Building Wealth

Marco, which contributed $1.1 million last year to its Employee Stock Ownership Plan (ESOP), was recently named one of the top 25 best small companies to work for in America. The award, which was given by the Great Place To Work Institute, a research and management consultancy based in San Francisco, is no small honor given the rigorous process used to select the best companies. That included a detailed survey sent to the homes of Marco's 190 employees.

Marco CEO Gary Marsden, who co-founded the $40 million business 30 years ago as a typewriter shop, says plainly and simply that the company's success begins and ends with its employees. "We have a real simple philosophy," he said. "You can't have great customer satisfaction unless you have great employee satisfaction." Making sure that employees are satisfied includes giving them a piece of the action, Marsden said. Since the Marco ESOP was implemented in 1989, the company has contributed more than $7 million to the plan. The ESOP was converted to a 100 percent employee-owned plan in 2001.

Marco goes to great lengths to ensure employee and customer satisfaction. The solution provider has surveyed its employees for the past 16 years in a bid to make sure the company is a great place to work. "I can tell you to a T how the employees think and, more importantly, what they want done to make this a great place to work," Marsden said. Likewise, the company measures customer satisfaction each month. "If you can't measure it, you can't manage it," he said. It's worth noting that Marco's business has grown steadily over the past decade with growth of 8 percent to 12 percent in the past several years. The company never fell prey to the dot-com hype or the dot-com blowout. In an age where many technology chief executives are driven more by personal greed than by building wealth for employees and value for customers, the Marco story stands out.

In the end, Marsden said, if you don't take care of employees, then you can't take care of customers. That means measuring and managing both employee and customer satisfaction, he said, to make sure "you're not fooling yourself. It's a fairly simple recipe, and it works."

What do you think of the Marco Magic? Let me know at (781) 839-1221 or via e-mail at [email protected].