What is Best Places to Work?
Glassdoor’s annual Best Places to Work List is based entirely on employee feedback, so it’s a true testament to your company’s commitment to its workforce. Companies that win the Employees’ Choice Awards receive a toolkit to display the award on their career sites and Glassdoor profiles, giving interested candidates the extra confidence to look for open roles and apply.
How are the winners of Best Places to Work determined?
Award winners are determined using feedback employees have shared on Glassdoor throughout the past year. Employees complete an anonymous company review that captures their overall job and company satisfaction, as well as qualitative insights into the best reasons to work at their company, along with what needs improvement.
Based on feedback employees share during the year long period of eligibility, Glassdoor then applies a proprietary algorithm to each award category. As part of the algorithm, Glassdoor considers the quality, quantity and consistency of reviews.
What is the methodology behind Best Places to Work?
While Glassdoor reserves the right to improve methodology year to year, the methodology from the year prior can help you understand the basics around how the list is put together.
Last year, the U.S. list was divided into two categories: Large Companies with 1,000 or more employees, and SMBs with fewer than 1,000 employees. Large companies needed at least 75 Glassdoor-approved company reviews in the evaluation period. SMBs needed at least 25 Glassdoor-approved employee reviews to qualify. For Canadian and UK companies, the requirement was 25 approved reviews, and in France and Germany it was 20. These reviews needed to appear during the eligibility period, which ran from November 3, 2014 to November 1, 2015.
What is a Glassdoor-approved review?
A Glassdoor-approved review is one that meets our community guidelines and remains on the site. Two important guidelines should be noted:
- We remove content if we have evidence that users were incentivized or coerced into leaving it.
- We believe in the principle of anonymity and free speech – everyone has a right to voice their opinion and be heard without fear of retribution, censorship or other unwanted attention.
This means that while it is acceptable and even desirable to encourage reviews, it’s never acceptable to require employees to write reviews. And because we value anonymity – it’s what gives our users the confidence to be honest – an individual should never be asked to prove that he or she wrote a review.
We also limit reviewers to one employee review per year per company, and will eliminate reviews if we catch attempts to game the system by posting reviews from multiple accounts.
How do I submit my company for Best Places to Work?
It's easy – just share a review for your company and ask your fellow employees to do the same. The review should take no more than a few minutes to complete. Only one company review per employee is accepted each year, and each review must meet Glassdoor's community guidelines.
What do we look for?
For those who have offices in multiple locations, reviews are evaluated based on where the employee leaving the review is located, so you could be on a list in multiple countries. For example, Expedia and Google landed on both U.S. and UK lists in 2016, while both Apple and Salesforce landed on the Canadian and U.S. lists.
Beyond the number of reviews, the proprietary algorithm takes into account the quality and consistency of reviews. To prevent gaming, Glassdoor does not reveal complete details of how these factors are taken into consideration.
When is the deadline to submit?
Remember that Glassdoor looks at employee feedback throughout the year, so unlike other awards, it's important to have ongoing feedback from employees. For Glassdoor's Best Places to Work awards, the eligibility deadline is the first week in November.
When will the winners of Best Places to Work be announced?
The winners of Best Places to Work will be announced sometime in December.
What are some things your company can do now to become a Best Place to Work?
1. Look at the quantity of your current reviews.
Do you have enough to qualify based on your company size? How many more reviews would you have needed to get in the running last year?
2. Identify trends in your reviews.
Do the reviews reflect your current working environment? What are employees saying that’s not being addressed? What are you getting right?
3. Use Glassdoor data to set a baseline.
Look at rating trends over time. Can you correlate sentiment to changes in your company?
4. Invite feedback.
If you don’t have a ton of reviews or the conversation is being driven by past employees, it’s time to launch an engagement campaign to solicit feedback. Actively reach out to employees and invite them to share about their experience. You can do this in a variety of ways: at all hands meetings, in email signatures, and as part of your onboarding process. Explain how valuable feedback is for your organization’s growth and ability to attract new top talent.
5. Monitor and respond to feedback.
Set up alerts so that you see reviews coming in. Create a plan for how you’d like to respond, both internally and on Glassdoor. If possible, get your leaders involved in responding. Executives and department heads should be alerted to insightful or sensitive reviews and respond if necessary.
6. Implement a feedback loop.
Use your reviews as a source of actionable insights. Maybe a specific job group or location within your company is experiencing turmoil but another is thriving. Use these insights to strategize on how to engage employees by investing in their growth and supporting work/life integration.
How can I find out more about Best Places to Work?
Want to be on The Best Places to Work list? Read this. And learn more about the universal traits of winners by downloading our eBook, Best Places to Work winners. We’ve also published an eBook called The DNA of a Best Place to Work. Or email us at bestplacestowork@glassdoor.com
