Each spring, The Dallas Morning News solicits nominations for the Top 100 Places to Work competition. Anyone can nominate a company — a worker, the CEO, even someone outside the company. Each firm must have at least 50 local employees to enter. Local workers are defined as those in 10 counties: Dallas, Tarrant, Denton, Collin, Ellis, Johnson, Kaufman, Parker, Rockwall and Wise.
The person making the nomination fills out an online form or calls the 800 number.
Our research partner, Energage LLC, contacts the nominated company and explains the rules. Each firm must give Energage access to its Dallas-Fort Worth area employees by email or paper ballots. All employee answers are kept confidential.
Energage encourages companies to survey all employees, but large employers can choose to randomly sample. At least 500 employees must be included in the random sample.
The company’s workers are sent a 21-statement form, and they’re asked to rank the statements on a 7-point scale ranging from “strongly disagree” to “strongly agree.” They’re then asked how important each statement is to them.
MAKING THE CUT
To qualify as a Top 100 company, at least 35% of a firm’s workers must fill out a survey. Firms with 85 employees or fewer must have at least 30 responses.
CHOOSING THE WINNERS
Energage analyzed the answers from 113,586 employees this year at 383 participating Dallas-Fort Worth companies to determine the rankings.
The employers are broken into size bands because smaller employers tend to score higher than larger ones.
The highest-scoring employers in each size band are selected as the top workplaces.
Energage also determines a list of special awards based on standout scores on specific survey statements.
THE NITTY-GRITTY
Each company that participates gets a free report from Energage, which makes money by selling more extensive reports to the companies that enter. The News sells advertisements in the magazine and tables to the Top 100 event. Each winning company gets two free tickets to the event.
The editorial staff knows the rankings of the companies beforehand, but the advertising department knows only the names, not where they placed.
ABOUT ENERGAGE
Since it was founded in 2006, Energage has analyzed 27 million employee surveys to compile lists of the top places to work. The Exton, Pa., research firm has conducted surveys over the last year for 60 media partners, including The News, The Washington Post, Chicago Tribune and Boston Globe.
