THE FORTUNE 100 BEST

• Have 1,000 or more regular full- and part-time U.S. employees for the duration of the selection process. ("Regular" employees does not include temporary or seasonal employees, interns, etc.)
• Have been in operation for at least seven (7) years by the nomination deadline. If the organization existed in a different form (e.g. part of another company, under a different name) they are eligible to participate as long as there are employees who have been working at the company for seven years or more.
• Government agencies are not eligible. A governmental agency is defined as an arm of the government or an organization where any leaders are appointed by government official or are elected by the community.
  If your organization is a private company or a non-profit whose leaders are appointed by government officials or elected by the public, this would make you ineligible.
• A company is not eligible if it is going through a merger/acquisition that adds 25% or more to their U.S. employee population at any time throughout the year in which the process occurs. Any company who has recently undergone a merger/acquisition that added 25% to their U.S. employee population must have closed on the merger/acquisition by the December before the nomination deadline (e.g., by December 31, 2007 to participate in the list published in January 2009). If your company goes through a divestiture impacting more than 25% of your U.S. employee population at any time during the selection process, we request that you bring this to our attention and we will follow-up with you for more information.
• Our goal is to evaluate separate and unique workplaces. As such, companies generally must apply on behalf of their whole organization. If your company is a subsidiary which has a distinct culture (e.g. separate industry, history, benefit structure, leadership team, etc.) from your parent and other subsidiary(s), or if you can show that the nature of the relationship is solely financial (e.g. the parent organization is a holding company) you may be eligible to apply separately. In order for our eligibility team to make a complete assessment of the nature of the relationship between your company and its parent organization or subsidiaries, please complete the nomination form.
• To protect the integrity of our Best Companies lists and ensure that no one participating company will have an unfair advantage and/or insider information regarding the selection process, any company that currently is or in the past has collaborated with Great Place to Work® Institute, Inc. to produce one of our U.S Best Companies lists and/or has served as a vendor with direct access to proprietary instruments, processes, or data, will be ineligible to participate in either of our U.S. Best Companies list processes. Please note: we anticipate that this restriction is only applicable to a very small number of organizations. If you have questions as to whether this applies to your organization, we invite you to contact the Best Companies Team.

Includes:

• 58 statement Trust Index^© Employee Survey – includes two open-ended questions and six standard demographics (available in English and Spanish)
• Sample population survey
• Online and paper distribution
• Survey and Culture Audit^© scores submitted for FORTUNE 100 Best Companies to Work For^®
• List results notification
• Optional Reports and Advisory Services available

The Culture Audit^©

There are two parts to this assessment tool. In Part I, we ask about items such as employee demographics (e.g. number of employees in the U.S., voluntary turnover, ethnic breakdowns, tenure, etc.). We also ask for general information about the company (e.g. year founded, revenues), as well as benefits and perks offered to employees (e.g. on-site fitness center, percentage insurance premium paid by company for employee, number of holidays).

Part 2 of the Culture Audit^© asks a series of open-ended questions, providing the company an opportunity to share with us various aspects of their culture from the management perspective.

How It Works

• Management in the organization completes both parts of the questionnaire
• Supplementary materials may be submitted to complement the responses to the questionnaire
• Great Place to Work^® experts score the responses to the Culture Audit^© and rate your practices in nine key areas