Eight years after first appearing on the Great Place to Work
Institute’s annual list of the 100 Best Companies to Work for in
America, Watsonville-based construction company Graniterock ranked
at 19 on the Institute’s 2005 list of Best Small Companies.
Aromas – Eight years after first appearing on the Great Place to Work Institute’s annual list of the 100 Best Companies to Work for in America, Watsonville-based construction company Graniterock ranked at 19 on the Institute’s 2005 list of Best Small Companies.
Graniterock deals with heavy engineering construction, materials production and retail landscaping supply from the Central Coast to the Bay Area, including a quarry operation in Aromas.
“Graniterock is a great place to work with exceptional programs for career advancement,” said Bruce Nicholson, an employee who has been a concrete mixer driver for more than 20 years.
It was in fact its unique career opportunities program, called the Try-a-Job Program, that helped land Graniterock on the list. Employees can try out another job within the company for one day with pay. Then, workers who want to move up career-wise have an opportunity to put together an individual professional development plan that can include increasing knowledge of computers, materials science or marketing.
The programs are voluntary, but 94 percent of employees take advantage of the opportunity, including many who take English as a second language or Spanish language classes to improve their communication skills.
Though the training programs make the company stand out, employees say the individual attention they get is what they like best.
“Graniterock is very accommodating when we have special requests,” Nicholson said. “When I wanted to help coach softball at Gavilan College, I was given plenty of time and support.”
CEO Bruce Woolpert described himself as “very pleased,” before praising the efforts of the company as a whole. “It’s a real family environment here, I think that’s important.”
Woolpert, who worked at the firm every summer through high school and most of college, inherited the company his grandfather founded after a 10-year stint with Hewlett Packard. He estimates that Graniterock receives about 3,000 applicants a year for a company that currently employs 750 people. About two-thirds of those applicants come on word of mouth alone.
Traditionally, the construction industry has an average voluntary turnover rate of about 24 percent, second only to the retail industry, according to the most recent figures from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. But according to Fortune magazine, Graniterock boasts a voluntary turnover rate of only 4 percent, leaving the uninitiated to wonder what exactly the company’s secret is.
“Bruce looks for self-leaders,” said Keith Severson, the firm’s Marketing Services Manager of almost nine years. “He’s really fostered a self-led company.”
“If you want to work at a place where some boss is handing you work in pieces, we’re not that sort of environment,” said Woolpert.
Graniterock also boasts some more unusual perks, like paid time off for parent-teacher conferences, that garnered its listing as a “Fun Company” on GraduatingEngineer.com, a website designed to help science and technology students find employment upon leaving school.
Established in 1991, the Great Place to Work Institute defines a great workplace as an environment where “employees trust the people they work for, have pride in what they do, and enjoy the people they work with.” These principles are worked into a model, and after a series of surveys and interviews, companies that stack up against it particularly well are placed on the list.
Graniterock’s 750 employees qualified it for the list of medium-sized companies, businesses which have 251 – 999 employees. The Institute analyzed anonymous survey responses from employees, compared the results to other leading firms and then reviewed human resource practices to come up with their rankings.
Nominations for the “Best Small and Medium Companies in America” can be made at the Institute’s website, www.greatplacetowork.com. If you would like to see a company nominated for 2006, submissions must be in by August 15, 2005.
