Custom «Baird’s Success» Essay Paper Sample

Baird is ranked the 14^th in the list of 100 best companies to work for in 2011. One of the leading providers of financial services and an outstanding investment advisor, Baird is believed to be one of the most promising and desirable places to work. According to Baird (2011), its “employees praise the integrity that prevails here”. However, these claims are too vague to identify the main factors of the company’s strategic and HR success.

What makes Baird so great? To begin with, Baird is an employee-owned company, which motivates employees to work collectively and collaboratively towards common strategic goals (Baird, 2011). Furthermore, the company praises diversity and maintains a culture of excellence. The latter, on the one hand, means that employees have skills, knowledge, and abilities to fulfill their workplace functions and, on the other hand, are motivated to work to the best of their capacity and talent. Baird aims to be the best place to work, and diversity helps to align employee needs and motivations with those of the company, for which they work.

Baird’s success builds on community involvement and active employee support. The company involves its workers in a range of community initiatives: employees volunteer their time and abilities to help non-profit organizations and pay back to the community, in which they live (Baird, 2011). This is how the company encourages employees to discover new talents and use them wisely. This is also how employees can feel valued and appreciated by the company and the community. Simultaneously, Baird offers an extensive list of benefits, to keep employees motivated. It is no wonder that, in these cultural conditions, employees are willing to provide regular inputs in the organization’s performance. Employees provide clients with superior services and first-class financial advice. The company fosters the development of professionalism and treats employees as personalities. These are the elements which create the atmosphere of integrity at Baird, where everyone, from executive managers to employees throughout the organization share genuine concern about clients and show respect toward one another and the values of the company (Baird, 2011).