2018 Workforce 100: Ranking the World’s Top Companies for HR

This past year shed light on certain blind spots in some HR departments regarding harassment claims, 2018 has revealed that many companies continue to show true excellence in HR. Just as bad people practices sour employees on their employer, a great HR department can turn even the most difficult circumstance into an opportunity for a better workplace.

Now in its fifth year, the Workforce 100 recognizes companies that excelled in HR over the course of the previous year. To determine which companies make the list, Workforce editors work with researchers from the Human Capital Media Research and Advisory Group, the publication’s research arm.

Learn more about the methodology.

The research team created a model to sift through publicly available data on HR performance to separate the best from the rest. To give employees more of a say in the rankings, we asked recruiting and job-review website Glassdoor to provide data on what workers are saying about the companies that made our list. From there, we combined that information with the public data available to create our 2018 Workforce 100 list.

[Please read: The Workforce 100 2017]

[Please read: The Workforce 100 2016]

Besides being No. 1 this year, Salesforce.com is also one of 22 companies to make the Workforce 100 all five years.

One trend this year was the inclusion of many companies in industries known for high turnover, like the retail, fast-food and hospitality industries. This was the first year for Chick-fil-A (No. 45), Ikea (No. 92), In-N-Out Burger (No. 22), REI (No. 73) and Trader Joe’s (No. 69). Meanwhile, Starbucks (No. 8) has risen into the top 10 this year after consistently improving in rank over the past half-decade.

Congratulations to all the companies that made 2018’s Workforce 100 list!

Ranked companies can download the Workforce 100 press kit here!

WORKFORCE 100 METHODOLOGY

The Workforce 100 is the rank order and scores of the 100 companies that performed best in seven core areas: workplace culture, employee benefits, diversity and inclusion, employee development and talent management, human resources innovation, leadership development, and talent acquisition. The working assumption behind the list is that high performance in these core categories provides a reasonable proxy for overall HR excellence.

This year’s change in methodology created a ranked list that made comprehensive HR participation and employee feedback on their respective employers the primary focus rather than excellence in one core area. Using this method, organizations that are recognized on multiple lists but do not perform perfectly will be ranked higher than organizations that are ranked in one area but perform better in a single discipline. In addition, organizations that are not as heavily represented in external recognition programs are still acknowledged for their HR efforts through the posted opinions of their employees.

To generate the score, researchers first looked at how many lists with HR relevance a particular company appeared on, which makes up half of the total score (maximum of 5 points). The other half of the score (also with a maximum of 5 points) was derived from an average of the company’s Glassdoor performance in areas pertaining to HR. These scores are then added together to create the final score.

Component Lists:

Note: Some of the component lists are compiled by active participation from the companies listed and therefore do not recognize companies that decline to participate.