Companies boost morale post-Katrina - New Orleans City Business

4 2005 Best Places to Work
Companies boost morale post-Katrina
By Tommy Santora, Associate Editor
WHEN THE CITYBUSINESS editorial staff returned to the drawing
board post-Katrina to decide how to relaunch our special projects, the
annual Best Places to Work rating needed updating.
What constituted an employee-friendly, Best Place to Work before Katrina
could have become a completely different workplace post-Katrina.
In years past, CityBusiness ranked the Top 20 Best Places to Work on
total employee satisfaction, tallying a company’s score out of 100 points,
based on 10 questions asked to random employees and weighing their
responses on a 1 to 10 scale.
While our “morale index” has been an effective means in the past, we
added a new twist to rank this year’s class: To what degree did employers
step up during and after Katrina to help their employees?
The final rankings compiled by the CityBusiness editorial staff analyzed
applications companies sent in and combined the traditional “morale index”
with the employee services companies provided during and after Katrina.
We asked each company to send us Hurricane Katrina stories. We were
utterly impressed by the many stories of employers reaching out to workers
in a time they needed help the most.
They were stories of companies sheltering employees, their families, children
and pets during Katrina, followed by providing housing for their
employees after Katrina through Federal Emergency Management Agency
trailers, purchased and rented houses and condominiums, and paying living
expenses for elongated hotel stays.
All top companies continued to pay displaced employees who struggled
to return to work immediately after the storm and were in great need of
financial support. Hurricane disaster relief funds were also instituted and
several top employers raised $1 million. Additional compensation was given
in the form of cash grants days after Katrina and bonuses to employees who
returned to work quickly.
Some companies supplied clothing and housing, as well as free garage
sales with merchandise spread out for the taking for employees in need.
The common theme for all of our Top 20 companies was finding ways
to rebuild businesses post-Katrina, by taking care of their most important
asset — their employees. “Treat them like family” was no cliché during the
most trying times this city has ever seen and the biggest hurdle this city has
ever endured.
Congratulations to the Top 20 Best Places to Work companies in 2005.•