Glassdoor.com® Launches Employees’ Choice Awards Unveiling the 50 Best Places to Work

General Mills, Bain & Company and Netflix Top List, According to Their Employees

SAUSALITO, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Glassdoor.com®, a career and workplace community bringing greater transparency to company cultures and compensation, today released its first annual Employees’ Choice Awards¹, listing the top 50 “Best Places to Work” based on surveys² collected from employees at more than 11,000 companies operating in the United States. General Mills had the highest rating from its employees, followed closely by Bain & Company, Netflix, Adobe, and Northwestern Mutual, which round out the top five companies on Glassdoor’s inaugural list.

“The Glassdoor Employees’ Choice Awards are truly unique in that they are based on the unbiased voices of the people who walk the halls every day and know these companies best”

“The Glassdoor Employees’ Choice Awards are truly unique in that they are based on the unbiased voices of the people who walk the halls every day and know these companies best,” said Robert Hohman, CEO and co-founder of Glassdoor.com. “Despite the inherent challenges faced by most businesses today, reading just a handful of company reviews on Glassdoor.com makes it easy to see the attributes that make these top companies consistently stand out and distinguish themselves from the pack.”

Unlike many workplace-related awards that require companies to self nominate, Glassdoor relies solely on the input from employees. The ranking of the top 50 list was determined by each company’s overall rating³ on Glassdoor, which is the cumulative average rating from employees who elected to participate in a 20-question survey that addresses key workplace factors, including work/life balance, career opportunities, communication, compensation and benefits, employee morale, recognition and feedback, senior leadership as well as fairness and respect.

General Mills’ rating was 4.5 and employees gave CEO Ken Powell a 96% approval rating. The complete list along with corresponding CEO approval rating is below.

Glassdoor Employees’ Choice: 50 Best Places to Work
Rank	Company	Overall Rating (5-point scale)	CEO	CEO Approval Rating (%)
1	General Mills	4.5	Ken Powell	96
2	Bain & Company	4.5	Orit Gadiesh	88
3	Netflix	4.4	Reed Hastings	100
4	Adobe	4.3	Shantanu Narayen	82
5	Northwestern Mutual	4.2	Edward J. Zore	98
6	Whole Foods	4.2	John P. Mackey	85
7	Google	4.1	Eric E. Schmidt	89
8	SAP	4.1	Henning Kagermann	75
9	Continental Airlines	4.1	Larry Kellner	79
10	NetApp	4.0	Dan Warmenhoven	79
11	Intuit	4.0	Brad D. Smith	78
12	McKinsey & Company	4.0	Ian Davis	85
13	FactSet	3.9	Philip A. Hadley	91
14	Boston Consulting	3.9	Hans-Paul Bürkner	71
15	Procter & Gamble	3.9	A.G. Lafley	86
16	Caterpillar	3.9	Jim Owens	85
17	Genentech	3.8	Art Levinson	94
18	CareerBuilder	3.8	Matt Ferguson	86
19	Apple	3.8	Steve Jobs	90
20	Juniper Networks	3.8	Kevin Johnson	n/a
21	Marriott	3.8	Bill Marriott Jr.	82
22	NIKE	3.8	Mark G. Parker	100
23	Ernst & Young Global	3.8	Jim Turley	79
24	MITRE	3.8	Alfred Grasso	53
25	Chevron	3.8	Dave O'Reilly	73
26	Goldman Sachs	3.8	Lloyd C. Blankfein	86
27	Nordstrom	3.8	Blake W. Nordstrom	75
28	Citrix Systems	3.7	Mark B. Templeton	77
29	Schlumberger	3.7	Andrew Gould	70
30	Booz Allen Hamilton	3.7	Ralph W. Shrader	61
31	National Instruments	3.7	James J. Truchard	74
32	Novell	3.7	Ron Hovsepian	64
33	PricewaterhouseCoopers	3.7	Sam DiPiazza Jr.	59
34	American Express	3.6	Ken Chenault	80
35	Cisco Systems	3.6	John T. Chambers	79
36	USAA	3.6	Joe Robles Jr.	83
37	EMC	3.6	Joe Tucci	60
38	Capital One	3.6	Rich Fairbank	68
39	QUALCOMM	3.6	Paul E. Jacobs	75
40	MetLife	3.6	Rob Henrikson	53
41	Lockheed Martin	3.6	Robert J. Stevens	63
42	Texas Instruments	3.6	Rich Templeton	64
43	US Army	3.6	Pete Geren III	50
44	Deloitte	3.5	Jim Quigley	64
45	Wells Fargo	3.5	John G. Stumpf	65
46	Best Buy	3.5	Brad Anderson	64
47	salesforce.com	3.5	Marc Benioff	69
48	Accenture	3.5	Bill Green	67
49	FedEx	3.5	Fred Smith	67
50	Paychex	3.5	Jon Judge	59

For more information about the awards and sample reviews from top companies, visit http://www.glassdoor.com/Best-Places-to-Work-LST_KQ0,19.htm and the Glassdoor.com blog (http://www.glassdoor.com/blog/). A complete copy of the Glassdoor survey along with additional information about the Best Places to Work methodology may be requested via email: [e-mail]. For more information about Glassdoor and to read company reviews visit www.glassdoor.com. To receive regular updates about new and interesting data and reports, visit and/or subscribe to the Glassdoor blog.

About Glassdoor.com

Glassdoor.com is a new career and workplace community where anyone can find and anonymously share real-time reviews, ratings and salary details about specific jobs for specific employers – for free. Designed to deliver greater transparency around our work life, Glassdoor enables employees, job seekers, employers and recruiters to simultaneously see – for the first time – unedited employee opinions about a company’s work environment along with details of pay, benefits and CEO approval ratings. Glassdoor was founded in 2007 and launched its public beta in June 2008. Glassdoor is headquartered in Sausalito, Calif. and was founded by Richard Barton, Robert Hohman and Tim Besse.

¹ To be eligible for the inaugural Employees’ Choice Awards for the Best Places to Work companies must have received at least 25 reviews from U.S.-based employees who are current employees of the company or who were employed at some time during 2008, maintain a ‘satisfied’ or above cumulative average overall and across eight workplace factors addressed in the company’s voluntary 20-question survey, and the company’s CEO must have an approval rating higher than 50%.

² Glassdoor carefully reviews each ratings survey, company 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.

³ The overall rating on Glassdoor.com is based on a 5-point scale with 5 being “extremely satisfied” and 1 being “extremely dissatisfied.”