Best large companies to work for.

1 BEST COMPANY WINNER

Edward Jones is a company accustomed to ranking someplace around the top of "best company" and "best customer service" lists.

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One year ago, J.D. Power & Associates ranked Edward Jones first among full-service brokerage firms in investor satisfaction for the third straight year. In another field, Edward Jones this year ranked No. 4 in Fortune magazine's "100 Best Companies to Work For" list.

There are two reasons Edward Jones--with 9,560 U.S. branches, 258 in Colorado--consistently finishes high in these sorts of surveys. Both reasons are embedded deep in the company's business model, which places the highest priority on the personal touch.

First, there is the typical Edward Jones office. Unlike the big brokerages, these almost always consist of one Edward Jones financial adviser/broker and one branch office administrator. Part of the importance of the office manager is that he or she handles most of the bushels of paperwork today's financial folks are obligated to fill out.

Among other virtues, this enables the financial advisers to get out of the office. This literally means pounding the pavement. Edward Jones offices are distributed geographically, and advisers often go door-to-door to solicit new business, as well as meet with clients. Conversely, the office-in-your-neighborhood model allows convenient access to advisers for clients and prospects.

"We feel that we're making an impersonal world more personal," says Denver-based financial adviser and regional leader Dan Large (who, as regional leader, has not one but two branch office administrators in his office).

The second award-winning part of the Edward Jones model is internal. One potential flaw of the Edward Jones office model is that it could tend to isolate advisers from their colleagues--and in a fast-moving industry, this could be deadly. Edward Jones strives to minimize this possibility by bringing advisers and staff together in frequent meetings that often double as rewards for a job well done.

Large, for instance, sat down for this interview just after a four-day confab in Steamboat Springs that asked about 60 advisers to attend morning meetings, but left afternoons free for themselves and their families. (About 45 spouses and 60 children attended, too.)

"Our summer regionals are a family event. We all put our Blackberries away," Large says. "We do these types of things to get together so that people don't feel isolated." The company also hosts monthly adviser meetings and other gatherings.

Another internal incentive involves rewards for performance. For instance, the company awards financial advisers up to two yearly "diversification trips" to five-star international resorts--not for sales, but for properly diversifying clients' portfolios. In 2007, more than half of all advisers won a diversification trip.

So why work for Edward Jones? "You're going to run your own office and you're going to be your own boss," Large says. "Ted Jones was a pretty smart guy. He knew people would work harder if they were working for themselves. For the right person, this is the greatest thing in the world."

2007 RANK: No. 2

--David Lewis

2 BEST COMPANY WINNER

Pinnacol Assurence

Pinnacol Assurance was a financial mess not too many years ago, with a disaffected work force to boot. Today the nonprofit is a stirring fiscal success story and a sterling example of enlightened employee policy. The two are not unrelated.

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Pinnacol is what used to be the Colorado workers' compensation company. It still is, technically, but it's more complex than that. While Pinnacol derives from state statutes, like other mutual insurance firms the company effectively is owned by its policyholders.

They must be a happy group: While Pinnacol suffered a $500 million deficit in 1990, since 2005 its turnaround has enabled it to return $227 million to customers. This year, Pinnacol distributed $55 million in dividends to 58,000 customers, namely Colorado businesses. Meanwhile, the company has dropped premiums 25 percent the past two years.

Meantime, employees get to work for a business that offers scads of exemplary benefits, and keeps coming up with new ones, such as an expanded telecommuting program.

Another example is the monthly "Coffee Talk with Ken" program, Ken being president and CEO Ken Ross.

"Coffee Talk with Ken" has two benefits: It allows staff to shoot questions at the CEO while eating a catered breakfast or lunch, and it can lead to further bennies.

For instance, Pinnacol formerly neglected to match employees' 401 (k) contributions. But it only took two Coffee Talk questions from concerned workers before Ross gathered his staff and changed that tack.

"Once we did that, my e-mail was flooded," Ross says. "We have 600 people in this building, and I must have gotten about 75 thank-you notes."

It's part of a corporate culture that says, "If you're happy at home with your family, and your family is happy with you in your work environment, that directly impacts your production, your efficiency and your output," Ross says.

Pinnacol staff gets lots of other impressive give-backs, one of which has had a profound impact on Ross himself. The company offers $4,000 to employees who adopt. Ross and his wife last November adopted a Longmont boy, now 7 months old. "He's a sweet little guy," Ross says.

NEW TO LIST

--David Lewis

3 BEST COMPANY WINNER

AlloSource

When you're a nonprofit dedicated to saving and restoring human lives, it's natural that the employees who make it happen would feel good about what they do. But AlloSource works at employee-satisfaction, too.

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Based in Centennial where it has 254 employees, AlloSource provides skin, bone and soft-tissue grafts for use in surgical procedures. It is the world's leading supplier of fresh cartilage tissue used for joint repair and skin allografts to heal severe burns.

"We have a very strong mission, which helps lay the foundation for everything else we do," says AlloSource President and CEO Thomas Cycyota. "Because we are a nonprofit and because we deal with donated human tissue, we hire people who right off the bat understand that we're a mission-driven organization, and that drives a lot of our success as far as it relates to getting good, satisfied employees."

Among the company's offerings: a flex-time alternative that allows for four-day, 10-hour work weeks, a generous retirement plan and PTO (paid time off) policy as well as medical and dental benefits. Plus picnics, barbecues and other get-togethers to encourage employee interaction.

In his eight years with AlloSource, Cycyota has seen the company grow from 80 employees in the Denver area to its current 254 in Centennial, and from 120 employees companywide to 400 (its other primary locations are Salt Lake City and Cincinnati.)

AlloSource was a finalist in the Best Companies small-medium category last year for firms with fewer than 250 employees. Cycyota agrees that maintaining the desired workplace culture becomes more of a challenge as the size of a work force grows.

"The challenges when you're a 400-person company with locations across the country are different than when you're an 80-to 90-person company with most everybody based here in Denver," Cycyota says. "We actually have set up a couple committees... we don't call them the 'fun committees,' but that's what they are. New employees as well as more tenured employees look at different things we can do to create or maintain the atmosphere that we have."

A third-place showing this year among large-company finalists indicates AlloSource's efforts have paid off.

"I've been in business a long time," Cycyota says. "Winning this award last year and then again this year is one of the highlights of my career. Business success is one thing, but cultural success and having folks who kind of vote you in for this ... it's a big deal."

2007 RANK: No. 17 (SMALL-MEDIUM CATEGORY)

--Mike Taylor

4 Mercury Payment Systems

Based in Durango where it is one of the largest private employers in town, Mercury Payment Systems provides point-of-sale solutions for retailers and merchants, including credit, debit, check, gift card and loyalty processing.

Led by Marc Katz, this magazine's small-business CEO of the Year in 2006, Mercury has grown rapidly since its founding in 2001. Two persistent challenges are Durango's high cost of living and its relative remoteness, making it all the more critical for company leaders to create an environment that workers enjoy. Last year the company had 800 job applicants and hired 134.

The company's 252 current employees are invited to provide feedback at regularly held "Townhall Meetings" as well as bi-weekly lunches called "Departmental 101s" where they meet with executive team members.

Mercury's highest honor, the "Award of Excellence" is bestowed quarterly by the company's "Culture Club" committee to the employee who exhibits outstanding performance and service, demonstrates the company's core values and does whatever it takes to help Mercury succeed. The award comes with a $500 prize.

NEW TO LIST

5 Alpine Bank

Based in Glenwood Springs, Alpine Bank has been a part of the Western Slope since its founding in 1973.The bank currently serve nearly 100,000 customers at 37 locations.