Is Being Recognized as a Great Place to Work Worth It?

March 9, 2016

The Great Place to Work Institute recently released their list of the 100 Best Companies to Work For™ in the U.S., which is published each year by Fortune and viewed by millions of people. You may wonder: is being recognized as a Great Place to Work worth it considering the time and effort it takes to apply for workplace-recognition lists? After all, your team is already very busy, and hundreds of companies vie for the honor, so the competition is fierce. 

Making the grade

Let’s start by assuming you make a workplace-recognition list since you play to win and believe that’s what your company deserves! It might be a national list like Fortune’s or Working Mother’s, or a local list in a certain city or state. Some lists are also broken down by company size.

Making a workplace recognition list can:

  • Enhance your company’s reputation with customers, partners, investors and people in the communities where your employees live and work
  • Help you attract the best talent in today’s competitive job market
  • Help you retain your employees by reinforcing the value they’re getting by working for such a great company
  • Increase pride and engagement across your workforce
  • Strengthen your brand

Benefits of trying

But even if you don’t make a list, applying still has many compelling benefits. It can:

  • Show your employees that you care about having a workplace they can be proud of and enjoy
  • Help your company better understand what goes into creating a great place to work, since the application process often includes a broad range of questions and criteria that focus on having a great employee experience
  • Enable you to get valuable feedback from your employees since some lists require an in-depth survey with a representative sample of your people
  • Make it possible for your company’s leaders and managers to see clear metrics on the state of your workplace, and provide baseline scores in a variety of areas – so you can strive to get better and better over time
  • Be a starting point for an internal dialog about improving your company’s workplace

In brief, simply making an effort to be recognized can make the chance of being recognized as a great place to work worth it. The efforts have the potential to help you improve your workplace in numerous smart and effective ways.

As you make those improvements, your employees will likely become more engaged, and your business will have more energy and passion behind it, helping fuel its continued success. In fact, research by the Great Place to Work Institute indicates that companies with great cultures have stocks that far outperform their industry peers.