Great Place To Work Certification FAQs

Organizations partner with Great Place To Work to understand how effectively their leaders create the conditions for an overwhelmingly positive employee experience. Great Place To Work offers best-in-class data about the employee experience, sourced from surveys taken by millions of employees globally. This data offers organizations invaluable insight into how their workers will interact with the workplace and establishes benchmarks for working conditions around the world.

Great Place To Work’s employee-centric view of the workplace was revolutionary 30 years ago. Today, our Trust Model™ offers an unmatched opportunity to identify what’s happening within your organization. Great Place To Work’s survey and analysis gives employers the ability to measure and track employee experience against key metrics and industry leaders.

Earning Great Place To Work Certification has many benefits, including:

• Better recruitment metrics such as offer acceptance rate
• Higher business profitability
• Automatic Best Workplaces ™ award eligibility
• Greater employer brand awareness 
• Improved employee trust
• Higher retention: 51% higher than a typical U.S. workplace
• Greater employee pride in the company
• Recognition for having great people managers and leaders

In broad terms, the Great Place To Work Trust Index™ Survey measures the level of trust in your organization and the consistency of the employee experience. In other words: How often can employees count on something happening in their workplace, such as clear and honest leadership, fair treatment, and employee recognition?

More specifically, the Great Place To Work Trust Index Survey measures individual employee experiences of five dimensions of a high-trust company culture through 60 statements and two open-ended questions. Three of the dimensions are connected to the actions of leaders and building trust: credibility, respect, and fairness. The other two dimensions measure the workplace experience of employees in relation to their colleagues and the wider organization: pride and a sense of belonging.

These five dimensions create a workplace culture where employees feel empowered and encouraged to do their most meaningful work. High-trust cultures are shown in Great Place To Work research to outperform their competitors in recruitment and retention, productivity and innovation, and financial performance.  

Survey answers are assessed on a five-point scale, revealing the most common experience of employees in the organization. Employee scores are averaged to provide an organization-wide assessment of workplace culture: the Trust Index score.

Great Place To Work is the global authority on workplace culture. Organizations around the world, including all companies on the Fortune 100 Best Companies to Work For List, partner with Great Place To Work to understand how effectively their leaders create conditions for an overwhelmingly positive employee experience. We offer best-in-class data about the employee experience, sourced from research-backed surveys taken by millions of employees globally. This data offers organizations invaluable insight into how their workers will interact with the workplace, and establishes benchmarks for working conditions around the world.

The Great Place To Work Trust Model we use to assess employee experience and award Great Place To Work Certification was developed from thousands of hours of interviews and focus groups with employees. This process uncovered essential truths about the employee experience that have been rigorously tested over 30 years with responses from millions of workers around the world.

To earn Great Place To  Work Certification, the average score across your survey results must show that approximately 7 out of 10 of your employees are having a consistently positive experience at work.

Once you are Certified, you will receive an email from us with access to your survey scores, digital Certification badge, a toolkit of social media images, and press materials with shareable content. As an extra benefit, your organization will automatically be eligible for all our award lists through the entire 12-month period your Certification is valid.

Great Place To Work Certification criteria are the global standard for quantifying and benchmarking the employee experience. Using the Great Place To Work Trust Model and the Trust Index Survey, Certification evaluates workplace culture from the perspective that matters the most — the employee — offering the most comprehensive picture on the market of the internal health of an organization.

To be considered for Certification, organizations must have 10 or more employees and must complete a two-step process: 

1. Survey employees with the Trust Index Survey.
2. Complete the Culture Brief™, a company questionnaire. 

Positive employee responses to the Trust Index Survey (four and above on the five-point scale) are averaged to provide an organization-wide assessment of culture: the Trust Index. Companies that score above the current threshold become Great Place To Work Certified.

Surveys must meet strict requirements for how they are distributed and the percentage of employees who respond to ensure they accurately represent feedback from the company’s full population. 

If your score does not meet the Certification threshold, we suggest you review and take advantage of the insights gleaned from the employee experience feedback in your survey data. You can review your areas of opportunity and consider your next steps. You can also get support from our customer success team and as an extra add-on, our expert Culture Coaches. Any efforts you make to build a high-trust culture will increase the likelihood of earning Great Place To Work Certification the next time you apply. Rest assured, your company’s participation is completely confidential. We do not disclose our clients’ names, information, or scores until they are Certified.

Your Certification is valid for 12 months. If your workplace meets participation requirements for our lists, once Certified, your company will be automatically considered for all the Best Workplaces lists that you’re eligible for over the following 12-month period.

Absolutely! Regularly obtaining and responding to employee feedback is a crucial aspect of fostering a positive work environment. It's essential to keep a pulse on your employees' sentiments and gauge whether your efforts are leading towards the desired outcomes. In this context, an annual Certification renewal becomes a cornerstone of maintaining strong ties with your employees. It allows you to capture a benchmarked perspective of their feedback, and as societal dynamics evolve, it helps ensure that you're persistently delivering a great experience. An up-to-date Certification is an effective signal to your employees, prospective hires, and clients that you're committed to providing an exceptional work environment. When they see a continuous streak of annual Certifications, they'll understand that you've been consistently dedicated to enhancing the work experience over the years.

Yes, the Great Place To Work Certification program fee covers the cost of the survey and the data analysis needed to produce a Great Place To Work Certification profile, employer branding assets, and reports showing you how your workplace compares to the country’s Best Workplaces in your size category.

Working with Great Place To Work gives you a competitive advantage by providing crucial insight on improving your culture as well as greater brand exposure in the employer market.

Employees answer 14 demographic questions and respond to 60 statements across a five-point consistency scale as well as two open-ended questions. Employees generally take 10 to 20 minutes to complete the survey.

You can add custom questions at some subscription tiers. While our core Trust Index statements must remain unedited in order to consider you for Great Place To Work Certification and our awards, we offer different subscription tiers that allow you to add your own open-ended questions, demographic questions, and survey statements. Any additional survey statements will not be evaluated as part of our awards, so you can collect the feedback you find most relevant to your business without it impacting your Certification result.

We take our ethical obligation to survey takers very seriously. Employees can rest assured that their participation is completely confidential and voluntary. Survey responses come directly to Great Place To Work. Employers cannot see who has or who has not completed the survey while the survey is live. We remove unique identifiers once the survey closes. For employers, company participation in the Certification program and the survey results are completely confidential. We do not disclose our clients’ names, information, or scores until they are Great Place To Work Certified™.

Yes. Once your survey is closed, you’ll immediately get (at minimum) an overview of your scores so you can see how your employee experience measures against our key evaluation areas, and how you stack up against our Best Workplaces benchmarks. You’ll be able to see how your company compares to top workplaces in the country with access to the Fortune 100 Best Companies to Work For® and the Fortune Best Small and Medium Workplaces™ benchmarks. This is exclusive benchmark data only available through the Great Place To Work survey platform. If you’d like even more in-depth reporting and benchmarking, contact [email protected] to learn about upgrade options.

Yes, our Trust Index™ survey is available in over 50 languages, and they’re all available for you to use at no additional cost.

If some employees don’t have their own unique, dedicated work email address (or don’t use/can’t get to theirs), we have alternatives. Receiving feedback from all your employees is so important. Contact [email protected] to discuss the specific needs of your employee population.

The Certification badge is license-free. There is no cost to use it anywhere. If you go on to be ranked on a BestWorkplaces list and decide you want to use badges from our media partners Fortune and PEOPLE, you will have to license them from the publishers; a separate agency handles that licensing.