Top midsize and small company winners go the extra mile for workers

So when do you think your boss will take you on an all-expenses-paid trip to a tropical resort in Mexico?

When hell freezes over, perhaps?

The employees of Power Home Remodeling Group dont have to wait for a polar vortex to sweep through Hades. Each December for the past five years, Power has invited all its 1,350 employees and a guest to spend four days at a resort in Cancun, Mexico.

Power earned first place for medium-sized businesses this year in Philly.coms annual Top Workplaces awards, based on employee surveys conducted by Workplace Dynamics, of Exton. Medical Solutions Supplier was named the top small-sized business.

The two companies are in completely different industries. Chester-based Power is an exterior home remodeler selling windows, siding, roofing and doors. Glen Mills-based Medical Solutions Supplier provides pneumatic compression pump therapy to treat chronic wounds, lymphedema, venous disease and arterial disease.

What they have in common is that they view their employees as an extended family. Its a word a lot of organizations like to toss around. But when it comes up over and over in conversations with everyone from top managers to rank-and-file employees, youve got to think there is something to it.

Hiring the right people is the key to creating the culture the companies want: supportive, collaborative, with innovative ideas often originating with front-line employees.

No one knows better how to do a job than the people doing it, said Joe Carberry, executive team leader of Medical Solutions Supplier.

Steve Kantor, who founded Medical Solutions Supplier in 1994, said he was always told to avoid hiring family and friends. Kantor has an opinion on that: The sanitized version is, Bull.

Ten years ago, Kantor was golfing with his friend Carberry, 28 years his junior, when on the 15th hole he hired him to build an outside sales force for Medical Solutions Supplier.

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Top midsize and small company winners go the extra mile for workers