Ackerman Security Systems honored by the Atlanta Business Chronicle

Sept. 17, 2012
Company named the eight best place to work in Atlanta

Atlanta-based alarm dealer Ackerman Security Systems was recognized last week by the Atlanta Business Chronicle in the publication’s annual "Best Places to Work" awards as the eighth best place to work in the city.

According to Ackerman President Jim Callahan, more than 650 companies were nominated for this year’s awards, the results of which were based on surveys filled out by employees at their respective organizations. Quantum Workplace, which worked in partnership with the Atlanta Business Chronicle on the awards, used analytical tools to rank top employers based on more than 27,000 of these employee-completed surveys.

"It’s not something you can purchase like advertising or PR. What has to happen is an employee has to nominate the company," explained Callahan.  "From there, 65 percent of company employees have to fill out a survey that is sent by the Atlanta Business Chronicle that they put together… they then take that information from those surveys and crunch those numbers looking for things like worker satisfaction, benefits and all of the various things that make up a work environment."

More than 800 Atlanta business leaders were in attendance for the announcement of the winners last week during an event at the Georgia Aquarium. Callahan said that there was a 35 percent increase in the number of applications for this year’s awards, which place companies into three categories (small, medium and large) based on their size. Ackerman was recognized as a medium-sized employer in the awards.

"We’re pretty excited about this, particularly because it is a true read on how the folks that work here feel," Callahan said. "Now that the announcements have been made, they will be providing us with the results of those surveys so we can see where the employees thought we were doing well. It certainly doesn’t suggest that employees don’t have suggestions or recommendations of things we could do differently, or in their eyes better, so it will be very interesting once we take a look at the results of the surveys to see if that can give us some guidance or direction on things we can do to make the work environment even better."