Southern Company No. 2 On Forbes Best Large Employers List

GEORGIA — The Forbes Magazine list of America’s Best Large Employers for 2022 contained many of the Georgia companies you would expect.

On the annual release of 500 companies that include Peach State mainstays like The Home Depot, Coca-Cola and Chick-fil-A, only two Georgia companies cracked the top 50, and of those only utilities giant Southern Company made it into the Top 5.

The COVID-19 pandemic “forever changed the workplace” and what makes a good employer, Forbes said with the release of its annual inventory.

To compile the annual list, released Thursday, the business magazine partnered with the market research firm Statista to survey 60,000 Americans working for businesses with at least 1,000 employees.

Survey respondents were asked about such topics as their willingness to recommend their workplace to friends and family, as well as nominate companies other than their own. The final list represents the 500 employers receiving the most recommendations, Forbes said.

Other Georgia companies that made the top 100 are Delta Air Lines at No. 30, Emory Healthcare at No. 55, and Emory University at No. 59.

Forbes’ Top 10 big employers in the country are:

1. The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (health care, social)
2. Georgia-based Southern Company (utilities)
3. NASA in the District of Columbia (aerospace, defense)
4. Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, New York (health care, social)
5. South Carolina-based Michelin Group (automotive, automotive suppliers)
6. Ohio-based Sherwin-Williams (engineering, manufacturing)
7. Minnesota-based Mayo Clinic (health care, social)
8. Arizona-based Carvana (retail, wholesale)
9. University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center (health care, social)
10. Texas-based MD Anderson Cancer Center (health care, social)

Virginia-based Huntington Ingalls Industries, the largest military shipbuilding company, moved to No. 11 on the list from No. 387, the largest gain of any of the large companies.

Not surprisingly given COVID-19 restrictions, the largest drops were in the restaurant industry, with only 11 companies earning spots on the 2022 large employers list. California-based In-N-Out Burger was the only one to land among the top 200, coming in No. 23.

“We bend over backwards to try to do as many things behind the scenes to continue business as usual,” the franchise owner and president, Lynsi Snyder, told Forbes in November 2020. “It obviously has not looked like business as usual with masks and nearly empty dining rooms.”

U.S. employers are struggling to fill 10.9 million job openings in an environment of 4 percent unemployment.

“Whether working from home or the office, Americans’ priorities have changed,” Forbes said, noting that “what makes a top employer has changed, too.”

Paul McDonald, a senior executive director at Robert Half and a Forbes contributor, said “employees are in control at this point because there’s such a plethora of openings.”

“With the number of job openings today and the choices that good candidates have, you have to move swiftly but diligently,” he told Forbes. “A lot of organizations have realized that, through all the retention efforts and through all the resignations, they’ve had to re-recruit their current staff.”

Forbes said many of the large employers on the list are wrestling with redefining their corporate culture with a largely remote or hybrid workforce where some employees report to the office and others work from home.

In the pre-pandemic era, Genentech, a California-based drug and biotechnology company that ranked 14th on the list, offered on-site benefits such as made-to-order sushi, day care and Friday night parties. Now, the company holds virtual office hours with executives and gives employees two hours of “protected time” when they can take a break or work uninterrupted on projects.