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Just 100 2019: A Deeper Look At Nvidia, Humana, And The Five Other Leaders In Just Behavior – Forbes


Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella.Jamel Toppin for Forbes

In ranking the 2019 Just 100, Forbes and Just Capital analyzed America’s largest publicly-traded companies based on how they performed in seven key areas: worker treatment, customer treatment, product quality, environmental impact, community treatment, job creation and quality of leadership. This number-crunching didn’t only create a top 100 overall; each of these seven categories has, within it, a top 100. Here’s a look at the Just 100 members that cracked the top spot in each of these categories:

#1 in worker treatment: Nvidia

“Our turnover hovers around 5% globally, whereas other tech companies are seeing 8-to-15%,” brags Beau Davidson, the chipmaker’s VP of human resources. Nvidia sets the gold standard in benefits for new and would-be parents (including comprehensive coverage of both adoption and fertility treatment). To make accessing health benefits easier, it has partnered with Crossover Health to build a private clinic less than a mile from headquarters and provides a Stanford run service that helps workers find specialists, research alternative treatments. Recent college graduates get up to $30,000 in student loan repayment, at a rate of $6,000 a year.

 #1 in customer treatment: Intel

As Facebook flounders in attempts to assure users that their personal data is not being misused, other tech companies are getting proactive. In 2018, Intel launched a dedicated subscription center—a portal that allows customers to determine (and adjust if they want) which, if any, of their data can be used for marketing. “Privacy by design is more important than ever before to Intel and its customers, so Intel continues to work on ways to provide its customers with more insight into the privacy features built into its products and services,” says global privacy officer David Hoffman.

#1 in products: Humana

“The healthier our population is, the better the financial results are for us,” says Dr. Roy Beveridge, Humana’s chief medical officer. That’s why the insurer is doing everything from signing elderly patients up for food pantries and Meals on Wheels, to helping them get subsidized housing, to arranging for automatic delivery of their medicines and even home visits by volunteers. It may sound like social work, but Humana’s efforts, which involve participants in Medicare Advantage (the version of Medicare that pays insurers a set fee per senior), are data driven and based on research showing poor nutrition, isolation and other “social determinants of health” are linked to poorer health and higher costs.

#1 in environmental treatment: Microsoft

To cut its environmental impact, the tech giant is experimenting with both futuristic ideas (e.g. natural gas fuel-cell-powered data centers) and old-fashioned ones. In the latter category is the renovated cafeteria at Microsoft’s Redmond WA headquarters, where reusable plates, cups and silverware– and a low-energy, water-efficient dishwasher– have replaced the disposable variety and tea strainers take the place of tea bags. (After some study, Microsoft opted to keep disposable napkins.) Talk about locally sourced: lettuce, spinach and radicchio grow in hydroponic towers in the eatery itself.

#1 in community treatment: Freeport McMoRan

In 2016, the copper giant spent $500 million building water supply and sewage treatment plants near its mine in Arequipa, Peru, a city of 860,000 which had been dumping its raw sewage into a nearby river. In 2016, Freeport tripled milling capacity at its mine there. Bill Cobb, head of business sustainability, candidly describes the sewage plant as a way to capture a “social license to operate” the enlarged mine and notes that the expansion wasn’t stymied by protests–a growing problem for mining projects around the world.

#1 in job creation: Nutanix

Since this cloud provider went public in September 2016, its workforce has grown from 2,000 to 4,400 employees. Founded and headquartered in San Jose, Nutanix now also has operations in Durham, N.C., Seattle, Beijing and Brisbane. (About 40% of its workforce is abroad.)  Nutanix vice president of business operations Rukmini Sivaraman says a diverse pool of workers is critical to expansion of the company, which had $1.2 billion in revenues in the year ended July 31. “We want to grow to $3 billion by 2021 and I think it’s safe to say our hiring will do whatever is needed to make sure we obtain those goals and do it in a thoughtful way,” she says.

#1 in leadership: Xylem

Since Patrick Decker took control of the water technology company in March 2014, shareholders have enjoyed a 16% annualized return, versus 11% for the S&P 500.  Decker credits, in part, the emphasis he places on formal executive development programs as well as management diversity. A quarter of top jobs are already filled by women and Xylem keeps the pipeline full by sponsoring chapters of a women’s network at sites across the company.  “We know that to advance our mission, our senior executives have to lead by example,” Decker says.

Images by Anton Klusener for Forbes.

To see the full 100 and sort by category, click here. And for everything else Just 100-related, visit JustCapital.com



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