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Jim Swift is a leader who doesn’t like to finish second. He was a little puzzled that Holmes Murphy & Associates Inc. finished second in the Business Record’s Best Places to Work survey.

“We never like to be second,” said Swift, president and CEO of the 78-year-old insurance brokerage, employee benefits and financial services company.

And it’s not that the company’s 500 employees are miserable at work. Quite the contrary, according to results of a Business Record survey that Swift was thumbing through last week.

Workers “feel valued by leadership,” “trust senior leadership” and consider Holmes Murphy a “great place to work.”

Those employees, located in West Des Moines and 11 other cities, say, essentially, that they would have to be forced, kicking and screaming, to leave the company and that the “people they work with most closely are committed to top quality work.”

Holmes Murphy prides itself on programs that focus on personal and professional development and nourish a leadership attitude.

And it immerses employees in the company’s history and culture. That is achieved, in part, through HMA University and HMA Service University. Combined, the programs graduate up to 17 people a year after six or seven monthly sessions that teach about the company’s history and operations, while fostering leadership qualities. Graduates are invited to invest in Holmes Murphy.

Holmes Murphy also has an employee-based committee, HMA Cares 4 U, to help workers who are being affected by a family crisis.

About half of the company’s employees are located in Greater Des Moines.

The company dates from 1932, when Max Holmes started an insurance agency in Des Moines. J. Raymond Murphy Jr. came on board in 1948. Their portraits, and those of others who led the company over the years, adorn a wall of the conference room where Swift studied the survey results.

During the current tough economy, the company also has remained committed to nudging up compensation, particularly among its sales and service work force.

Swift noted that the company rated better than most of its peers in most categories, and that all of the large companies had at least one thing in common: Workers would like a pat on the back once in a while.

“One thing that people want more of is recognition and feedback on their job performance,” Swift said.

You can bet that Swift has added “pats on the back” to areas needing improvement.