LEADING THE 'BEST COMPANY' THROUGH THE 'WORST THING'

Cisco is Fortune's Best Company to Work For for the third consecutive year. CEO Chuck Robbins says clear communication is one reason for the top ranking. Cisco aims for honesty and transparency even when delivering tough news, like recent layoffs.

- Susie Gharib

WHAT DOES it take to run the Best Company to Work For? Ask Chuck Robbins, CEO of Cisco Systems, and you will get a pretty standard answer: Communication is key.

"We communicate very honestly, openly, transparently, and authentically," he says. "And we talk to our employees about any of the issues that they want to talk about. [That's] really important today because employees want to work for human beings."

That may sound like a common C-suite spiel, but when Cisco workers reviewed their employer, they too cited communication as one of the tech giant's top traits. An internal platform called Team Space lets individuals and teams collaborate and ask questions of company leaders. An event series called Cisco Check-Ins attracted 59,000 unique employee views across 13 events during the company's last fiscal year. During the check-in sessions, leaders share information about employee relations concerns, and workers give feedback on what's working and what's not.

Those forums, along with Cisco's sustainability efforts, mental health resources, internal hiring, and community outreach, landed the San Francisco-based tech giant that sells networking and telecom hardware at No. 1 on Fortune's Best Companies to Work For list for the third straight year.

"Employees today care deeply about what the organization they work for stands for. They care about our purpose and what we believe in. And our purpose as a company is to power an inclusive future for all," says Robbins.