What key qualities make your organization a Great Place To Work?
The Culture Audit™ question
What key qualities make your organization a Great Place To Work®? How do you create this unique environment and why do you do it?
Thirty years ago, we set out to answer a question: What do great workplaces have in common and how do they create them? We expected the best workplaces might be employee-owned, pay above market rate, or perhaps they would share a common organizational structure — Maybe we could find a baseline compensation, training or recognition program requirement.
Shockingly we found that none of these tangible programs and perks matter. For every company that offers generous monthly bonuses to high performers, there’s another that offers a simple peer to peer recognition that’s a far better place to work.
Is there a magic bullet to being a best workplace?
The data tells us that it is never what companies do that makes them great workplaces, it is how they do it. To be effective, the how has to build employee trust – this is the defining characteristic of all great workplaces:
Employees trust the people they work for, have pride in what they do, and enjoy their colleagues.
The best workplaces go a step beyond: Ensuring the company’s values and leadership are used together to build and enhance trust across all employees, unleashing the maximum potential of everyone in the organization, driving innovation, and realizing the outsized financial results that trust-based companies are known for.
How does Great Place To Work measure Trust?
When we evaluate companies for our premier national lists, our primary consideration is whether employees themselves say it is a great workplace.
- We use the Trust Index™ Survey to ask current employees to rate their organizations confidentially on over 60 trust-building behaviors. For example, they tell us whether managers consistently follow through on their promises, treat people with respect, and avoid favoritism.
- To round out our analysis, we want to understand from the company’s point of view what they have done to create the environment that employees are describing in the survey. So, we ask you to tell us (in less than 5,000 words) :
What key qualities make your organization a Great Place To Work? How do you create this unique environment — and why do you do it?
What is Great Place To Work looking for in a response?
In response, companies may be tempted to provide a comprehensive list of their benefits and perks, or fear that we have an undisclosed list of specific programs we’re looking for and that they can make a mistake by focusing on professional development, rather than community service. Neither is helpful or true.
Through our research, we know that there is nothing magical about the specific benefits you offer – it’s the culture you create through them and through your people that has the impact. In 80% of the cases, your competitors will describe substantively the same programs, but they can never have the same culture. Set your answer apart by sharing the big picture of the core attributes that define your culture – and the context, strategy and effectiveness of the programs that drive this culture. Bring your culture to life by showing it to us in action, illustrating your answer with the programs that show you at your best.
For example, is your culture one of ambitious world travelers driven by excellence? Maybe you want to highlight the exceptional professional development programs that push your employees to excel, the recognition programs that reward them, and the work-life balance programs that sustain them?
Or maybe your culture centers around caring – for your own people, your customers and your community. Then tell us about the exceptional benefits that meet the needs of your people in crises, how you reward people for going above and beyond with customers, and how integrated community service is in every aspect of your employee life-cycle, from onboarding through retirement. (Still not sure where to start? Here are some tips.)
Here are some other ways you can make your answer stand out from others:
- Communicate your company’s unique culture. This bears repeating.
Think about how your competitors are going to describe their cultures – what is different about people’s day-to-day experiences at your company that could never be mistaken for working for your competitor across town? - Draw attention to the ways you’ve intentionally included everyone.
Maybe you’ve made sure that a particular program that would typically only be offered to the day shift is offered to the night shift too. Or, maybe the same programs don’t work for everyone, so you’ve developed unique programs for a subset of your workforce so regardless of role or background everyone has a way their needs are met. Be explicit about how you include everyone in your programs, benefits, and the best of your culture. - Call out ways you make your programs personal and human, instead of transactional and commoditized.
For example, maybe your anniversary program spends fewer dollars per employee, but each person receives a personalized note from their manager and a token that relates to a personal hobby or interest. - Make the connection clear when your values and philosophy drive key programs.
You stand out when you are clear about who your company is, what your strengths are, and how your programs build these strengths and strategically support the business itself. For example, your pro bono program takes on more meaning when you share that your people value development and community impact, so in addition to using it to do well in the community and inspiring your people, you also intentionally take on projects that build the skills and resumes of junior professionals in areas they are passionate about – and that that ultimately has increased retention of key talent and expanded your business by 20%. - Show us the data.
To be honest, nothing makes our eyes glaze over more than grand aspirational claims to greatness without evidence. Answers that share hard numbers (or at least specific examples) describing the utilization and impact of your programs really stand out from others. For example, how many of your new managers use that professional development program and then go on to be promoted from within? What kind of positive impacts are your programs having on your people – and your business?
This question is meant to give us the big picture story about who your company is in action and how you’ve intentionally created the culture you have. We look forward to getting to know you better through it – and sharing who you are with the world.
