Google Has Best Rep in Corporate America
While the anti-Google movement is already in full-swing amongst the nerdarati, it seems that the company is still enjoying its "good guy" reputation with the mainstream. According to a study released on last week, the company has the single best reputation in all of corporate America. (Which is kinda like being named prom king at Zombie High School, but we digress.)
Google has become famous for its perks -- from allowing engineers to spend 20 percent of their work time on side projects, to free, unlimited snack bins full of everything from salted cashews to dried mangoes -- and this probably didn't hurt its case.
"The ratings they get focus on how they treat their employees, their workplace environment," said Robert Fronk, senior vice president at Rochester, New York-based Harris. "They absolutely get tremendous credit for the social responsibility, which for them is also linked with their vision and leadership."
On the other end of the spectrum, unsurprisingly, was nearly the entire U.S. airline industry, which has cut employee salaries while raising ticket prices and tacking on fees for every conceivable perk for consumers. The percentage of respondents whose rating toward the industry was favorable fell to 26 percent from 31 percent last year -- the single the sharpest drop of any of the 11 industries counted in the survey.
Rounding out the top 10, from second to ninth, were health care company Johnson & Johnson, Intel Corp, food companies General Mills Inc and Kraft Foods Inc, Warren Buffet's investment and insurance enterprise Berkshire Hathaway Inc (sweet Web site, by the way), the 3M Co, Coca-Cola Co., and Japanese automaker Honda Motor Co.
Johnson & Johnson? Kraft Foods? Really? Perception is a powerful thing. [Source: Reuters]
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