TOP WORKPLACES 2015

Surveys help determine the area's best workplaces

1/25/2015

BLADE STAFF

The Blade partnered with Philadelphia-based WorkplaceDynamics, an employee survey firm, to determine the region’s top workplaces. Beginning in July, The Blade ran articles and advertisements encouraging employees in the region to nominate their companies as top workplaces. WorkplaceDynamics then invited those companies, as well as other organizations in the region, to participate in the program. Anyone could nominate a company. The sole requirement was that the organization employs at least 35 people in the Toledo area. The company could be public, private, nonprofit, or governmental. Methodology: How the survey was done

No. 1 Small Employer: U.S. Xpress Logistics

The logistics business may seem comfortably bland, but it can be quite stressful. If truckloads don’t arrive on time, assembly lines can grind to a halt, costing customers thousands upon thousands of dollars and potentially sending ripples through entire industries. In spite of that, U.S. Xpress Logistics has virtually no turnover at its downtown Toledo office, and you’re far more likely to find smiling faces than you are hair pulling.

No. 1 Midsize Employer: Ohioans Home Healthcare

When it comes to providing home health-care services, Josh Adams believes the key to success is two-fold. “Customer satisfaction is first, but employee satisfaction is a close second,” said Mr. Adams, owner and chief executive officer of Ohioans Home Healthcare, a Toledo-based home care agency that provides skilled and unskilled services in 17 counties in Ohio and Michigan. Good home health-care employees care passionately about helping others, Mr. Adams explained. But when that desire to help is stifled, employees become frustrated. That’s why Ohioans does its best to ensure its workers — nurses, nursing aides, therapists, and social workers — can do their best, Mr. Adams said.

No. 1 Large Employer: Perrysburg Exempted Village School District

Perrysburg Exempted Village School District finished atop the large employer category in The Blade’s Top Workplaces competition. The winners are chosen based on an anonymous survey of employees. “We value our staff and what they do and we try to show that, although we can never do a great enough job,” said Thomas Hosler, who has been the district’s superintendent since 2007.

Employees seek sense of meaning, direction at firms big and small

The 2015 Top Workplaces in Toledo show great diversity in size and sector. There’s BP Husky Refining LLC, with more than 650 employees, and U.S. Xpress Logistics, with 37. What common thread winds through these 30 Top Workplaces? It’s not the perks, though there are many great perks represented in the Top 30, such as Hanson Inc., where every day is bring your dog to work day. Our research of employee feedback concludes the common thread is having a healthy organization.