Emphasizing employee retention through various programs helps remodelers among the 101 Best keep employees longer.

You don’t have to be big to be "Best."

The majority of the remodeling companies among the 101 Best provide a varied bundle of employee benefits. Forty-four percent offered four or five of the benefits above; 10 companies offered six or seven.

Most of the remodeling firms among the 101 Best do a lot with a few, which means a lot of multi-tasking and shared responsibility. But the companies do not forgo clearly defined, written job descriptions.

Offering paid vacation time to office and field employees keeps with the "family-first" mission of many of the 101 Best.

The range in company age suggests you can provide an excellent environment for employee satisfaction from day one ... but a little experience doesn't hurt.

When it comes to employee health care, there is a lot of disparity among the remodeling companies on the 101 Best list. Differences exist regarding what they pay for (premiums versus actual health-care expenses), how they pay (offering a monthly cash allowance rather than cover an overall percentage of costs) and whom they cover. Only eight of the remodeling companies indicated that they extend health-care benefits to spouses and/or dependents, usually at a percentage lower than what they contribute for employee health-care expenses.