18
Best Places to Work
SF BUSINESS TIMES | April 20-26, 2012
sanfranciscobusinesstimes.com
Smallest companies (25 to 50 employees)
Akraya cooks up team spirit with plenty of services
By Jessica Lyons Hardcastle
Silicon Valley / San Jose Business Journal
Contributor
A
18
Akraya Inc.
Dino Vournas photos
kraya Inc. CEO Amar Panchal
makes a mean pancake. And,
even better, he regularly cooks
them for all of the Sunnyvale IT
consulting and recruiting company’s
employees.
Panchal first served up in-office pancakes and waffles about a year ago; now
it’s a monthly event with different teams
of employees trying to outdo the previous month’s chefs.
“It’s a competition,” said Tanya Taneja,
director of operations. “It’s not just about
the food, but the whole presentation, the
menu. You start off Friday morning with
such positive energy, and when you see
the CEO making waffles for the company,
it doesn’t get any better than that.”
No better than that — unless you count
the free gym membership for employees’ and their spouses, complementary housecleaning, fresh produce delivered weekly, a one-week sabbatical plus
$5,000 given at employees’ five-year
work anniversaries, monthly weekend
getaways for top-performing sales staff
and recruiters, and a Christmas shopping
trip to the mall with $100 to spend in an
hour each December, just to name some
of the benefits that come with working at
Akraya.
“We have lots of celebrations at different levels, as small as the CEO buying
you ice cream for an individual achievement to taking a dream vacation on your
five-year sabbatical,” Taneja said. She’s
been with Akraya for nine years and
was the company’s first employee when
Panchal founded it in 2002.
“I hire people who want to work independently and are capable of being suc-
Rank: No. 1, Smallest companies.
CEO: Amar Panchal.
HQ: Sunnyvale.
Bay Area employees: 27.
Score: 99.86.
CEO Amar Panchal (above) cooks for the crew at Akraya’s Sunnyvale headquarters.
cessful without being driven by others,”
Panchal said. “Once those people come
on board, I give high-level directions and
get out of the way.”
Open communication and feedback is
important to Panchal, too, which is why
at monthly meetings he shares financials
with employees (Akraya made $40.5 million in revenue in 2011). Also at these
meetings, team members share highlights and any disappointments and can
ask any question they want. Additionally,
Best Places to Work
employees at all levels have a say in hiring decisions.
Besides being a successful business,
Akraya has a responsibility to the community, Panchal said.
“We’re a certified green business,” he
said, adding the staff works to renew the
certification every three years.
Plus, the company has sponsored Race
for Literacy for the past five years. The
annual 5K or 10K walk or run benefits
literacy in India.
“Not only are we a sponsor, we’re active
participants,” Panchal said. And any
employee who improves his or her time
over last year’s by at least 10 percent get
a Pete’s Coffee card from Panchal.
“Doing the right thing for our customers, and our employees, and also doing
the right thing for the community and the
environment,” he said, “that makes us all
feel good about working for Akraya.”
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SF BUSINESS TIMES | AprIL 20-26, 2012
sanfranciscobusinesstimes.com
Smallest companies (25 to 50 employees)
Unlike competition, Cresa encourages cooperation
Cresa
By Renee Frojo
San Francisco Business Times
Rank: No. 2, Smallest companies.
CEO: William Goade.
HQ: Boston.
Bay Area employees: 49.
Score: 97.35.
I
Courtesy of cresa
n an industry driven by internal competition, real
estate advisory firm Cresa is an outlier that thrives
on collaboration and teamwork.
Cresa employees break the mold of the traditional, independent broker by sharing ideas and working
together on multiple projects. They’re also encouraged to
socialize openly and often with colleagues.
“It is a challenge in our industry to find other real
estate brokers who are willing to share information freely,” said Craig Zodikoff, one of the managing principals
at Cresa’s San Francisco office, who joined the company
two years ago. “Here, we’re all looking out for one another … and we communicate obsessively.”
This is partially facilitated by open-room setups in
most of Cresa’s four Bay Area offices located in Oakland,
Palo Alto, San Francisco and San Jose. Without walls or
doors, there are few barriers to communication. And
with everyone in the bullpen, all employees are placed
on equal footing — from junior analysts to senior-level
executives. The few private offices are used only for
meetings or flex workstations for visiting employees from
other Cresa offices.
To further encourage communication, every two weeks
the company hosts “idea-sharing” meetings and provides free lunch. At these meetings employees talk about
their projects, obstacles they’re facing and trends in the
marketplace. Cresa also hosts happy hours every other
Cresa’s Bay Area leaders are managing principals Matt
Elmquist (left), Craig Zodikoff (center) and Scott Stone.
month, occasional off-site dinners and annual retreats.
The model seems to be working, said Tyler Kellog, a
vice president at Cresa San Francisco. With client portfolios ranging from 1,200 square feet locally to 12 million
square feet globally, the firm represents some pretty big
tenants, including DreamWorks, Gap and Genentech. And
it’s still expanding. In January Cresa opened its newest
office, in Oakland.
“We all agree that the sum of our parts is greater than
the individual,” Kellog said.
To keep all those parts happy, Cresa invests in employees by catering to individual interests, Zodikoff said.
Employees can attend conferences to learn a particular
aspect of the industry or get company-sponsored memberships to professional associations.
Erin Bourne, Cresa’s adviser of consulting services,
said flexibility in her schedule and ability to choose projects are the main factors keeping her happy.
“Someone else isn’t controlling what you do,” she said.
“You can pick your projects or work on other people’s.”
Because Cresa employees are engaged in the work
they’re doing, “they always bring the best, newest ideas
forward,” Zodikoff said, which has helped Cresa reach
record high profits over the past four years, even during the recession. “They act with imagination, and our
clients see that.”
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