We are proud to announce the winners of the 2nd annual Glassdoor.com Employees’ Choice Awards for Top 50 Best Places to Work. The Glassdoor Best Places to Work list is based on the employee sentiment of their respective employers from throughout the past year¹. With all the economic ups and downs, employee opinion of a company is becoming an increasingly important and valuable barometer of how well a company treats its workforce during good times — or in more troubling times like we’ve seen most recently.
Highlights from the 2010 Best Places to Work Awards include:
Southwest Airlines beat out last year’s top Best Place to Work winner – General Mills. Southwest garners a 4.7 company rating and CEO Gary Kelly has a 94% approval rating. We think Southwest Airlines Flight Attendee based in Oakland, CA said it best when discussing why the company is a great company to work for: “SWA knows that the employee is just as important as the customer.”
However despite the fact that General Mills dropped one spot in the Best Place to Work ranks, the cereal manufacturer CEO Ken Powell took a one percentage point increase in his approval rating (97%) compared to this time last year, giving him the distinction of highest rated CEO on the list. General Mills also held on to its impressive company rating of 4.5 (very satisfied) for two consecutive years.
Coming in as the 3rd Best Place to Work is newcomer Slalom Consulting, which has a 4.1 company rating while CEO Tony Rojas has a notable 81% approval rating. A Slalom Consulting SharePoint Consultant (Atlanta, GA) writes: “A great place to work if you want to grow your career without sacrificing your work/life balance!” Top five veteran Bain & Company comes in at #4 falling from #2 spot last year as its company rating slid from 4.5 last year to 4.3. Following closely at #5 is another management consultant, McKinsey & Company, moving up from #12 last year as its company rating inched up to 4.1 from 4.0.
In addition, some other interesting facts regarding the list:
- 62% of companies made Glassdoor’s Best Places to Work list two consecutive years, including: General Mills, Google, Goldman Sachs, Apple, Whole Foods and Marriott just to name a few. Those that fell off include: Netflix, Nike and Genentech.
- Roughly one-third of those on the list last year climbed up in ratings despite the tough employment climate this year. Only 12% of companies on the 2010 Best Places to Work list received a very satisfied (4.1+) company rating compared to 18% in 2009; The remainder of the 2010 Best Places to Work companies received satisfied ratings of 3.5 or greater.
- 6% of CEOs on the 2010 Best Places to Work list have an approval rating over 90% compared to 14% in 2009. Of those over 90% this year are: General Mills CEO Ken Powell (97% approval), Southwest Airlines CEO Gary Kelly (94% approval) and Apple’s Steve Jobs (91% approval).
- Of the most concentrated states with headquarter locations for 2010 Best Places to Work Winners: 20% are located in California, 12% Texas and 10% Massachusetts.
- Industries sectors most frequently represented on 2010 list include: Business Services (18%), Computer Hardware and Software (16%), Financial Services (8%) and Insurance (6%)
- New York City was the most frequently represented HQ city on the list: McKinsey & Company (Rank: 5), Goldman Sachs (Rank: 16) and PricewaterhouseCoopers (Rank: 49)
Here’s the complete list of Top 50 Best Places to Work for 2010:
Congratulations to the 2010 Best Place to Work award winners!
To find out more about the top 50 workplaces and read company reviews from employees, we invite you to visit: 2010 Employees’ Choice Awards. A complete copy of the Glassdoor survey along with additional information about the Glassdoor Best Places to Work methodology may be requested via email: BestPlacestoWork@glassdoor.com. For those thinking ahead to 2011, eligibility review period kicked off Dec. 1, 2009. And for those interested in seeing what else Glassdoor has to offer, check out salary and compensation reports, as well as interview questions and reviews for specific jobs at specific companies.
Interested to see what companies made the lowest rated list? Click here.
¹ To be eligible for the 2nd Annual Employees’ Choice Awards for the Best Places to Work companies must have received at least 25 reviews between December 1, 2008 to December 1, 2009 from U.S.-based employees, maintain an above 3.0 cumulative average overall and across eight workplace factors addressed in the company’s voluntary 20-question survey, and the CEO must have an approval rating higher than 50%. Glassdoor carefully reviews each ratings survey, company and interview review and salary report submitted through its website and only those surveys and reports that are approved by the Glassdoor research team are eligible for the list.
