Forbes contributors publish independent expert analyses and insights.
For roughly 25 million Americans, a toxic workplace is a daily experience. This negative company culture is not only bad for employees, but it’s also bad for business since it leads to decreased levels of productivity and higher levels of attrition. On the flip side, when companies prioritize creating a work environment that is supportive and values-driven, both the employer and the employees benefit.
“When companies have leaders who promote psychological safety, transparency, fairness, and appreciation of their workforce, people want to remain working within the organization,” says Dr. Ashwini Nadkarni, a psychiatrist and assistant professor at Harvard Medical School who researches what drives burnout and what enhances professional fulfillment. Employees are also more likely to stay engaged and motivated when the company’s values align with their own, adds Nadkarni.
This type of thinking is core to the workplace philosophy at Cummins, an Indiana-based power solutions company. Managers at Cummins are expected to lead by expressing vulnerability, being transparent, and showing care in the decisions they make with their teams, says Marvin Boakye, the company’s vice president and chief human resources officer. And this doesn’t happen by chance. Employees being considered for management learn self-awareness skills and the value of different perspectives through a popular training program at the company called “Building Success in You,” which has graduated about 1,000 new leaders per year since its inception in 2018.
“We treat culture as a unique competitive advantage,” says Boakye. By prioritizing diversity of thought and experiences, he says, Cummins ensures that projects aren’t dominated by one voice, which encourages employee engagement and makes the company’s products better. This also likely helped Cummins earn No. 18 on Forbes’ inaugural list of America’s Best Employers For Company Culture.
The list, made in partnership with market research firm Statista, is based on survey responses from more than 218,000 employees based in the United States who work for companies employing at least 1,000 people within the country. Respondents were asked to evaluate their company’s culture and share whether they felt employees were treated with fairness, if they were passionate about what the company did, if the company made an effort to be inclusive, and whether there were paths to promotion, among other criteria.
Respondents were also asked whether they’d recommend employers they’d worked for within the last two years, those they knew through friends or family and those they knew from industry experience. Three years’ worth of survey responses were collected and incorporated into a scoring system with the most recent data weighted the heaviest. Statista analysts also did extensive research on each organization to assess company culture-related best practices — such as the presence of employee-centric training programs — and that research was integrated into each organization’s final score. Ultimately, the 600 companies with the highest scores made our new ranking.
The top three companies on Forbes’ list were the University of Tennessee Medical Center (No. 1), Progressive (No. 2), and Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta (No. 3). Within the top 10, the education industry dominated with the University of California, Irvine taking No. 4, Cleveland State University at No. 5 and Western Carolina University at No. 7.
At Verisk (No. 8), a global analytics and risk management company that focuses on insurance, new hires are welcomed into the company culture with an extensive onboarding process, buddies, training sessions and employee networks, which help them navigate the company, says Sunita Holzer, the company’s chief human resources officer. Another way employee wellbeing and belonging is promoted: Verisk has switched from yearly reviews to quarterly checkins and removed performance ratings, which Holzer says has improved employee morale and lessened end-of-year uncertainty.
In addition, every year Verisk has “dedicated days of understanding” that feature a keynote speaker specific to an employee resource group. Last year, for example, the theme was neurodiversity, and the keynote talk inspired employees to continue the conversation later. “It creates this great environment where people can talk about things afterward,” says Holzer. People learn about the issues, and understand their colleagues much better, she says, which also helps create an inclusive environment.
Verisk also keeps its finger on the pulse of employee sentiment by conducting its own internal surveys. Holzer says that in a recent survey, 82% of employees reported that they would recommend the company as a great place to work — and that this number has gone up by 3% in the last three years.
Karen Pavlin, chief workforce innovation officer at ServiceNow (No. 14), a software as a service (SaaS) platform that specializes in business workflows, says the company’s “people pact” is one of the main things that sets the company apart from its competitors. Pavlin says the pact is “not just words on a page;” the company actively listens to its employees’ challenges and holds peer-to-peer meetings for insights into employee needs. For instance, recognizing that flexibility and work-life balance is important to its employees, the company offers six wellbeing days a year and a hybrid or remote work schedule depending on the employee’s job function.
Also at ServiceNow, roughly a third of employees are involved in the company’s nine “employee belonging groups,” says Pavlin, which cover groups like veterans, peoplewith disabilities and parents. These groups are key to helping the company build its culture, and to helping its employees find paths to growth. Within the groups themselves, there are six positions for leadership, which Pavlin notes works as a leadership incubator for the company itself, as these visible positions are often noted by the senior vice president that sponsors each group. “Bottom line, the common thread is when employees feel allowed to grow,” says Pavlin. “When it feels like it’s ‘theirs’ and not just ‘ours,’ it adds growth to the company.”
For the full list of America’s Best Employers for Company Culture, click here.
To determine our inaugural list of America’s’s Best Employers for Company Culture, Forbes partnered with market research firm Statista and surveyed more than 218,000 workers employed at companies with at least 1,000 people in the country. Survey respondents (who remained anonymous so they could answer freely) were asked if they would recommend their employer to others and to rate it based on a range of company culture-related topics involving fairness, inclusivity and opportunity. For instance, participants were asked whether their employer recognizes good performance, encourages a healthy work-life balance, values input and ideas from employees across the organization, prioritizes collaboration among coworkers and provides avenues to advance.
Respondents were also asked if they would recommend their previous employers (within the past two years) and those they knew through industry experience or through friends or family who worked there. Data from the past three years of Forbes-Statista employee surveys were integrated into a scoring system, with heavier weights placed on the more recent data and on recommendations from current employees. Statista analysts also did extensive research on each organization to assess company culture-related best practices, such as the presence of employee-centric training programs. That research was incorporated into each organization’s final score, and the 600 companies with the highest scores made our new ranking, which is directly below.
As with all Forbes lists, companies pay no fee to participate or be selected. To read more about how we make these lists, click here. For questions about this list, please email listdesk [at] forbes.com.
