Construction firm Davis Langdon isn’t just good at building award-winning developments. It also knows how to create a happy, motivated workforce.

The firm scores an 85% positive rating for being a place that employees would recommend to others and they would not want to leave if they were offered another job (81%).

It is scores such as these from its 1,425 staff that have pushed the business more than 50 places up the rankings this year into the top 30 Best Companies To Work For.

Recently voted top international cost consultant in the Building Design/World Architecture poll for the 14th successive year, the firm, which last year made pretax profits of £30m, knows its success comes from the hard work of its people.

Incentives aren’t hard to find. The independent partnership, owned wholly by its members, used some of its generous £970,000 fun budget to pay for trips to New York and Monte Carlo last year, and salaries are good too. Project surveyors earn just over £40,000 and the latest pay review in April saw staff get an average 6% pay increase, while the average bonus was 5% of salary.

And the perks don’t end there. Benefits include free private healthcare for staff, childcare vouchers, an employee assistance programme, which is being enhanced to include health assessments and preemptive support, as well as a contributory pension scheme to which the company adds between 5% and 9% of an employee’s salary.

In a bid to balance their job and home life, staff can work from home or on reduced hours and a large number of employees have laptop computers so they can work off-site.

Innovation, integrity and collaboration are key to the firm’s success, as is developing the talents of its staff. The company rewards outstanding performance with awards and its internal leadership development programme aims to draw out the full potential of employees at its 19 UK sites. Staff feel their job is good for their own personal growth (83%), are excited about where the organisation is going (82%) and feel the firm really tries to help them (83%). More than 150 people like it so much they have worked for the company for more than 15 years.

Good leadership is usually found at the heart of a successful company and that’s the case here. Staff have a great deal of faith in senior partner Rob Smith, who heads the UK organisation (80%) and are confident in the leadership skills of the senior management team (82%).

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