Dan Rocha wanted some coffee from the employee kitchen on a recent Wednesday morning, so he hopped on his mountain bike and rode there. Yes, rode.
In addition to providing a shortcut, a 300-foot-long oval track ringed by computers and conference rooms on the fourth floor of SRAM, a bicycle parts company, also allows employees to test bike prototypes.
“It’s like working in Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory: It’s all here,” said Rocha, a designer.
The track features directional arrows and bicycle icons, like those on streets. It rings workbenches where employees can tweak parts and tune bikes. Several park their racing and commuter bikes along the walls, joining utilitarian black bikes intended for World Bicycle Relief, a nonprofit started by SRAM that provides bikes to children and health care workers in developing countries.
SRAM, pronounced as one word, landed at No. 28 among small companies on the Tribune’s 2014 Top Workplaces list, as surveyed by WorkplaceDynamics, an Exton, Pa.-based consultancy.
“It’s a superfun environment,” said David Zimberoff, a vice president of marketing. “It fosters all this great stuff: health, fitness. To get to be a part of it, as a profession, that’s what’s kept me here.”
The company, which also has plants in Taiwan and Germany, has a global workforce of about 3,400 people, said Kelli Koschmann, director of global human resources. About 135 people work at the company’s Chicago headquarters in Lincoln Park, which soon will move to Fulton Street in the West Loop.
More Top Picks Best Dyslexia Learning Toys For Kids
Stan Day Jr., SRAM’s president, who had a personal interest in triathlons, started the company in 1987 on West Carroll Avenue with his brother, F.K. Day, along with Sam Patterson, Scott King, Mike Mercuri and Jeff Shupe. Known for introducing the Grip Shift, a gear changing mechanism, SRAM grew through the acquisition of five other bike brands, including RockShox, a suspension company.
Privately held SRAM has had annual sales of about $625 million since 2012, according to Day, up from about $20 million in 1993.
“We wanted to create a company where people always felt they had traction: When they got to work, they could get things accomplished,” Day said, adding that he also strives for “extreme trust across the organization.”
Trust and communication crystallized during a tough stretch last year, when SRAM issued a recall of hydraulic road brakes.
Day called it a “painful and expensive process. One of the things that helped was the whole organization was focused on identifying the problem and fixing the problem and getting the cyclists back out on the road.”
As intrinsic to the company as complimentary fresh fruit is a weekly meeting in which employees can ask executives questions anonymously. That openness creates the kind of environment, test track and all, that excites employees like Rocha.
“I still wake up on Mondays, and I don’t have a problem going to work,” Rocha said. “I tell people that, and they just look at me like I’m crazy. I’m really happy here.”