Bain & Company won Glassdoor's Employee Choice Awards.

Over 1,700 reviews from current and former employees catapulted the company to the top of 2017's list of Best Places To Work, with big names like Google, Facebook, and LinkedIn close behind.

Bain & Company is a Boston-based global management consulting firm, one of the Big Three in its industry.

As expected of today's leading businesses, the company offers excellent pay, trendy offices, and a long list of perks including generous maternity leaves, solid health coverage, and strong 401K matching plans to boot!

But one thing stood out in reading the employee reviews of the firm:

Challenging employees with tougher problems and encouraging them to advance in their career is part of the company's culture.

Here's a review from a manager in Bain & Company's Chicago office:

"Here's how you know you've made it at Bain.

The reward for doing a good job is getting a bigger, tougher problem next time. Meaning, you are always solving the easiest problem you will ever solve again.

This takes a lot of resilience and active managing of self-expectations to remember that you are not actually getting worse, the problems are just getting harder.

So my advice is to remember that.

And then take a second to realize that it would be a lot less fun if the reverse were true. And isn't that precisely why you wanted this job in the first place anyway? It sure was for me."

Bain & Company knows that employee benefits are only the icing on the cake.

To create a truly productive and high-performing workforce, they need to help their talented staff make progress and get better at work. And what better way to do just that than to challenge their team to take on tougher client problems!

Maybe you're not in contention for Glassdoor's awards. But you can challenge your employees and help them make progress with the following steps.