Great Place To Work® has been surveying employees around the world about their workplace experiences for 30 years. We have developed a set of themes and metrics that not only reveal whether employees feel their workplace is great, but also predict retention, agility, and overall business success.
Using our proprietary Trust Index™ survey, we measure the core of what we know creates great workplaces — key behaviors that drive trust in management, connection with colleagues, and loyalty to the company.
The survey enables employees to share confidential quantitative and qualitative feedback about their organization’s culture by responding to 60 statements on a five-point scale and answering two open-ended questions.
Employees tell us whether leaders are accessible, communicate honestly and clearly, and if their actions match their words. They tell us whether they feel respected as individuals, if they receive training benefits, appreciation, support for their well-being and opportunities to contribute. They tell us whether they believe their company is fair related to pay, profits, promotions, recognition, favoritism and opportunities. They tell us if they are proud of their work, their team, and their company and if they feel they make a difference, and their work is meaningful. And they tell us whether they enjoy the people they work with, feel cared for and can be themselves.
List rankings are based on this employee feedback, which we analyze to determine the extent to which this experience is shared by the full workforce. Great Place To Work measures the differences in survey responses across demographic groups and roles within each organization to assess both the quality and consistency of the employee experience. Statements are weighted according to their relevance in describing the most important aspects of an equitable workplace.
Companies with the broadest sets of employees who report positive workplace experiences receive the highest rankings on lists.
In order to analyze employee feedback in context, we collect information from each company including their industry, revenue, size, and employee demographics. We identify the organizations that offer the most generous, caring and innovative cultures reflecting a genuine commitment to meet the diversity of their people’s needs inside and outside the workplace as validated by what employees themselves report in survey results.
Because employee feedback drives these rankings, surveys must meet strict requirements for how they are distributed and the percentage of employees who respond to ensure they accurately represent honest feedback from the company’s full population.
To be eligible for the Fortune Best Workplaces in Chicago list, companies must be Great Place to Work-Certified™ and must have 10 or more employees in the U.S. They must also be headquartered in the Chicago Metropolitan area. Companies with 10 to 999 people are considered for the small and medium category; companies with 1,000 employees or more are considered for the large category. Companies appearing on Fortune’s 100 Best Companies to Work For list rank at the top.
In the last year, Great Place To Work surveyed companies employing 7.3 million people in the U.S. and received 1.3 million survey responses. Of those, more than 60,000 responses were received from employees at companies who were eligible for the 2026 Fortune Best Workplaces in Chicago list and this list is based on their feedback.
