Great Place To Work Certification:
The most trusted workplace award
Anyone can claim they have a great workplace culture. Only Great Place To Work® Certification™ gives you independent, concrete proof that your employee experience is a cut above the rest. Discover how it recognizes exceptional company cultures and what it takes to earn certification.


















How Certification works and why it’s unique
To apply for Certification, you’ll use our employee engagement survey tool, the Trust Index™ Survey, to ask your employees about their experience at work.

Tested, scientific approach
Certification is based on the Great Place To Work Model™, based on 30 years of research into company culture.

Driven by real employee feedback
The employee engagement survey gathers genuine employee feedback, focusing on trust, respect, and camaraderie. Employees’ real-life experiences at work determine whether a company earns Certification.

Real-time reflection of your culture
By continuing to earn Certification year after year, you show your people — and job seekers — that culture is a key part of your long-term strategy.
Benefits of Certification
Bolster your bottom line
There’s a clear, tangible relationship between your culture and your company’s performance. At companies that embrace the Great Place To Work Model:
- Stocks outperform the market by 19%
- Employees are 38% more likely to say they plan to stay at their company for a long time
- People give extra effort and adapt more quickly to change
- Employees are 87% more likely to feel they deliver excellent customer service

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Earn company culture awards
Once Certified, you’ll be automatically considered for placement on our famous Best Workplaces™ lists, such as:
- Fortune 100 Best Companies to Work For®
- World’s Best Workplaces™
- PEOPLE® Companies that Care
- 20+ lists in all — see them here

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Clarity on strengths & opportunities
On your way toward Certification, your Trust Index Survey will reveal your culture's strengths and opportunities and show you how your results compare to relevant benchmarks. You'll discover early indicators for:
- What specific experiences make employees stay — or leave
- Which leaders who are boosting performance and productivity
- Who might need a little extra support to help their teams shine
- How your culture compares to the Best Workplaces

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Fill your recruitment pipeline
Top talent can work wherever they want. Certification shows job seekers that your current employees are there because they want to be, not because they have to be.
- In a 2023 market study, job seekers were 15 times more likely to choose a company if they knew it had been Certified as a great workplace by its employees.

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Transform your workplace culture with Certification
Achieving the Great Place To Work Certification is more than just an award each year — it’s proof that your company is a leader in building a thriving, trust-based workplace.
Survey
Powered by our proprietary Trust Index, easily survey your employees using the Great Place To Work Trust Index Survey to better understand your workplace culture.
Insights & Benchmarking
Using data-backed insights, you will be able to make more informed decisions and get a benchmarked view of your organization, creating a thriving culture.
Certification
Great Place To Work Certification evaluates workplace culture from the perspective that matters most — the employee — providing a clear signal to the world about your culture and commitment to employee experience.
Best Workplaces Lists
Once Great Place To Work Certified™, companies are automatically eligible for lists in Fortune& PEOPLE, earning recognition for the culture you built.
Have a question?
If not, let's get started on your Certification.
Great Place To Work Certification is a recognition award earned by companies that meet specific employee experience benchmarks. It highlights organizations with a positive, engaging workplace culture. 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.
The cost varies depending on your company size and the specific services chosen. Contact our team for a tailored quote.
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.
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 Great Place To Work 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.
Our Trust Index™ Survey platform is designed to support a wide range of feedback collection needs. You can use it to gather insights from various groups across your organization — whether you’re running engagement surveys, onboarding feedback, pulse checks, or other internal assessments. This flexibility allows you to include different types of workers depending on your goals, such as contractors, interns, or even franchise employees in some contexts.
However, the criteria for Certification eligibility are more specific and must be followed closely. If you’re unsure how to best capture feedback from various populations within your organization, or if you have any other questions, our team would be more than happy to talk to you.
To be eligible for Certification, you must include all indivduals who are legally employed by your company, paid directly by your company, and classified under one or more of the following at the time of survey launch:
- Employment status: All part-time and full-time employees
- Job roles: Including the CEO and all levels of staff
- Locations: All company locations
- Union status: Both union and non-union employees
- New hires: Including those from mergers or acquisitions
- Remote workers: Telecommuters and those working from home
- Employment type: Seasonal, casual/per diem employees, interns
- Age: Employees under 18, as permitted by local laws
Important: Failure to include any eligible group — whether intentionally or inadvertently — or failure to invite the required number of employees will result in disqualification from Certification and Best Workplaces™ list eligibility.
Do not include individuals who are not legally employed by your organization at the time of survey launch, such as:
- Contractors: Employed by another company or self-employed. These individuals should be surveyed by their legal employer.
- Furloughed employees: Temporarily not working and not expected to perform any duties during the furlough period.
- Franchise workers: Typically employed by the franchisee, not the franchisor. Only include them if they are legally employed by your company.
The world's most trusted workplace award
Empower your organization with actionable insights, improved employee retention, and a stronger culture. Ready to see the difference?