How do you ensure everyone can reach their highest potential?
The Culture Audit™ question
How do you ensure everyone – regardless of who they are or what job they do – is a full member of your organization and can reach their highest potential?
If there’s any magic to best workplaces, it’s their ability to bring out the best of all their people’s talent with an extraordinarily high degree of consistency. This ability to “maximize human potential” is what turns a Great Place To Work® into a best workplace – and reaps rewards not just for their people, but for the business.
While great workplaces do an excellent job building trust with their typical employee, the best ones raise the bar by consciously ensuring that they bring out the best in a range of employees. Regardless of whether their next best hire is an extrovert or introvert, from Atlanta or Dubai, a recent graduate or an experienced professional, a single mom in a corporate office or a widower working the night shift – that person knows they have a fair chance to progress in the organization and that the unique talents they bring are desired and make a difference to the success of the organization.
How does Great Place To Work analyze a company’s abilities to maximize human potential?
- We primarily look at each company’s Trust Index™ survey results to understand the degree of consistency employees experience in the workplace. We aren’t looking for one group to have a better experience than another – we’re examining demographic groups (for example: job role, tenure, gender, etc.) to see how similar or different the people within it report access to information, camaraderie with colleagues, the respect with which they are treated – and comparing those trends to that of other similar organizations.
- To round out our analysis, we also look to understand your company’s point of view on what you have done systematically to ensure a consistently great work experience for all your people. We focus the question to understand your company’s approach to common critical barriers to employees’ full engagement in your workplace. So, we ask you to tell us (in less than 5,500 words):
How do you ensure everyone – regardless of who they are or what job they do – is a full member of your organization and can reach their highest potential?
What is Great Place To Work looking for in a response?
We recommend you focus on the areas we’ve found set the best companies apart. Share specific examples of ways your organization has created an experience of full inclusion by systemically ensuring equity, building belonging, and valuing and leveraging your people’s uniqueness.
Great answers will typically tell us:
- As a baseline, what you do to make sure people can count on being treated equitably by the organization.
For example, what strategies do you have in place to create organizational accountability and measurable success in areas like equitable hiring, pay, promotions, and allocation of development & coaching resources? - How you systemically ensure different people feel they fully belong in your organization.
In what ways do you proactively help different people feel central to and full participants in your business and culture? For example, some companies have a regular interpreter in staff meetings so hearing-impaired or non-native speakers can fully participate. - How you systemically show that you value – and leverage – individuals’ uniqueness.
What strategies do you have to identify the talents, needs and perspectives that make your people unique? What ways have you found to meet these unique needs and leverage different experiences and talents for the betterment of the business? For example, some companies have a structured way to take people’s talents, backgrounds and experiences into account when designing project teams or getting feedback on business decisions. - Describe how you engage with leaders to ensure they are inclusive in their approaches to creating a Great Place To Work For All™ .
For example, does your organization have a clear stance on what an inclusive, “For All” leader looks like in your company? Is there an intentional system to hire, develop and hold a range of great leaders accountable to this standard? - Share highlights of how your benefits/programs address any unique needs.
specific to things like employees’ tenure, position, work shift, educational background, pay status, gender, age, ability, race/ethnicity, national origin, etc. Plus, programs related to hiring, onboarding and training.
As with all the questions in the Culture Audit, evidence and specific examples will make your answers stand out. Most companies tell us compelling aspirational statements they try to live up to – but actual examples, evidence and data bring these claims to life in a more convincing way. Don’t avoid telling us if you are not where you want to be yet in your results. Tell us about your progress, what you’ve learned along the way, what you’re doing next, and how it’s impacting your business.
What are your organization’s values or guiding principles?
The Culture Audit™ question
What are your organization’s values and guiding principles? Please share the three (3) specific examples of how you have put them into practice.
When we talk about values at a Great Place To Work® For All™, we’re not talking about mere slogans on the wall or the language on the careers page of your company website – we’re talking about principles that guide the day-to-day way people work together at your company. Our research finds that the best companies ensure that those values and behaviors are well defined, known by everyone in the business, and used to support in the execution of their strategy.
What are values exactly and why are they important?
Values are what leaders use to make decisions that cannot be made using spreadsheets and data analysis alone. They are the bedrock principles that guide executives’ choices in complex, difficult matters like hiring, firing, geographic expansions, doing more for customers, and mergers.
How does Great Place To Work analyze a company’s values?
When we evaluate companies for premier national lists, we analyze how they live out their values through two lenses.
- The primary lens is how employees report the company lives its values, which we assess through employee feedback on the Trust Index™ survey.
