Name: Trends and Insights from the 100 Best Workplaces
Uploaded: 2026-02-05T19:31:06.555Z
Duration: 1 h 56 s
Description: Trends and Insights from the 100 Best Workplaces

Transcript for "Trends and Insights from the 100 Best Workplaces": This is not an opinion. It's not a perspective, or a belief, or a philosophy. This is trust. This is leaders we can believe in. This is civility, decency, respect. This is listening like you give a damn. This is bigger than identity or politics. This is prosperity. Closing gaps, opening doors. This is growth, scale, resilience. This is not controversial. This is business for all. And this is how it's done. Welcome everyone to today's event, Trends and Insights from the 100 Best. We're so glad you're here. My name is Sarah Lewis Kulin. I'm the Executive Vice President of Global Recognition and Research here at Great Place to Work. And today, you are gonna get a preview of the trends and insights we see across the twenty twenty six one hundred Best Companies to Work For. This will be coming out in April and published by Fortune. Before we dive in, there are a few housekeeping notes to enhance your experience today. So please go ahead and add your questions via the Q and A tab at the top right corner of the screen. This is also where you will find other event resources and where polls will appear during the session. You can also chat with us and other attendees through the chat function. Closed captioning is available, and you can access this session on demand through the unique link provided in your registration email or calendar invite. Before we go to our agenda, I do want to get a better sense of who is attending today and your level of familiarity with the list. So you should see a poll on your screen. And we'd love to understand where you are today on your recognition journey. And you might check all that apply. So perhaps you've never participated before. It's your first time participating. You may be an experienced participate, in which case, welcome back. Have you earned Great Place to Work certification before? Or perhaps you yourself are 100 best companies to work for, current or former winner. See some results coming in. Great. So it sounds like we have a nice mix here of people who've never participated before, first time participating, some certification companies, and some 100 Best winners. Congratulations to all of you who have earned that. So there's a lot that you can get out of today. For those of you who are new to this work, this session is going to give you an overview of the core elements present in the best workplaces and where you can look in your own trust index results to see how you compare. And for those of you who are frequent participants, this session's help you understand where the best companies are leading right now, where they also experience challenges, and how you can focus on what will differentiate you in the year ahead. So to do that, we're going to start off today reminding you what the 100 Best list is and how we select it. Sarah Arguello will share key strengths, challenges, and trends from the 2026 100 Best. Ruby Green, who many of you know, will show you how you can surface those trends in your own trust index data. And Kim Peters will provide tips for success as you plan your 2027 application. We will be sure to save time at the end so you can ask questions of our experts in a live Q and A. So don't forget to use the Q and A feature throughout the session to add your questions at any time. So I'm going to get started by grounding you in the 100 BEST methodology. We all on this call have experiences as workers and leaders ourselves in organizations. So I'd love it if you would take a moment to think of the organization or team that was the best place for you personally to work. Don't think about methodologies. Just think about why was this a great place to work for you and what really made those experiences great. Just waiting for some answers to come in there. Great. I see recognition where people are looking out for each other, the people and the culture. It's like you all believe in this work and are experienced with it. So what you're all really describing is much more than benefits, say specific programs. You're talking about the relationships at work and you're talking about trust. And your instincts really match the proven data that Great Place to Work has. Great Place to Work's model is based on research that we've conducted all over the world with millions of employees. And through our research, we know that it's trust and not a specific set of programs or practices that ultimately creates great workplaces and drives business outperformance. Trust is based on having credible leaders who treat people with respect, who communicate clearly and honestly, and act in ways that are consistent with their words. It looks like providing training, benefits, appreciation, and support for people both in the workplace and outside. And it requires companies to pay, promote, recognize, and distribute opportunities fairly. At great workplaces, employees also have a strong sense of pride in their work and their association with the company. They feel they make a difference, that their work has meaning, and they're motivated to contribute discretionary effort. In addition, companies employees really enjoy working with their colleagues. There's a strong sense of cooperation, care, and the ability to be themselves. Our Trust Index survey contains over 60 metrics that quantify this performance against this model. And this is what we look at in order to determine the 100 best. But it's not all we look at. So I'd love you also just to take a minute to think about comparing two companies. So I want you to imagine that you have the results of the trust index in hand, and you're comparing two companies. And in each of them, 80% of their people say that it's a great place to work. In company A, there's a five point difference between the experiences of senior leaders and individual contributors. And in company B, there's a 30 range. So which of these would you say is the better place to work? Love to see the answers there in the chat. Seeing a lot of agreement there that company A is really more skilled at extending that experience to all its people regardless of their job role and so is ultimately creating the better place to work. And that