3 Signs A Company is a Best Place to Work

You’ve spent months considering a career shift, weeks Googling “best company to work for,” days on portfolios and work samples, and hours on video interviews. When the job search is so arduous, and company websites look tiringly similar, aligning your personal career goals with a company that shares your values can feel like a job in and of itself.

So what factors are essential for today’s top talent to consider when searching for the correct position at the right company in the architecture, engineering, and construction (AEC) industries?

To provide leading-edge solutions to our communities’ biggest challenges, firms in the AEC industry have a shared responsibility to advance thought leadership and promote learning and development. At Gannett Fleming, we believe everyone should have access to education and professional development opportunities. By giving our employees and partners in the AEC industry access to continuing education and certifications – live, on-demand, and free of charge – we provide tools and foster a company culture that aids specialized skills development.

We also understand that a career is about more than just a job, and our employees want opportunities to give back. We take a holistic approach to hiring and career development, providing our team with the ability to mentor future leaders through internships, our internal Connected Relationships Mentoring Program, and initiatives like the ACE Mentor Program and science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) programs. Gannett Fleming received the 2021 Private Sector Employer Recognition Award for “its strong presence in the Illinois Section of the American Society of Civil Engineers (IS-ASCE) activities… supporting STEM-related events, and promoting professional career advancement.”

We demonstrate our tagline, Excellence Delivered as Promised, as a trusted advisor to our clients, but just as importantly, as an unyielding supporter of our employees’ career goals.

Making a career plan is unique for everyone, based on a combination of experience, specialized skills, interests, and education. The surge of COVID-19 resulted in stay-at-home orders, creating space for introspection about topics like work satisfaction and flexibility. Finding the best company that pairs specialized career development with a company culture that promotes personal development has become a huge selling point (and even a requirement) for job seekers in the war for talent. Companies recruit in many different ways, touting flextime, hybrid work models, and benefits. Still, the best companies provide prospective employees with options to create the best fit for their long-term growth, and inclusive policies and benefits are vital considerations.

To remain innovative, we prioritize and seek to further a culture that encourages diversity and equity in the AEC industry as a whole, starting within our own (virtual) four walls. We believe there is power in diversity, equity, and inclusion. We create a space for these initiatives and programs outside of Human Resources because it improves our work and empowers professional and personal advancement. Our employee resource groups (ERGS) play a key role in this:

• Connected Women at Gannett Fleming™ fosters professional growth and mentorship to enable women to advance in leadership.
• Future Generations of Gannett Fleming (FuGen) amplifies the voices of recent graduates and early career professionals.
• LGBTQ+ of Gannett Fleming encourages companywide education and awareness initiatives to empower LGBTQ+ members within our community to bring their whole selves to work.
• Military Veterans at Gannett Fleming provides a space for military veterans transitioning to the civilian workforce and a culture that recognizes the skill and value that they bring.

We recognize that each person has different experiences and skills, and there are strengths in those differences. By taking an individualized approach, we can more accurately set goals and measure skills development on a personalized scale. Recognizing strength in our differences is key to attracting the most innovative problem-solvers for the biggest and seemingly most intricate AEC projects. This commitment, paired with our holistic approach to the work we do and the communities we serve, has allowed us to evolve for over a century and continue to innovate into the next century.

Thoughtful building design and environmentally sound solutions are crucial in keeping our communities safe, companies efficient, and the planet ecologically sustainable for future generations. Studies on climate change have expanded discussions around sustainability in the physical sense, while the past year has heightened a need for conversations about resilience in the virtual sense. Stay-at-home orders shifted activities like grocery shopping and birthday parties to laptops and cellphones, expanding vulnerabilities within cybersecurity frameworks. These orders increased opportunities for scams and data breaches, like exposing batches of personally identifiable information on the internet to cyberattacks on critical infrastructure like public transportation systems.

At Gannett Fleming, our teams of highly qualified, passionate specialists across our corporate business groups work together to impact the world through their work. We don’t believe in silos, so we expose our teams to various projects and disciplines. We’ve learned that sharing knowledge to understand best practices is essential in predicting patterns to avoid large-scale catastrophes and affect positive change.

The AEC firm you choose should have a proven track record of addressing industrial, technical, economic, and environmental factors to create innovative solutions within our communities. Projects that solve complex AEC challenges require vast experience, continuing education, and a passion for creating impactful solutions. We believe investing in our employees is crucial because if we enjoy what we do and the people we do it with, it will show in our work quality.

To take your career to the next level, apply to our open positions, and join our talent community!