- To round out this analysis, we ask the company to tell us (in less than 3,000 words) how their stated values shape their programs, practices, and key decisions through this Culture Audit question:
What are your organization’s values or guiding principles? Please share three specific examples of how you have put them into practice
What is Great Place To Work looking for in a response?
We don’t just want a bullet list of what your values are – we aren’t evaluating whether you have “good” or “bad” values. Instead, we are trying to understand how your specific values play an active role in your workplace. Great responses to this question stand out because you:
- Avoid simply reporting a list of your values and instead bring to life how your values capture what’s unique about your company.
How are they specific to your organization’s particular business, market, and culture? How do your employees connect to these values?
Help us see why your values aren’t just words on a wall, but something your people actively engage with. For example, you could share how you selected them. Perhaps you developed your values collaboratively, conducting focus groups and employee surveys, tapping into the insights of groups like high potential employees, employee resource groups (ERGs), senior leaders and front-line employees, so that everyone had direct input into defining what the company stands for. Regardless of how you determined them, understanding why and how you picked them can illustrate how connect to your specific business.
- Explain how your values play out day-to-day in the workplace.
For example, how do they factor into things like hiring and onboarding, employee recognition, decision-making, leadership development, setting priorities or strategy, how employees are promoted, or other key programs and decisions? The examples you share might demonstrate how you live your values in big ways and small, such as special recognition given to employees for demonstrating your values, or how managers are accountable for leading with values. Answers will stand out when they share specific examples that help us see how your values are relevant in everyday work situations and are actually utilized. - Share specific examples about how your values were used to make difficult decisions.
We want to see what happens when values are really put to the test — when push comes to shove, will an organization rely on its values to shape how they handle a situation? For example, how do your values influence what happens when mistakes occur by an individual, team or the organization? Have you ever taken a risk to live by your values? Perhaps you’ve taken a stand because of your values that’s risked negative public or shareholder response, or you’ve invested time or money to do what you think is right. How have your values applied when your workforce has faced difficult circumstances like a recession or layoff? How do your values apply to your customers and broader community when it might cost the company something?
Certified companies have told us about times they have taken public stances on sensitive political issues despite potential backlash from their shareholders or market because of their value for caring for their people and doing the right thing. They’ve even told us about calling competitors during layoffs to help their top talent get placed in their next positions.
In short, great answers to this question help us understand more about what your organization’s values are, why you developed them, how they shape your strategies and actions, and how they impact your employees’ day-to-day experiences.
What is your strategy and philosophy for ensuring a successful business?
The Culture Audit™ question
What is your strategy and philosophy for ensuring a successful business? How are strategy, business direction, and goals developed and communicated across the organization?
The best workplaces produce and leverage effective leadership teams who have meaningful connections with their company’s culture and people, as well as an ability to create a coherent and effective strategy at every level of the business.
How does Great Place To Work measure leadership effectiveness?
To consider companies for our premier national lists, we analyze each company’s leadership effectiveness using two approaches:
- Our primary focus is on how employees actually experience their leaders, which we measure through our Trust Index™ survey.
- To round this analysis out, we also ask companies to tell us about their approach to a key leadership competency (in less than 5,000 words). We ask
What is your strategy and philosophy for ensuring a successful business? How are strategy, business direction, and goals developed and communicated across the organization?
What is Great Place To Work looking for in a response?
We are not evaluating or critiquing your organization’s short and long-term strategy and philosophy through this question. Rather, we are seeking to understand how your strategy, direction, and goals were developed and communicated with employees at all levels of the organization, and how well-equipped leaders at all levels are to connect to and communicate the strategy. Answers stand out when they:
- Share how your strategy, direction, and goals were developed.
It’s particularly useful to describe who was included across the business and anything you did to ensure great ideas could rise to the top. While we do not believe there is one “correct” way to develop a strategy, we do want to understand your particular approach and why it works for your business and people. - Provide examples for how you implement that strategy, direction, and goals through people at all levels of your organization.
We want to get a picture not only how compellingly your executive team can speak to the company’s overall strategy, but how you equip leaders at every level down to frontline supervisors to be the torch bearers of your mission, vision, and strategy. For example, what communication, resources, training, and accountability do you provide so leaders can confidently speak to your strategies in every corner of the business? Are there special ways you support individuals who are not leaders to connect their daily work to the strategy, direction, and goals? What feedback loops do you have so that employees can provide input or suggest how the organization can make updates and adjustments? - Call out any fundamental principle that ties your business decisions and strategy together.