is indeed something that we take into account in our model and our list rankings as well. So for every survey question that we're looking at for the trust index, we measure how robust that experience is across the entire organization. We want to know whether both hourly and salaried employees are clear on their goals and have opportunities for recognition, for example, or whether one or the other group is missing that context. Because the best workplaces know that all their people perform critical roles for their businesses and treat them accordingly. And actually I should say that companies with more consistency in their workplace also perform much better during crises and show more market resilience during economic downturns. So consistency is simultaneously great for employee experience and for business performance. So finally, part of the way that companies shape employee experience and support their people is through benefits and programs, which may be the responsibility of several of the people on this call. And so that is also something that we take into account in our model and list rankings as well. So what we do is take into account the apologies. My computer is just fritzing out on me for a second, but I'll speak off the cuff. So the company if you look at company A and compare it to company B, company A on the surface may have much more robust company A may have much more robust programs that match working people's experiences. Compared to company B has experiences that may fit salaried employees much better. And so what we do when we look at programs and practices is take into account the context of the workplace in which those practices are being implemented and make sure that the programs meet the true needs of employees. So in company A, for example, even though the benefits may appear to be more limited, they're a better match for, say, hourly employees who are in frontline positions versus in company B, they may not have the context, the ability to pay upfront in order to access those benefits. So ultimately, across all these three components we've talked about, the 100 Best Companies represent organizations whose own employees validate that leaders' behaviors and the company's programs consistently create workplace experiences that are strong regardless of who the people are or what job they perform for the organization. And that's great news for employees. It's also great news for employers because companies that build workplaces that thrive on those metrics also consistently outperform their peers financially, which is something our next speaker will talk about as well. So now that you understand what makes companies earn a spot on the list, let's go to the trends that we're seeing in this year's winners. I'm joined by Sarah Arguello, who is an analyst on our Strategic Workplace Insights team. Sarah reviewed data across the dozens of lists we produce in The US and around the world. Welcome, Sarah. Thank you, Sarah. Thank you for having me. Lovely. So, Sarah, can you tell us about the trends that you've seen and whether there's any major changes this year in who's making the list? Absolutely. So in some ways, the list has remained very consistent. Things like the benchmarks for the 100 best are again very steady year over year, and we see the best companies continue to wildly outperform typical companies. Winners span a huge range, so we have companies with 1,300 employees all the way to over 800,000 employees. And industries from IT, manufacturing, hospitality, all across the board showing that really any company has the capacity to create a great workplace. But what has shifted this year is the mix. This year, there are nine companies that are completely new to the list. This is nearly double from what we saw last year. And we saw a really big jump in eligible companies overall. Some other great things we're seeing, health care companies are continuing to recover since the pandemic, especially on their frontline teams, but we are seeing some previously strong industries like tech and professional services are feeling a little bit of stress due to AI adoption and recent layoff concerns. That makes a lot of sense. Thanks, Sarah. And so as part of your work, you regularly compare best company data to typical companies data. From that vantage point, what would you say the 100 best companies' core strengths are compared to what employees can expect at typical companies? So I'm always looking for what makes the 100 Best truly stand out. And what we see is that, like you mentioned earlier, it's not one magic program. It's trust. It's a culture system. And when we distill that down, there's three strengths that show up again and again, two way communication, consistency, and purpose. Compared to typical workplaces, two way communication is over 35 stronger at best workplaces. Because winners, they don't just communicate. They speak transparently. They listen, involve, act, and they repeat. And trust compounds over time because of this loop. So if things don't go as planned, leaders address it. They repeat the loop, and then they do better next time. This improves communication in that moment, but it also allows employees to trust the system, which helps make the culture reliable. And that is where it leads to consistency. So winners aren't just great for some, they're reliable for all. Lots of companies have high TI averages, but winners have low disparity. The 100 best are intentional about each leader, each department, and everyone's experience because they know that they need everyone's contributions to succeed. When employees experience that level of consistency, it frees up their energy. People stop spending their time decoding the culture, which allows them to lean into what they're really trying to achieve, the purpose. And purpose is a key driver of a great workplace. Leaders at Best Workplaces help employees see the link between their work and the bigger picture, how their work aligns with the company goals and why it matters. And in turn, those employees are excited about the work, and they're four times more likely to want to stay at the organization for a long time. So to bring all of these to life, I wanna share a quick video from Jackson Healthcare. They're a really great example of all three of these themes working together. I think every organization is a purpose driven