Welcome!

It’s that time of year again. No, this isn’t about the fat man in red and chimneys and such. It’s the time when we start reaching out to businesses across Washington state to find the 100 Best Companies to Work For. We’ll celebrate them at an awards banquet next summer, but now it’s time to find those companies that know how to treat their employees right.

And a big part of that is asking you to nominate someone. It doesn’t matter if it’s the company you work for or just another company (that you might wish you worked for). We’ve set up this process so that if there’s a company out there that’s doing good by its employees, we want to know.

Here’s how it works:

Step one: Nomination. We gather the names of companies and reach out to them, or they come straight to us.

Step two: Registration. A company official (usually someone in its human resources department) creates a registration on our website. This will allow him/her to come back and finish the application later if they can’t do it all in one sitting.

Step three: Survey. After the company has paid the registration fee (based on the size and type of the company), the official fills out a brief corporate profile. This information will be passed on to our survey company, Ipsos Worldwide.

Step four: Employee Survey and Calculation. This process
involves a comprehensive survey of your employees with questions about
your company’s culture, benefits, leadership, communications and other
important attributes. The survey is conducted online by Ipsos, the
world’s third largest survey company. Ipsos will compile, for each
company, a customized report that includes the company’s scores, how
the scores compare to other companies in its industry and a complete
list of employee comments. Many companies use the survey as a way to
benchmark progress and gauge staff reaction to various internal human
resources efforts. The top 100 companies will be listed in our
publication, while the winner and two runners-up in each size category
will be profiled in our magazine.

Step five: Judging. A panel of human resource and workplace experts will review the raw scores and inject the human element into the process. The panel will select the winners based on a modified scoring system.

Step six: Celebration. Everyone comes to our awards banquet, where dinner is served, drinks poured, winners are announced, and a good time is had by all!

If you want to start the process of registering and filling out the survey, click here.

If you just want to nominate a company you think is deserving of the award, click here.

For answers to some frequently asked questions, click here.