For example, perhaps your retail organization’s business and people strategy centers around sharing your love of the outdoors and protecting the earth. Or your customer-driven organization commits to always putting people first. In some companies, this principle might be your mission, vision, values, purpose, brand identity, or some other key philosophy that forms your organization’s “true north.” Making this guiding principle explicit helps us understand how clearly your business and people strategies integrate together and align your people in this direction.
Engaging individual contributors and leaders at every level of the organization in a clear and coherent strategy is a powerful indicator of great workplaces and drivers of their outsized success. We look forward to learning more about the approach that drives your people and business forward.
How does your organization involve employees in new ideas?
The Culture Audit™ question
How does your organization involve employees in developing new ideas and better ways of doing things that result in real improvements to your business performance?
Once, there was a poolside bartender who worked for a large hospitality company. His hotel was a resort in a very hot location; and over the course of his time tending bar by the pool, he began to notice a problem. The weather and pool deck were so hot that guests were hesitant to leave the pool to walk to the bar to order drinks; therefore, business was slow.
He had a theory that if they were to remove the obstacle of leaving the pool and standing in the heat that more people would be willing to buy drinks throughout the day, so he came up with the idea of swimming bartenders who could wade around the pool, take orders, and then bring the drinks back to the guests in or next to the pool.
He passed the idea to his manager, who advocated for his idea to hotel management. They converted a few of their servers to swimming servers and tried the employee’s idea. It was a resounding success, as the revenue brought in by that poolside bar dramatically increased and the hotel was able to better meet the needs of the guest.
Our research has found that it takes a great culture to have innovation that comes from anywhere in the business – we define this as Innovation By All.
Innovation By All is what happens when all employees are encouraged, empowered, and recognized for trying new and better ways of doing things, regardless of who they are and what they do for the business. It’s win-win for employees and for business, driving powerfully better workplace experiences for your people and dramatic revenue growth your company.
How does Great Place To Work measure Innovation By All™?
As part of our analysis for our premier national lists, Great Place To Work® examines companies’ abilities to tap into their people’s innovative contributions to the business.
- The focus of our analysis is on our Trust Index™ survey data, which tells us how effectively leaders engage their workforce in innovation-driving behaviors.
- To round out our analysis, we ask companies to tell us what they have done to create the experiences employees describe. In the Culture Audit, we ask companies to share (in less than 5,000 words):
How does your organization involve employees in developing new ideas and better ways of doing things that result in real improvements to your business performance?
What is Great Place To Work looking for in a response?
Great answers to this question:
- Don’t get stuck on the word “innovation.”
Best companies are distinguished by having a unique ability to engage all their talent in fueling new ideas and better ways of doing things that drive their business success. Whether you call this empowerment, continuous improvement, innovation, or something else entirely doesn’t matter. Regardless of whether your people are engineers or cashiers, whether you are in technology or banking, you need your people to help you be agile and improve. We understand that you don’t want accountants to invent new tax code – but what do you want them to improve? - Help us understand any systems you have to drive innovation.
Perhaps you have programs to enable employee collaboration and idea-sharing? Maybe you dedicate resources like a physical space for collaboration or time for training sessions that promote employee ideas? Perhaps you equip leaders at all levels of your organization to respond to people’s ideas and create a clear path to move them forward? How do your programs work together to reach all corners of the business and positions within the organization? Your answers will make more sense to us if you clearly communicate the intent and desired outcomes of these practices – we want to understand whether innovation happens intentionally or by chance. - Explain how you motivate and reward innovation.
Real examples are particularly useful to help bring this to life. They help us understand the complete life cycle of innovation at your organization. For example, how do you recognize and reward successful innovations? What happens when you try something new but the outcome isn’t a success? What happens to ideas that do not get implemented? Is there a feedback loop for those ideas? Is there a sense of appreciation for the effort it took to come up with the idea? - Reflect a diverse set of examples of employees sharing new ideas and better ways of doing things and how those ideas have benefited your business.
Innovation from any corner of the business is great. Your examples stand out even more if you can share examples that are not limited to a specific group of individuals – for example, just from management or just from your research & development team. Examples from people in roles where innovation is not considered part of their daily job are particularly interesting because it shows that innovation is part of your culture at large, and not just part of discrete individuals’ job descriptions. - Include metrics.
Any place you can tell us how many employees participate in your programs or quantify the business impact of the innovations your people have driven is an opportunity to set your company apart. Many organizations may have similar approaches to innovation. Evidence that your people are highly engaged in your programs and that they have a quantifiably positive business impact will stand out.
Engaging individual contributors and leaders at every level of the organization in a clear and coherent strategy is a powerful indicator of great workplaces and drivers of their outsized success. We look forward to learning more about the approach that drives your people and business forward.
What bold act of leadership has your organization taken?
The Culture Audit™ question
What bold act of leadership has your organization taken to improve the root conditions necessary to create great workplaces for all in your organization or the community at large? How has this impacted your people and business? And how has this impacted your community?
Let us let you in on a secret: Great Place To Work® doesn’t just want you to work for a great workplace – we want EVERYONE to work for a great workplace. We know it’s better for business, better for people, and better for the world.
We’re not the only ones who think this way. Many of the leading Best Workplaces™ are so committed to changing the world and ensuring great workplaces for all are the norm, that they are driven to act not only on behalf of their own people, but to positively influence the broader workforce, industries and communities they are part of.
We invite companies applying for our premier national lists to tell us (in less than 5,000 words):
What bold act of leadership has your organization taken to improve the root conditions necessary to create great workplaces for all in your organization or the community at large? How has this impacted your people and business? And how has this impacted your community?
What might bold acts of leadership look like?
Perhaps you are investing in widescale reskilling efforts that allow workers who would otherwise lose their jobs to gain a share of the tech-driven economy. Or maybe you started your businesses in an economically disadvantaged area, creating jobs and revitalizing business and residential communities. Maybe you’ve inspired deep pride and loyalty from your people due to widescale environmental actions. Perhaps your board might be acknowledging and acting to redress systemic injustices in your organization, sharing your successes and failures to help others. Or, maybe you have a totally different vision of what you’ve learned is necessary to scale your impact and create great workplaces for all in the world. We’d love to hear about it!
What might this look like in practice?
Maybe your company is committed to creating equitable access to job opportunities in your own organization and your larger community and industry. So you’ve gone beyond ensuring that your own pipeline and hiring is diverse, to figuring out a systemic way to create healthier, more inclusive talent pipelines in your community or industry.
Make sure we know that the donations and volunteer time you are investing in your local school system are done with a larger intention than simply being a great community member and inspiring your employees to make a difference. Help us understand how deep your partnership with your local school system is, and the time and money you are investing. How big of a risk was it for your CEO to pitch this investment to your shareholders? If your strategy aims to improve outcomes for at-risk teens, those with learning differences, chronically underemployed communities, girls in STEM, veterans needing post-military careers – what metrics do you have that show how many people’s lives you are impacting and the success rates of people who then go on to be hired by your organization or others in your industry or community?
Maybe your program doesn’t impact a lot of people – but is targeted to folks that are otherwise not focused on – why did you focus there? How do you know your investments are actually creating better workplaces for all? How many years have you been engaged in this work? What kind of lessons have you learned and year-over-year improvements are you making?
What is Great Place To Work looking for in a response?
We are looking for a demonstration of your organization achieving its purpose, having a powerful impact on the world, or creating a source of employee pride that goes beyond your products and services. Essentially, how are you sharing in and magnifying our vision to create great workplaces for all across the globe? How are you taking a stand on behalf of this movement?
To be frank – we expect that many companies won’t have an answer to this. This question is optional extra credit and organizations won’t need to answer it to qualify for and make a Best Workplace list.
But our national list winners have always represented leadership and best-in-class employers at the vanguard of business culture. We expect that just as the market has followed the Best Workplaces’ winning practices in the past – no doubt chasing the 3x stock out-performance their cultures are so famous for – future employers will soon be following these leaders as they take a more thoughtful approach to strengthening the social and economic ecosystems their businesses require to thrive.
If your company is already acting on the vision that every organization should be a Great Place To Work For All™, let us know how you’re doing it! (And if you’re not, keep an eye out for the inspiring examples we’ll be sharing next year of those leading the way.)
Whatever your vision for addressing the fundamental challenges to creating great workplaces for all in your own organization or the community at large looks like to you, excellent responses to this question will stand out when they:
- Make clear connections for us.
Help us understand why the example you are sharing will help create great workplaces for all. - Quantify the impact you are having.
How much of what you’re doing are fine words – and how much evidence do you have that leads to measurable results? Please focus on providing examples and evidence rather than aspirational claims. - Help us understand the scope of who you are impacting.
Are your actions focused on particular needs of your own people? How many of them? Why those folks? Are you supporting people beyond your own walls? What kind of broader influence are you having? - Provide perspective on how significant an investment this is for your company.
Your work may cost your organization money, time, or even a risk to your brand or social capital when you do what you feel is right. - Show your commitment.
How persistently are you chasing your goal? Is this a one-time event, or part of a multi-year commitment?
This kind of context in your answer will really make your answers stand out – so we know the difference between a great volunteer day, and a company that’s making strategic investments they know are paying off to change the world. We can’t wait to hear from you and together change the world by creating great places to work for all.