organization. It's just a question of what that purpose is. For for some organizations, our purpose is to make our quarterly numbers for Wall Street so we can all get big bonuses. Okay. I mean, I'm not demeaning that. Like, if that's what it is, great. Just be clear about it so other people can say, like, yeah, that's what I wanna be a part of. And and, you know, I think what we're finding is that more and more people are saying, like, well, yeah, I need to make a living and I do wanna make my bonus. But I I actually also wanna feel like the result of my life's work is is is something meaningful and that has a positive impact. That's what we've done is is we just try to be super clear about who we are, what success means to us, like why we do what we do, the values that we apply to every decision that we make, and then say, hey, if this resonates with you, come be a part of it. Era. So what do you think was important about that clip? Is it telling us that we should all work in health care? Not at all. So obviously something like being purpose driven is very clear in health care more so than it would be in other industries. But as we heard in the start of that video, any company can be purpose driven, and we see companies in every industry, manufacturing, tech, construction, that connect employees to their purpose by showing them how what they do makes a difference. That's great. So as this slide is showing us, you've told us before what the best companies are great at. But what's particularly challenging for them? Yes. Even the best companies have things that are hard for them. The difference is they anticipate where trust is at risk, and they build systems to respond. Three of the biggest challenges, especially that we're seeing right now, are consistency, fairness, and external disruptions. Starting with consistency. Yes. We listed this as a strength of the 100 best, but just because this is something that they do really well doesn't mean it's easy for them. As companies grow and as they scale practices, it's easy to end up with great over here and not the same over here. Best workplaces anticipate this, and they consider the impact to all of their people, all of their decisions, and all new practices. And that's why we always say there's no finish line here. There's no end to being a great workplace because decisions land differently across teams, and that's when favoritism and questions about fairness show up. And the tricky thing about fairness is that it's often based on perception, but. perception still matters. You can have all of the best intentions and do all of the right planning, but employees may still experience a lack of fairness. And this is where that trusted communication loop comes in because it isn't that these best companies always get it right, but their employees trust that their leaders will make it right. They know that they'll be able to speak honestly about their feelings if something feels unfair, and they know that they will be heard. And if all of that wasn't challenging enough, we are operating in a time of extreme uncertainty and rapid change, and external disruptions test trust. But what we have repeatedly seen in times like these is that best workplaces are more resilient and outperform in times of crisis. Take a look at this next slide. The significant outperformance by the 100 best in 2008 during the Great Recession and then 2020 during the pandemic show us that companies with a fair, caring, supportive culture tend to fare well during difficult times. That's great. And I think that's a really important point, SJ, because all of this talk about communication, purpose, fairness, consistency could sound to people just like soft skills. But what you're saying here is that the keys that unlock sustained business performance are these, especially during periods of crisis. Absolutely. Yeah, so building on that, what do some of these practices actually look like in day to day life? Many people on the call might say that they're already engaging in these types of practices. Can you provide a more specific example about what this looks like? Certainly. Hill Corp is a really great example. So they have appeared on the 100 Best List multiple times. And they're an oil and natural gas producer. They operate across the entire United States. What's really unique about them is they have a very extremely distributed frontline workforce. So they have people out in the field wearing hard hats and doing really challenging work every day, but they really give a great example of how all these practices work together. And then here's a quick video for that. It's pretty simple for us because everything we do, we're gonna be consistent and fair. We're not gonna do something for one person or one group of people that we're not willing to do for everyone. Over 70% of our people are in the field. And so there's, you know, been things that come up. It's like, hey, you know what? We probably should make this exception. And the question I always get asked by my leadership is, are we willing to do it for everyone? And if we are, then it's the right decision. If not, we need to then continue to talk about that. And so everything we do is consistent and fair and extremely aligned. I mean, we take that value of alignment. When Hill Corp wins, we all win very, very seriously, which enables us to do things like our bonus program, which is very unique. You know, it pays zero to 60%. It averages about 35%. It's on the same exact metrics for every single person. But, it's pretty exciting when the receptionist, the operator, an asset team leader, the CEO are all getting the exact same bonus on the same day. They're hard checks. They're not direct deposited, which we get feedback in the survey every year. Can you please direct deposit it? And the answer was one of those. I was at a presentation earlier and said, sometimes you just have to say no and explain why. And the reason why is we wanna look you in the eye, shake your hand, and say thank you because you're one of the reasons why we got this bonus. I I think it makes people feel that we're all in this together, and my role is just as important as the next person's. And and which is true. It doesn't matter what your role is. We are all under the same vision, mission, and values, same purpose, same focus. We're we're moving down the same, direction. And I