Mississippi’s most desirable places to work

• Business columnist Phil Hardwick discusses workplace satisfaction while highlighting the Best Employers in Mississippi.

America’s workplaces are changing rapidly due to technology, remote work, COVID, and generational shifts. Companies must adapt to the needs of today’s workforce while also executing their business strategies. According to a recent survey from the Pew Research Center, only about half of U.S. workers say they are extremely or very satisfied with their jobs.

In this column, we examine some of those changes and report on a survey of Mississippi’s most desirable places to work as reported in a national magazine.

Happiness is particularly crucial for younger workers. According to the Randstad Workmonitor, 56% of employees aged 18 to 24 would consider quitting their job if it interfered with their personal life, a significantly higher percentage compared to older generations. Likewise, 40% of Gen Z respondents would prefer not to have a job at all than to have one they don’t enjoy. Millennials and Gen Z tend to prioritize non-career-related goals, while Gen X and Boomers are more focused on their age and life stage as the main drivers of their ambitions. This emphasis on work-life balance and personal fulfillment among younger generations is not surprising.

For over 20 years, the Gallup organization has measured overall employee engagement, defining it as “the involvement and enthusiasm of employees in both their work and workplace.” The current level of engagement in so-called best practice organizations is 70%, while overall, it stands at 30%. Only 18% of survey respondents said they were extremely satisfied with their company as a place to work. When asked whether their supervisor or someone at work seems to care about them as a person, 38% strongly agreed with that statement in 2020, down from 48% only a few years ago.

Attracting and retaining talent is also one of the corporate reputation attributes that management consulting firm Korn Ferry, which has partnered with Fortune since 1997 to select the world’s most admired companies, uses to rank companies. 

Remote work has decreased from its peak during the pandemic but is still three to four times as common as it was in 2019, depending on how broadly one measures it. Approximately half of workers still want the option to work from home to some extent. In early January, a study by LinkedIn on the Global State of Remote and Hybrid Work found that in April 2022, the share of job postings offering remote work reached 20.3%, which was more than double the share in January 2021 and significantly higher than the 3% to 5% estimate for the pre-pandemic period.

So, given that backdrop, what are some of the best places to work? Even more relevant, what are some of the best companies to work for in Mississippi? That second question was answered by Forbes magazine. 

Forbes partnered with market research firm Statista to conduct a survey to find the Best Employers by State. According to the article, they surveyed 70,000 full—or part-time employees across all 50 states and the District of Columbia who work at companies with more than 500 workers nationwide. The survey asked participants if they would recommend their employer to friends and family and to evaluate their employer based on criteria including working conditions, diversity, compensation packages, potential for development, and company image.

Here are the companies with a presence in Mississippi that made the Forbes list: