What Makes a Company a Great Place to Work?

Here at Vault, we've long been aware that, when it comes to choosing a place to work, money isn't the most important factor: firm culture is.*

(The reason we know this: our annual surveys of employees at leading professional services firms around the world.)

That raises an obvious question: if firm culture is so important to employees, what makes a great culture?

To answer that question, we went back to the results of our 2011 Consulting Industry Survey, and singled out the responses from people who <i>love</i> their current workplaces—those who gave their firm 10 out of 10 for "firm culture." What follows are the combined results of what they had to say about the culture. (Click here for more on the methodology involved .)

So what's the most important factor for a great workplace? Turns out it's the people. As you'll see in the list below, the most commonly-cited terms from satisfied employees when talking about their firm's culture were "teamwork," "social" and "supportive."

Additionally, the fourth option on the list—"intelligent"—was most often cited as a positive attribute in one's co-worker's. 

** Obviously that conclusion has some caveats: it applies to people weighing similar jobs within a discrete industry such as consulting, rather than those trying to decide between, say, a career at an investment bank or a non-profit.) Return to sentence.

** The full methodology is as follows: we went back to the results of our 2011 Consulting Industry Survey, and singled out the responses from everyone who gave their firm a perfect score—10 out of 10—for "firm culture," and also chose to comment on the culture.

 That gave us 556 answers to examine for clues, of which we randomly  selected 327 for further analysis. We then standardized the  terminology in the responses to make it easier to group them. Return to paragraph.)

More:

Consulting Firm Rankings 2012: Best to Work For: Firm Culture