Textile n Fashion

FORTUNE has announced that Milliken & Company has been ranked #92 on the 11th annual “100 Best Companies to Work For” list. Milliken is the only South Carolina-based company to make the list. Milliken also ranked #31 on the Best MEDIUM-Sized Company list. The full list and related stories appear in the February 4 issue of FORTUNE, available on newsstands January 28 and at www.fortune.com.

Upon notification, Dr. Ashley Allen, president & CEO, stated, “A key component of being a great place to work involves filling that place with great people. Milliken is quite fortunate to have a talented and creative workforce which continues to adjust to a changing world. This is great recognition for the company they helped create.”

Milliken informed associates of the recognition Thursday when Joe Salley, chief operating officer, made the announcement to a group of 250 company leaders at Milliken's Winter Management Conference in Spartanburg, S.C.

"Making FORTUNE's ‘100 Best Companies to Work for’ list for the fourth time is an exceptional way to cap a great year," stated Salley. “If you take into account the hundreds of thousands of companies that exist in the U.S., it is great recognition for our associates to be ranked among the top 100 of the FORTUNE survey.” Immediately after the announcement, Milliken released the news to its workforce of approximately 10,000 associates around the world.

A driving factor for the list this year is that these companies excel in creating jobs. The 100 companies on the 2008 list added 67,000 employees to their payrolls in the past year and employ a total of nearly 1.6 million employees; up 16% from the number employed by companies comprising last year’s list.

To pick the “100 Best Companies to Work for”, FORTUNE works with Robert Levering and Milton Moskowitz of the Great Place to Work Institute to conduct the most extensive employee survey in corporate America. Of some 1,500 firms that were contacted, 406 companies participated in this year’s survey. Nearly 100,000 employees at those companies responded to a 57-question survey created by the Great Place to Work Institute, a global research and consulting firm with offices in 30 countries. Most of the company’s score (two-thirds) is based on the results of the survey, which is sent to a minimum of 400 randomly selected employees from each company. The survey asks questions related to their attitudes about the management’s credibility, job satisfaction and camaraderie. The other third of the scoring is based on the company’s responses to the Institute’s Culture Audit, which includes detailed questions about pay and benefit programs and a series of open-ended questions about hiring practices, methods of internal communications, training, recognition programs and diversity efforts, etc. After evaluations are completed, if news about a company comes to light that may significantly damage employees’ faith in management, that company may be excluded from the list.

Courtesy: Milliken & Company, USA