Alston Construction Co. is the top-rated honoree in the small-company category, for businesses with 25 to 49 employees.
Alston Construction Co. has aimed to be as solid, stable and secure for its employees as its massive industrial structures are for its clients, which have included entities such as Amazon.com Inc. (Nasdaq: AMZN), Hewlett-Packard, Whirlpool Corp. and the federal government.
Founded in 1986 and formerly known as Panattoni Construction, the company employs 48 people out of its Sacramento offices, which remains the company’s second-largest out of its 22 U.S. offices (its largest is in Edison, New Jersey, just outside of New York City) and was Alston’s headquarters before it was moved to Atlanta.
Aided by a U.S. warehouse-building boom during the past few years, Alston’s annual revenue is about $2.5 billion and is growing at about 20% per year. As a result, closely-held Alston was ranked by construction-trade publication Engineering News-Record as the third-largest U.S. distribution and warehouse builder.
Alston pays for as much as 90% of the premiums for its workers’ health insurance, dental and vision care, and provides company-paid life insurance. Other perks include either company-provided vehicles for field-operation employees or car allowances.
Alston typically pays annual bonuses of at least 10% of its workers’ salaries each year, according to Brent Perkins, regional human resources manager based out of the company’s Sacramento office.
“We don’t have something written in stone but I can tell you everyone here since I’ve gotten here has gotten a bonus,” added Perkins, who’s been with the company since early 2019.
Additionally, with such a nationwide presence, Alston offers its workers the opportunity to travel less than what’s typical for construction firms because almost all of the company’s projects are within a two-hour drive of an Alston office. As a result, Alston’s annual employee-turnover rate is less than 10% per year.
“We’re not sending our people across the country,” said Perkins. “In construction, that’s a perk.”
Overseen by CEO Paul Little since 2017, Alston employs about 500 full-time workers (not including subcontractors) across the country, and boasts a history of both promoting from within and encouraging input from all levels of employees. Case in point is Isaac Dye, who started with the company as an intern in 2005 and has since risen to operations manager at the Sacramento office.
Additionally, Alston’s all-hands meetings every quarter give all workers a chance to engage with company leadership.
“When someone comes on board, they know they have a seat at the table, and their opinion matters,” Perkins said. “We’re strength in numbers, as opposed to one or two people calling the shots.”
About Alston Construction
Top executive: Gary Ralls, vice president and general manager
Number of local employees: 45
Headquarters: Atlanta
About Business Journal’s 2022 Best Places to Work
Each year, the Business Journal and its parent company, American City Business Journals, partner with human resources technology company Quantum Workplace to identify local businesses that have excelled at listening to their employees and responding to their feedback.
Source: https://www.bizjournals.com/sacramento/news/2022/10/07/best-places-to-work-alston-construction.html
By Danny King – Contributor