NO. 3 LARGE COMPANY
11-TIME WINNER
Private agents/brokers firm based in Dallas, with 23 local offices and 1,251 D-FW workers.
When Jim Fite returned from vacation recently to find 40 new agents and employees had joined the staff at Century 21 Judge Fite Co., he wasted no time making them feel welcome. Fite, president and CEO of the Dallas-based agents/brokers firm, mailed each of the new staffers a book he wrote about his late father, Judge B. Fite, who founded the company in 1937. He also included a note personally greeting each of the newcomers and their spouses.
The book and note were ways to highlight the company’s 40-plus-year-old mission statement — “Serve the community, develop people, have fun and achieve profits” — and to introduce the new workers to the family culture established by the CEO’s father. “If you don’t set the stage from the very beginning, you won’t keep the stage throughout their affiliation,” Fite explained.
The company’s culture is “something we’ve built upon for years, and we just keep tweaking it and improving it and tweaking it and improving it,” he added. “We continually make things easier and better for our people.”
The firm’s core values — which include honesty and integrity, world-class service and the discipline to do the best job possible — seem to have struck a chord with the agents and employees. Here’s how some of them expressed it:
- “I love the atmosphere, the people and the support system that’s widely encouraged throughout the office and the company. I love helping others, and here I have all the right tools to help people I care for.”
- “You always feel part of a team where the people care about each other, including the leaders of the company.”
- “I feel valued, respected and heard. Even though I have a lower seniority or experience level, I am still always asked for my opinion, and I know that it matters to the whole company.”
Fite said solving problems quickly, giving to charities through its foundation and mirroring its communities are also important at Century 21 Judge Fite Co., where 36 different languages are spoken. “We’re a diversified group of people who work together as a family and operate like a business,” he said.
It seems that adhering to the culture of its founder has worked for Century 21 Judge Fite Co. After all, the firm has ranked in the top tier of the Top Workplaces large category every year since it first entered the competition in 2012.