Bending spoons on the European podium of the Great place to work

Also on the podium of Great Place to Work's European ranking of Best Small & Medium Workplaces is a young but rapidly growing Italian IT company: Bending Spoons, which ranks third. Three Italian companies are among the top 100, with the other two being Alnylam, a biotechnology and pharmaceutical company, ranked 24th, and Skylabs, a digital consulting firm also in the IT sector, ranked 93rd. According to Alessandro Zollo, CEO of Great Place to Work for Italy, three companies is a small number for a country like ours, where there is still much room for improvement: "The ranking," he says, "confirms that Italy is not yet a country where people are listened to, and the European Workforce Study published this year by Great Place to Work itself has demonstrated this. However, even in a national context where listening to and supporting employees is not yet a widespread priority, some Italian companies manage to stand out as virtuous." These companies are breaking the mold of an organizational culture still too tied to control and hierarchy, focusing instead on trust, shared responsibility, and the valorization of people."

Looking at the ranking, composed of the 100 best European companies, representing 21 countries (Austria, Belgium, Cyprus, Denmark, France, Finland, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Iceland, Italy, Luxembourg, Norway, Holland, Poland, Portugal, United Kingdom, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey), certified as Great Place To Work and with a number of employees in the Old Continent between 50 and 499, in the comparison between European countries, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom lead the ranking with 13 organizations each, followed by Spain (12), Germany and Sweden (10), Belgium, France and Norway (7), Cyprus, Denmark, Greece and Portugal (5), Austria (4), Finland, Ireland, Italy (3), Luxembourg and Switzerland (2), Iceland, Poland and Turkey (1). Among the sectors, however, Information Technology dominates (37%), ahead of professional services (15%), other sectors (11%), biotechnology and pharmaceuticals; education and training (6%), financial services and insurance (4%), manufacturing and production (3%), advertising and marketing (3%).

In the top ten, the Swedish IT company Castra AB takes the top spot, followed by Austria's willhaben internet service GmbH & Co KG, and then Italy's Bending Spoons. Completing the top ten are the Dutch, Norwegian, and Swedish company mnemonic (professional services), Austria's comprei Reinraum-Handel-und Schulungs GesmbH (professional services), the Dutch company Blue Bricks (professional services), Portugal's Mind Source (information technology), Denmark's VELA (manufacturing and production), Spain's Redarbor (information technology), and Denmark's Abakion (information technology).