think when you have that, you get that alignment. And if you ever wanna know what the secret sauce is to Hill Corp, it's alignment. Of all our values, they're all important, but alignment is the hardest one to do because people aren't willing to provide those kinds of things. Mike, inspiring. But I can imagine a lot of companies may be thinking that they can't offer bonuses in the same way that Hilkworm might. Is the message here, Sarah, that bonuses are necessary in order to create great workplaces? No. Not at all. Look. We all would love a great bonus, and we do need a fair wage. But that's not what this video about is about. It's not about the money. Mike uses the bonus moment to communicate clearly about Hillcorp's values, how they make decisions, and how each person in the company matters, how their work contributes to the company's success and their own success. This builds trust and a more consistent experience so their people aren't left guessing whether recognition is only for certain teams because the message is clear, this is for all, and the why is also clear. And when employees don't have to spend that energy decoding how things work, they can plug into the bigger picture, the why, the purpose. Leaders are able to connect this practice back to what the company is trying to achieve and why each rule matters. That's great. So what I'm hearing you say is that the really special thing that best companies do with their programs is pay a lot of attention to what signals those programs send to their people and make sure that those signals reinforce the behaviors necessary for the organization to succeed. So for example, in this case, Hillcore is really doubling down on its message that every job matters equally to company success and that those bonuses are intended to thank everyone equally for that success. Yeah. So as leaders think about the programs that they're going to be investing next year, where are you seeing the best companies are focusing for 2026? Where will they be innovating? Looking ahead at 2026 and what we see best companies talking about right now, AI adoption, cost management pressure, and really sustaining the pace of change and the resilience of their people. So the best workplaces are accelerating and maturing in all these areas. Over the last year, companies have largely focused on access and adoption when it comes to AI tools. We will see this evolve over 2026 with more focus on ensuring there's a clear return of investment in AI. And in addition to focusing on that ROI of AI, this economic uncertainty that we're experiencing is creating more pressure on cost management across all industries. And as a result, best companies are really leaning strongly into leadership development, leadership development that supports stronger performance management. They're also reviewing benefits to make sure that the ones that they're investing in are truly meaningful to their people. But these macro trends are also putting a lot of pressure on the workforce. So in response, companies are integrating wellness and burnout management into the day to day work, creating systems that allow people to be their best even when uncertainty and change are the norm. Great. Well, thanks so much for that big picture, Sarah. I'm sure that there's so much detail that you could go into about all of the strengths, the challenges, and the examples that we put into practice here. We've covered a lot quickly so please keep your questions coming through the Q and A. We're seeing them and getting them all queued up for the latter part of our session. But now let's move into a deeper look about how you can see the trends that Sarah was talking about in your own data with Ruby Storm Green. So Ruby, welcome. Ruby is a culture coach at Great Place to Work and some of you may recognize her from your own culture coaching sessions. Ruby works with a wide variety of our customers across sizes and industries with the goal of continuous and sustainable improvement across the employee experience for maximum business impact. So welcome, Ruby. Thank you so much for having me, Sarah. I'm so excited to be here today, and I love seeing a lot of people that I work with attending today. So, yeah, hi Melissa, we love you as well. I see you in the chat. Yeah, thank you so much for having me. Great. Ruby, many of the companies attending today are probably thinking about how they can increase their competitiveness for the 100 Best and continue their progress. Sarah shared some insights on where companies really need to excel in order to compete with the best company's core strengths, as well as where they struggle and need to improve. So what can you tell people about where they can look in their data to see how they're performing here? That is a great question. So let me go ahead and share my screen. So here is some demo data from Emprising. It's not a real company's data. And we're going to just start with that statement around my work has special meaning, this is not just a job. So this is a really big measurement of purpose, which we heard from Esche. The 100 best does really, really well. And what we're seeing here is that this this demo data has there's a 56% positive response rate here. Positive response is the four or five on the one to five scale, almost always true or often true. And if we compare this to the 100 best benchmark, so the top 100, we can see that the average score that the 100 best got across the survey for this statement is an 81%. So there's a pretty big gap here compared to the 100 best, which is telling me that there's a lot of room to grow before that's competitive for this specific statement. Right? But one thing to keep in mind is, like, this is the average for the 100 best for this statement. There are some organizations that are going to be scoring lower. There are some organizations that are going to be scoring higher. So I like to use this benchmark as a guideline of where do we maybe see that there's some competitiveness, and where do we see that there is some larger gaps to the benchmark. So overall, I always recommend looking at the statement view and then seeing where is there some of the largest gaps to the a 100 best because this gives us the context of what the a 100 best is maybe scoring higher or lower on. And from that, purpose lens, we already heard from SJ that this is the number one