In the age of AI anxiety, the 100 Best Companies to Work For are betting on their people
- In today’s CEO Daily: Diane Brady breaks down Fortune‘s new list of top employers.
- The big leadership story: The cautionary tale of Allbirds, a one-time direct-to-consumer darling
- The markets: The global rally ends after Trump vows to hit Iran ‘extremely hard’ in coming weeks.
- Plus: All the news and watercooler chat from Fortune.
Good morning. For every CEO who talks about being a servant leader, who recycles tropes like “there’s no I in team,” there comes a moment of reckoning when your people will tell you how they really feel. And few surveys offer a better barometer of corporate leadership and employer excellence than our annual 100 Best Companies to Work For. Now in its 29th year, our partner Great Place to Work gathers confidential responses from more than 640,000 employees at companies with 1,000 or more U.S. staff, ranking employers based on workers’ experiences.
While some tactics are timeless for being an employer of choice, new priorities have emerged among employees facing tectonic technological shifts. We all know that, while money matters, companies can’t buy their way into people’s hearts if leaders boast about layoffs or focus on their own gains at the expense of others. The speed and scale of AI is transforming how people think about work. One unifying theme among top companies this year: a commitment to making employees feel supported, trusted, and trained for an AI-enabled future, as my colleague Orianna Rosa Royle points out.
Topping this year’s list is Synchrony Financial (No. 178 on the Fortune 500), a Connecticut-based provider of private-label credit cards that sprung out of GE and retains its historic commitment to leadership development. One priority for CEO Brian Doubles is the importance of leaders listening and then acting on what they learn. “That cycle of feedback and action is what keeps trust high,” he says. Fortune’s Matt Heimer reports that “Flexible Fridays” is a benefit Synchrony’s workforce asked for and received; its earnings have doubled since adopting the policy.
Stalwarts like Wegmans, Hilton, Cisco and Marriott International rank high again. So does Delta Air Lines, which also ranks high with customers and is now the country’s most profitable carrier. As CEO Ed Bastian told Alyson Shontell in this week’s Titans vodcast, employees come first. As Bastian put it: “We’re not obsessing on customers, per se, at the leadership levels, because we want to obsess over our own people, so that they can obsess over you as a customer.”
Scanning the list, another commonality I’d add is transparency and trust at the top. The leaders of these companies prioritize being visible, especially in times of volatility. They believe in the importance of leadership and they talk about it, internally and externally. Many of their peers do not. In every great culture I see, people have learned how to connect as human beings. The boss knows their names and respects the value of what they do. When the tough times come, you get the sense that everyone’s in it together.
Contact CEO Daily via Diane Brady at diane.brady@fortune.com
This story was originally featured on Fortune.com