Best companies to work for in Colorado 2006: financial-services firm Edward Jones and Texas-based WR starkey mortgage rate the best among 25 finalists judged exemplary workplaces in the state.

Scott Cawood was a principal in The Great Places to Work Institute, the company that teamed up with Fortune magazine several years ago to create what is becoming a new industry in America: rating company workplaces around the U.S. as the best places for employees to work. Almost three years ago, Cawood left the institute and spun off a new company, Modern Think, with offices in New York, Washington D.C., and Wilmington, Del., to essentially do the same thing for smaller firms than are listed by Fortune, but also to advise those smaller firms on how to make money at putting their company in the ranks of "The Best Companies."

This year, for the first time, ColoradoBiz has joined with the Colorado State Council of the Society of Human Resource Management and JOBing.com, an online employment advertising service, to produce a list of the best companies to work for in the state. Twenty-five firms made the list of finalists and are profiled here.

But only two, Edward Jones, the national financial-services company with 300 offices in Colorado, and WR Starkey Mortgage Inc., a Texas-based firm with just two Colorado offices, were named by Cawood's Modern Think as the No. 1 best workplaces in Colorado: Edward Jones in the large-employer category, with more than 200 employees; Starkey in the small-to-medium employer category, with anywhere from 25 to 199 employees.

In order for a Colorado competition to be recognized in what is essentially a paid-for counseling service for the firms, more companies than these 25 finalists had to sign up with Harrisburg, Pa.-based Best Companies Group Inc., which partners with Modern Think to provide the service. Companies paid a fee of from $575 to $1,145 for the third-party employee survey and "infrastructure and practices inventory" conducted by Cawood's Modern Think.

Each company is also coached in the results of the research by Modern Think, because, as Cawood said, the survey and inventory of the firm "does a really great job of picking up when leadership teams are getting along and functioning or whether they're off track and not functioning."

The Colorado State Counsel of SHRM, along with JOBing.Com and ColoradoBiz, will name all the finalists in the two categories at a "Best Companies to Work for in Colorado" awards luncheon and workshop event Aug. 3 from 8:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. at the Westin Westminster off Highway 36 in north metro Denver. The awards lunch will be held from 11:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m.