driver of retention. Employees who feel like their work is meaningful are 294% more likely to wanna stay. And so if you're struggling to get buy in from leaders to act on the results beyond know, we want to make the 100 best. This sense of purpose drives business performance from a retention lens, and worker attrition and disengagement costs medium S and P 500 companies about 282,000,000 annually. But this also drives productivity. So people, who feel like their work has special meaning are 1.5 times more likely to feel like people give extra to get the job done. Mhmm. And in addition, we can see that employees that feel like their work has special meaning, they're scoring significantly higher across the survey. So if if we're looking for this demo data, the average score across the survey is a 64%. If we just look at employees who feel like their work has special meaning, that average jumps up to a 73. So there's a significant difference here in terms of overall experience. That's really helpful. Thanks, Ruby. So we've spoken to this a few times in different ways, but I want to ask it explicitly because I know it comes up from client questions, is sometimes companies are trying to understand their results after the lists are published. And they can be confused about why they didn't make the list despite having scores that appear to them to be equal to the benchmark or survey statements they might see on certification profiles. So how do you help people understand this? Yeah. Great question. So this is probably the number one question that I get asked from organizations that maybe have really high scores but aren't making the list. So, you know, you might have a 90% across a survey, and we might see that the benchmark for the 100 best is an 85. And you're thinking, why aren't we making this list? You know, we're our scores are really high. It doesn't make sense to us. But I always recommend going to the demographic view, pulling up the average of the great place to work model, and then going through all the demographics on the survey. My rule of thumb is that anytime that there's a 5% or larger gap for a specific demographic across a survey, that's something to pay attention to because we know that the 100 best workplaces, they have a large consistency of experience. And we'll talk a little bit more about this in a bit, but that consistency of experience has a big impact on this the determination of list, placement and ranking. And what we're seeing here for this demo data is that female identifying employees scored 9% lower across the survey compared to male identifying. So that's a pretty big gap here. And you might be asking as well, like, what do we do about this? Right? Because this is just across the survey. What does this really mean? And so if you're seeing these gaps that are showing up in your results, you are then able to go into the statement view and figure out where are those female identifying employees actually scoring lower. What are maybe those differentiating factors that you can work on to close that gap? So in blue, we're seeing just responses from the female identifying employees at this organization, and in purple we'll see just, responses from male identifying. And then we'll use this sorting feature and do a gap to the filter, and we can see that the largest differences for these two employee populations are people here are treated fairly regardless of their gender, and I am treated as a full member here regardless of my position. But we're also seeing some of these statements around managers avoiding playing favorites and management seeking and responding to suggestions and ideas. And so right off the bat, we're seeing that there's a there's a big inequity between these female and male identifying employees that possibly starts just from a basis of unfair treatment because of people's gender. So this is something that I always recommend doing, and not just for things like gender, race, and ethnicity, but also things like pay type and managerial level. Like we saw in the first example today with those two companies that had the same average score, but for the first one, there was only a 5% gap between individual contributors and executive leadership. That's what we're looking for. We want there to be consistency across all levels of the organization. Great. Thank you so much, Ruby. I know you've just touched the tip of the iceberg here. So I'd encourage everyone to check out the Great Place to Work Effect Playbook that includes an action guide that's exclusive to our customers that will help you understand some of the key statements to examine for unlocking the Great Place to Work effect in different business outcomes. Thanks so much, Ruby. So we've covered now the framework for the 100 Best List, key trends from this year's winners, how to search in your own data for those key areas, and now let's look ahead on how to put your best foot forward for 2027. Kim Peters is our Executive Vice President of Global Recognition Research and Strategic Partnerships. Many of you will be familiar with her already from our summits and other events where she shared her experience, particularly with analyzing workplaces of global organizations who are working with us at a national or international level. So welcome to the conversation, Kim. Thanks so much, Sarah. Great to be here. So Kim, I know you work with many organizations globally for lists that include our world's best and other global regional lists. But for organizations specifically aiming for the Fortune 100 Best Companies to Work For list in The US, could you walk us through the milestones that they should expect? What are some of the most common pitfalls that might cause teams to miss the window? And what should they do now so that nothing slips? Certainly. Well, all of the lists require companies to have active certifications on the date that we begin analyzing companies for every every list in order to be eligible for that list, and that ensures that we're always using the most current data, when we create the list. Certification is based solely on achieving the required trust index average. And this year, companies, need to be eligible for the 100 best list, every every year, and they have so they have to be certified and have a completed culture audit by July 31. We're a couple of days earlier this year, thanks to the calendar, but