representatives give of their time voluntarily and help train a newer person because someone else did it for them."

That's how it was 12 years ago when Leopold joined the firm and found a mentor in Ron Scariano, a veteran investment representative in Billings, Mont. "He would fly down one week a month, and he did this my first 18 months in the business," Leopold says of Scariano, who is still with Edward Jones today. "He had a significant business at that point, yet he was willing to give up that time to come down and help us. Because Ron and people like Ron have had an influence on my business, that's why I do what I do and give back. This is just part of the culture we have here at Edward Jones."

Best SMALLCompany 2006

WR STARKEY MORTGAGE LLP

Bill Starkey, founder and majority owner of WR Starkey Mortgage, went back to Texas where he was born to start his company, but the graduate of Colorado's Overland High School in Aurora quickly opened a Colorado office in 1999, and Starkey Mortgage has grown exponentially in both states ever since. Scott Cawood, president of Modern Think, the New York business consultant that developed the survey techniques used to choose "The Best Companies to Work For in Colorado," said great weight is given in the process to "how do they (a company) view people as part of their business: Are they just kind of looked at as expenses, or are they looked at as real contributors to profit and growth?"

Lisa Reiersgaard, branch manager of the two Colorado offices of Starkey that were considered by the "Best Companies" Colorado survey, when asked what about Starkey earned the firm its No. 1 rank on the list of finalists, said, "We feel our biggest attribute is people. Our biggest contributor to our service and our market is all about people, and our employees are equally as important as our customers."

That's the primary focus of Starkey portrayed from the company's Plano (Dallas-area) headquarters where Starkey and another Coloradan, CEO John Apsinwall, run the company, which posts annual revenues of $56 million. Although the Colorado offices--one on Colorado Boulevard in Denver and a second in the Denver Tech Center on South Quebec--have only 37 employees, the larger company has a total 275, and it describes its approach to employees in a way that is bound to have gained...