The Good Life

Where the best jobs are

Hewlett-Packard, the electronics company, owns a dozen vacation spots for its workers to use, including a country house in Japan, a lakeside resort in Scotland and several ski chalets in the German Alps. Hospital Corp. of America pays its employees to keep fit by giving them bonuses for every mile they jog and every lap they swim. Control Data, the computer manufacturer, and Reader's Digest have community gardens on company grounds where employees can grow their own vegetables. And, yes, there is a free lunch, at least for all workers at the Morgan Bank and Northwestern Mutual Life Insurance.

These are some of the perks and quirks of corporate life discovered by Robert Levering, Milton Moskowitz and

Michael Katz, a team of San Francisco business journalists who set out to find the most contented employees in the U.S. They have published their conclusions in a breezy new book for job hunters called The 100 Best Companies to Work for in America (Addison-Wesley; $17.95).

Levering, Moskowitz and Katz started out with a list of 350 companies that were recommended by executive recruiters, management consultants, business-school teachers and other sources. The authors then visited 114 companies that range in size from Celestial Seasonings, the herbal-tea maker, which has 200 workers, to IBM, the largest computer manufacturer, with 218,000 employees. Besides studying company-benefit brochures and interviewing factory workers and executives, the authors poked around cafeterias and corridors listening for candid comments.

The authors did not rank their 100 best companies, but they did choose a Top Ten. In alphabetical order, they are Bell Laboratories, Trammell Crow, Delta Air Lines, Goldman Sachs, Hallmark Cards, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Northwestern Mutual Life, Pitney Bowes and Time Inc.

Each company is graded on five criteria: pay, benefits, job security, chance to move up and ambience. Goldman Sachs, an investment banker, is one of the best-paying companies. It has a generous profit-sharing plan, and last year gave many employees a year-end bonus of 25% of their salaries. IBM offers such benefits as free physical examinations for those over 35, dental insurance, adoption assistance (up to $1,000) and two country clubs that employees can join for $5 a year. Hewlett-Packard provides free coffee and doughnuts twice a day and sometimes throws informal beer busts in the afternoon during working hours. At Trammell Crow, the real estate developer, partners own a stake in the properties they manage. As a result, some 5% of the company's employees are worth more than a million dollars.

Certain characteristics are common to most of the 100 companies. They tend to promote from within rather than hire outsiders. They try not to lay off employees in hard times. Above all, they make workers feel like part of a family. Nowhere is family spirit stronger than at Delta, which has not laid off anyone for nearly 40 years. In 1982 a retiring Delta pilot took out a full-page ad in both the Atlanta Constitution and the Journal (cost: about $6,400) to declare, "It has been my privilege to work for the finest group of human beings that God has ever created."

The authors admit that their survey is far from infallible. They welcome angry letters from workers who feel that their companies were overrated or overlooked.