July 31 is the cutoff for the culture audit. And it it should be a fresh one. So you wouldn't be able to reuse the one that you had done the previous year. Also, order to be eligible, you should have, more than a thousand employees in your organization and not be a government agency. That's a fortune rule, for the 100 best list. So with that in mind, sure to survey in plenty of time to be able to, make that cut off. Try not to leave it to the last week or two, although many people do. So there we are. Okay. And I saw some questions in the Q and A about what industry you need to be in in order to be eligible for the 100 Best List. So just to call that out here, it's just you can be a nonprofit, you can have any kind of organizational structure, you just can't be a government agency to be eligible for the Fortune 100 Best list. And we do include government agencies on our other lists. So moving ahead, Kim, earlier I shared the big picture of what our methodology examines. And Sarah and Ruby outlined some of what that looks like in practice at companies. I know you often get asked about specific scoring though. Can you outline that for us? Yes. Certainly. And and as you can see on the the little graphic here, the employee experience or the scores from the trust index, account for 75% of the waiting for the the data that we use to rank companies on lists. So they're by far the most important area. Culture audits that share details about programs and practices account for 25%. And we really are relying on the employee experience to understand how great an organization is. The role of the culture audit is really to to give us some insight into the programs and practices that are driving those great results. Great. And I want to double down on two points that you made there. First, that the employee experience, as it is reflected in the trust index, is the most important lever for your ranking, much more than the culture audit essay questions. So pay attention to that data. And also that your trust index benchmark is the first indication, but there is more context to evaluate about your ranking, including consistency and performance relative to peers and your practices. Exactly. Exactly, Sarah. Thank you. And and, I'll just reiterate, that that that that is the case. Many people do think when they see their trust index average being high that that means really great things, but it isn't just about the trust index average. That's for certification. Our lists for our lists, we really do look across, all of the data that we see not only at the average, but how consistently positive it is. And then we also look at, some statements specifically related to leadership, to innovation, and to values. And all of that plus the plus the culture audit data, goes goes into the algorithm. And, based on that final outcome, we're able to rank, companies on lists. Excellent. Thank you for that clarification. So another question I know you're often asked, Kim, is how should teams structure their culture audit responses so that they show real program impact rather than just a list of offerings? We talked earlier about the fact that benefits on paper are not what create great workplaces, but it's the actual impact on employee experience. So when our team reviews culture audits, what things in your experience consistently make submissions stand out to evaluators? Yeah. That's a great question. Thank you. And and people, people will certainly tell us their stories, but the very best culture audits, really come from companies who can describe really successfully and clearly, how how they're great, how how do they stand out from from everyone else. They know exactly who their what their true north is, and they can very clearly explain how they've shaped their culture to make sure that that actually comes to fruition. Many companies, if you're not sure where to start, we're always interested in companies' current priorities. Everybody's on a continuum. Culture doesn't ever stand still. And so, you know, if if you start by kinda telling us what you're working on this year, and and why, we're always interested in the what, but even more so, we're interested on why you are focused on that particular area and, how you are how your work has has helped determine the action that you're going to take. So lots and lots of context is really helpful. And and and in fact, some companies don't think about this, but it's really great if you use your trust index results, when you're shaping your story. We can actually see them. So, you know, if if they've gone up in a particular area, you've probably done something to cause that to happen, and it gives you a kind of a a double, advantage there because you can tell us, and provide the data on how you did go up, and then you can tell us why and and what you did to cause that. So if you can survey a little earlier to give you yourself time to digest those results before you finish writing your culture audit, it's probably a good idea, to be able to do that. And so, anything that you are telling, and of course, we're all adapting to to the current situation and probably evolving some of our our programs and practices, If you are going to tell us about really important programs, which you we hope you do, please tell us enough about why they're important and give us a lot of detail on what you've done, what the results are. Perhaps it's like a three year plan, and you're just in year one, so you don't maybe you don't feel you have enough to say. But but tell us, you know, why you're doing what you're doing and how you've gone about it and over what time frame you're kind of looking to reach the ultimate goal. All we we know, no company's perfect, and, even the number one company wouldn't be perfect. And so, and as I said, we can see the survey results. And if you're able to tell us, you know, what's going on, that's great. We're never going to share anything, that isn't positive about you, so, don't worry about that. Finally, just to let people know that, I I really encourage people to take a good advantage of the word count caps that we have in the culture audit questions. Remember, this is a competition, and we really need details, and context. We don't just wanna hear, we're great, because that's not enough. We need, the details to be able to give you credit, and give us some data to back it