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We tallied the scores for 55 different 417-land companies and found 12 that earned points heads and tails above the rest. They are the Best Places to Work in 417-land, and what they have to offer might surprise you.
By Katie Pollock
(page 4 of 14)
 Photo Edward Biamonte Employees at the Girl Scouts Council in Joplin don cookie costumes for special events. |
Third place, 25 or fewer employees
320 points
Kid Stuff
The Girl Scout Council of the Ozark Area in Joplin is the most delicious of all the Best Places to Work in 417-land winners. It’s minty, chocolately, coconutty and crunchy. It’s jam-packed with the organization’s namesake treats. It’s all those things if you visit on the right day, anyway. We went to talk to CEO Ilene Bates about the Girl Scout Council’s win on an afternoon when one room of the office was a Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory of cookie-packaging goodness… and they were giving out samples.They were putting Girl Scout cookies into little bags and fastening them with ribbon, so Bates and Katrina Farmer could throw them out to the crowd the following day, when they were scheduled to join Good Morning Joplin dressed in Girl Scout Cookie outfits. In her office on the other side of the building, Farmer (a.k.a. Tweety to the scouts) is sitting at her desk surrounded on all sides by Tweety Bird dolls and figurines. The room almost glows yellow. “You’re the Tagalong,” she tells Bates, pointing to the cookie costume on a chair across the room.
The company is a 14-person operation that has a hands-on influence when organizing the 3,000 Girl Scouts and 750 adult volunteers in their three-state area. “We’re a small staff, so all of us wear a bazillion hats,” Bates says. “We always have so darn many things going on.” The event planning hats seem to be popular by necessity. Bates rattles off a partial list of projects from the 95 they do in a year: badge workshops, camps and overnights for the girls. For grown-ups, they plan a Cookie Crunch-Off (a contest to eat the most cookies in a short amount of time), a triathlon and more. Bates says the whole staff is committed to the organization’s overarching goal of providing the resources that will ensure troops produce self-sufficient young women with high self-esteem who can be leaders in their communities. And regardless how busy everyone is planning events and thinking about the scouts’ futures, the office remains a kid-friendly one where employees can bring their children if there’s a snow day or other issue. “We don’t mind as long as they are well-behaved and don’t eat a computer,” Bates jokes.
To keep themselves thinking like kids and to keep the office fun, the employees hold themed dress-up days. On the last Friday before Christmas, they all came to work in pajamas (because they were waiting for Santa.) The first time they had a pajama day, Bates says, she thought the staff was playing a joke on her, and she’d be the only one who showed up dressed down. “She wore the most executive-looking pajamas I’ve ever seen,” Katrina says with a laugh. “You have to be a little goofy and creative and fun to be able to relate to and work with girls,” Bates says. “They don’t care how professional we are. They just want to have fun.”
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