A tour of its carefully tended, 300-acre corporate campus leaves little doubt why surveys, year after year, rate the SAS Institute, the world’s largest private software company, among the best places to work, says The New York Times.
There is the subsidised day care and pre-school. There are the four company doctors and the dozen nurses who provide free primary care. The recreational amenities include basketball and racquetball courts, a swimming pool, exercise rooms and 40 miles of running and biking trails. There is a meditation garden, as well as on-site haircuts, manicures, and jewellery repair. Employees are encouraged to work 35-hour weeks.
Academics have studied the company’s benefit-enhanced corporate culture as a model for nurturing creativity and loyalty among engineers and other workers. Six years ago, in a report on 60 Minutes, Morley Safer called working at SAS “the good life”.
But that good life is under threat today as never before.
- Photo credit: World Economic Forum