up. And some anecdotes are are really good to help us see and feel the warmth of what you're doing. So, we've we've also, will be providing some resources and, hope that you'll take advantage of all the tips that we offer. Excellent. Thank you so much, Kim. So now we've covered our methodology trends, where you can find insights in your data, how you can prepare for your application for the next year. We've covered so much quickly during our short time. I'm sure it's prompted a lot of questions for our audience. We won't be able to get to all of them, but we do promise to follow-up on any questions that are not addressed after today's event. So please keep sending them in. So let's go now to some of those questions with our experts. I'm seeing a few questions come in, Kim, regarding the culture audit. And so people have asked, do companies need to fully rewrite their culture audit each year? How frequently do they need to submit them? Can you provide some perspective there? Certainly. We do need an annual culture audit submission, once a year, but we know that your whole culture didn't change from one year to the next. So we ask you to, you know, to to make sure that the things that you say are great and make you great are, in fact, consistent year over year. You might update them a little bit to tell us about, with fresh data or proof points or anecdotes, and you might, you might have made some minor changes. And so I we would invite you and encourage you to tell us about those things. It it wouldn't be good if it was exactly the same as it was the year before, but, but, you know, we understand that it isn't gonna be a total rewrite. Excellent. I just see, one other thing to mention here that we're talking when I'm talking about the culture audit, it's the essay questions that you submit separately from the culture brief, which is much more about your quantitative quantitative information about your employee counts and things like that. Excellent. Thank you. And we also have a few questions about eligibility for the 100 Best List versus global lists. Can you just clarify again for people what data we look at for the 100 Best List and who's eligible for that. Sure. Again, it's companies that have over a thousand employees and have been certified in The US, and are not a government body, essentially. Those companies, as long as you are certified and submit your culture audit by the deadline of July 31, that you will be eligible for the 100 best list. If you're participating in more countries around the world, you may you might, if you're doing a lot of them, be centralized with us, in which case you would just have to submit one culture audit for all the countries, or you might just be doing a couple of countries, and so you might be working with our offices in those countries as well. They'll have different list deadlines, than the 100 best, so, it is always important to be aware of those list deadlines, which are posted on on our websites. And to clarify as well, Kim, if people have a global organization, it's just The U. S. Data that will be considered for the Fortune 100 Best Companies to Work For list. Exactly. That that would be true in any country. We do a national list in many, many countries around the world, and we are looking specifically at the employee experience for people who work in that country. And one thing I'll also add for those of you that don't know is the Fortune 100 Best Companies to Work For in The US is one of many, many lists we produce. So if you don't meet the eligibility requirements for this specific list, there's many other lists based on size and location and different aspects of the workplace that you would be eligible for. One other question that we got is, will the culture audit questions be the same this year as they were last year? Yes. Absolutely. There are no changes to to the technology, or the questions this year, so nothing new to worry about. Excellent. Going into the trust index data now, we got some questions about how we do comparisons across demographic groups and whether that takes into account the sample sizes for the different groups. There's probably two ways to answer that. One is, you know, what we look at in pricing and another is what we're looking at for lists. So Ruby, do you want to take that question? Yeah. Sure. So one really important thing to keep in mind, talking about, like, sample sizes. Right? It is that overall, there has to be a certain margin of error across the survey for list eligibility. So and correct me if I'm wrong about this, but it has to be at least at 95 a margin of error of 5% or less at the 95% confidence level. That's all. basically, we're making sure that you have a representation of your employee population so that, like, if you redistributed the survey to a different subset of the employee population, we would be 95% confident that your survey would only vary 5% in either direction, like positively or negatively. So that's something that's really important to keep in mind. Like, when you're looking at the results, do you have enough responses? When I'm looking at the results from, like, a culture coaching lens, I'm also always looking at is there representation within a specific demographic group. Right? And so if we're looking at the survey results and maybe you only you have, like, 2,000 employees, but we only have 50 responses for, for example, employees with disabilities. Right? We don't necessarily know how many employees with disabilities, there are within the organization, but that would kind of lead me to believe maybe we need a little bit be a little more cautious when it comes to making action based off of those results because there's it's a smaller employee count. But I I would say I don't have as necessarily as Sarah, you might have more information around, like, the if there's, Yes. like, a margin of error need for the specific populations. Yes, absolutely I can speak to that. So for our list analysis when we're looking to see how consistent people's experiences are across demographic groups, we always take into account the margin of error. So we're not going to say, ping you in the list analysis if there's four people responding and have a really atypical experience there. So that's definitely something that we are careful to take into account. Yeah. So let's see. Moving on, I'm scanning the questions