Goldman Sachs being the Best Big Company to Work For is surely a no-brainer. Rumours abound about the hugely successful investment bank. It’s the place where everyone earns squillion pound bonuses and the offices are made of solid gold, isn’t it? Of course its employees are going to be happiest in the land — they are all millionaires! But pay is the factor least associated with how engaged employees feel with their company. And while few Goldman Sachs staff could grumble about their wages — even though they aren’t all millionaires — what keeps them dedicated to the bank is strong leadership, close teamwork, being stretched professionally and the buzz of working for the leading company in its field.

Among the top 20 big companies Goldman Sachs staff returned the highest positive scores for 34 of the 70 points that make up the employee survey. These include having pride in working for the firm (88%), happiness with pay and benefits (76%), having a job that is good for personal growth (84%), having confidence in the leadership skills of senior management (83%) and confidence in the abilities of teammates (84%) — all five scores are comfortably ahead of any other big business in our survey.

Co-chief executive Michael Sherwood — known as Woody at the firm and joint winner of our Leadership award with Richard Gnodde — knows that recruiting the best talent is at the heart of the firm’s success. “We’re not in the gold-mining business where we have to go out and find gold mines. Our gold mines are our people,” he says.

The company likes “home-grown” employees recruited straight out of university and into the Goldman culture, though so-called “lateral hires” — or those brought in at a more senior level — have also played a big part in the firm’s significant growth since going public in 1999. The company favours team players rather than sole trading stars. Managing director James Garvey explains his approach: “What I try to look for is ambition away from pure selfish greed. And it’s quite a difficult thing to do. Success and teamwork is what Goldmans is all about.”

Staff think the firm is run on strong values (86% and another top score), and that Sherwood runs it based on sound moral principles (78%). “There’s a very strong culture of morals, ethics, doing the right thing, being responsible,” he says.

The company shares some of its wealth in financial and man-hour terms via a community teamworks programme, with Sherwood himself leading by example: “The day I became CEO of Goldman Sachs, I was digging up flowerbeds at an old people’s home in Hendon,” he says.

Staff get an eye-wateringly good range of benefits, not least a final salary pension — which there are no plans to close — an on-site crãche for which all employees have 20 days’ credit a year per child, and an on-site medical centre that would put most Bupa clinics to shame.

And they don’t even have to remember to bring in their sports kit to the on-site gym; shorts and T-shirts are provided and laundered for their convenience, as are stacks of fluffy white towels. The gym even has a climbing wall — appropriate for a company so used to hitting the heights.

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