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SALT LAKE CITY — Ten companies across the Wasatch Front have been ranked on a national list of best workplaces in 2021, including several tech giants in Utah's Silicon Slopes.
The list of over 400 companies comes from Inc. Magazine, which has ranked the country's best places to work for the last six years. In Utah's Silicon Slopes, three companies made the list: Lehi-based Podium, Lehi-based MX and Draper-based Divvy.
The magazine collected data from thousands of submissions and narrowed it down to 429 companies to be recognized this year. Participating companies had employees fill out surveys that covered topics like management effectiveness, perks, and employee growth. Each company's benefits were also audited as part of the process to calculate the company's overall score.
MX, a billion-dollar financial technology company, was specifically a winner in the XLarge category, which included other companies with 500 and more employees.
The onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 brought a new set of challenges to the American workplace as employers scrambled to transition to remote working across many industries and what employees value at work drastically changed as well.
"The definition of a positive workplace has changed drastically over the past year," said Inc. magazine editor-in-chief Scott Omelianuk in a news release. "Stocked fridges and nap pods were no longer perks many companies could rely on once work went remote. So, this year's list is even more important as it reveals organizations that continue to enrich the lives of its employees amid a pandemic."
Divvy, another Utah fintech, recently achieved unicorn status after it was valued at more than $1 billion as a private company.
"We encourage team members to use the product over the long term, not just to identify opportunities to improve it, but to instill a sense of ownership of the product and identification with our clients," reads a blurb from Divvy in the magazine. "We aspire to mirror the diversity of our clients within our own team; this philosophy enabled us to survive 2020 as we relied on team members' wide range of abilities to build for a new reality.
Earlier this month, Divvy was acquired by Bill.com, which is a cloud software-based platform focused on helping businesses manage cash flow.
MX, which made the magazine's ranking last year, also became another Utah unicorn earlier this year with its own valuation of over $1 billion.
"We are proud to once again be recognized by Inc. Magazine for our people, our culture, and the workplace that we are building together. The secret to any exceptional workplace is exceptional people, and that is what we have at MX," said Ryan Caldwell, founder and CEO of MX, in a statement. "While this past year has not been without its challenges, I have been inspired by the way our people have come together to support each other, our customers and partners, strengthening our company and culture in the process."
Podium, which is a software company that provides messaging tools to businesses, said they take employee feedback seriously and implement changes based on what they suggest.
"We've taken the feedback model we use to improve our services and brought it inside the company to improve how we work with our employees," an excerpt on the company's ranking page reads.
Inc. examined several benefits offered by companies, including flexible hours, paid paternity leave, paid maternity leave longer than 8 weeks, unlimited paid time off, and retirement contribution matching — all 10 Utah companies offered these benefits and then some.
Along with the Silicon Slopes software companies, here are the other Utah businesses that made the list for having a great work culture and employee engagement:
- Health Catalyst, a health company in Salt Lake City
- Lendio, a financial services company in Lehi
- Onset Financial, a financial services company in Draper
- Manly Bands, a retail company in Vineyard
- Pura, a retail company in Orem
- Telarus, a telecommunications company in Sandy
- Xyngular, a health company in Lehi