here. We have some other, another question that would be good for you Ruby, is people are trying to understand whether there's a way to segment out in imprising the experience that their employees are commenting on for managers overall or for their specific managers. Could you talk about if they can do that? yeah. So that's a super great question. So our intention with the term management, because a lot of the statements on the survey you'll see use the word management, is supposed to embody people's overall experience with managers or people leaders within the organization because most people are not just going to interact with their direct manager. They're also going to be interacting with their skip level or a manager in another area of the business. And so we're thinking about leadership effectiveness overall. If you have a high level of leadership effectiveness and trust, in theory, it shouldn't matter what manager you're thinking about. Right? But if you're wanting to get a little bit more specificity with that, depending on what product tier you have, you can add custom statements to the survey. And I have some organizations that will that will put in, like, the same statements, but will say my manager. So instead of, like, management makes its expectations clear, it could be my manager makes their expectations clear. So one thing one caveat with that is that the custom statements, they wouldn't count toward any of the lists because we're only using the core 60 statements that we have on the survey, but it can give you a little bit of additional information if that's something that you really care about, that you're wanting to see are there differences in terms of like direct managers maybe for some of those statements around clear expectations or involvement decisions. Great. So quick takeaway. If that's something that you're interested in, talk to your customer success manager. We have ways to help you with that, both through how you design your demographics, as well as what questions you can add to the survey. So just the final question that we have time for, I've seen a theme in some of the questions we've sent in around benefits. So if people do feel that they have similar benefits as they're seeing on the best companies list, what can they do to tell that story better? How can it stand out more in their culture audit essay responses? Well, first of all, please understand that we're not evaluating your benefits in that way. Like, we don't say how many days exactly, or, you know, how much coverage exactly. It it isn't it isn't really about that. We're looking at the employee experience of those benefits. So, still, when you are writing, to tell us a bit about, you know, what's important in your culture, that will, of course, be impacted by by the benefits that you want to tell us about. And so, really, you know, what we want to know is how you invented that benefit, like what you thought about. Is it is it something that, is available to everyone or maybe just the CEO and the c suite? We we care most about things that are, impactful for the whole organization. So focus in on those. Tell us, maybe how you put it together. Maybe you survey annually. Maybe you have special things for special demographic segments like pet owners get get pet insurance or something like that. How you personalize and customize, is is really those kinds of details will give will help you put your best foot forward. But, fundamentally, if you have exactly the same benefit, that isn't that doesn't matter. It's really how the employees, are are understanding and appreciating that benefit. Thanks more much, Kim. Yeah. that is always helpful, whatever you might have. So thanks, everyone, for spending time with us today. I hope this helped give you really solid information as you move forward in the next year. Before we go, we're going to share some parting wisdom from Hackensack Meridian Health about their journey to making the 100 Best List for the first time in 2025. I began this work about eight years ago, and I remember being at my first Great Place to Work conference and thinking, how am I ever going to get there? It felt very daunting. It is a journey. It takes time. It takes consistency, and it takes commitment. I would say look at your data. Understand from your data what's driving engagement. Share those drivers with your leaders, align their goals with those drivers, and then provide support, tools, and resources to help them in their journey. When you strengthen leadership team by team, you see the results. So please be sure to fill out the survey to let us know your thoughts on the session today and how we can best help you on your next steps. We have another live digital event on scaling high trust leadership behaviors for frontline performance with longtime list winner and foodie favorite Wegmans. So be sure to register via the link in the chat. And even if you can't join live, I recommend that you register so you can catch up at your convenience on demand. Our For All Summit is back in Las Vegas in April. I know I've seen many of you there before and hope to see you again in just a few short months. We've got a special discount for our customers today with a $9.95 price, so reach out to your customer success manager to get that special code. Thanks so much for joining us today. We hope to see you soon at an upcoming event. And until then, take good care. Everyone here is literally trying to do the same thing. They just want their workplace to be the best place for all of their employees. So people that care about, you know, being a good coworker, good manager, good leader, you're going to find people like that at this conference. This isn't just a summit. This is a critical mass of companies that are gonna change the world. We're here to help you be your best self. There is no monopoly on intelligence. It creates a level of imagination. It can plant seeds for long term transformations. The way we can make the biggest difference is by being an example. What is happening here? The party of the decade. At the center of it, it was gonna be not how much you're worth, but your self worth. Trust in your people, believe in them, invest in them, and they'll give you the right results. The point of business is to make life better for all. There's only one way to do it. A future where business works for all. That's it.