The low down

In order to be eligible to participate, your organisation must:

• Have been in existence for at least 3 years on the 1st March 2011
• Have a minimum of 50 full time employees or part time equivalents working in the UK as of the 30^th September 2010 (not including contractors/freelancers, implants, or employees not on your payroll)

Any major mergers, de-mergers or acquisitions must have been completed before 1^st August 2010.

If you are eligible you will be entered into the list for your organisation size category based upon the number of employees in the UK and Northern Ireland:

• Best small companies: 50 - 249 employees
• Best mid-sized companies: 250 - 4,999 employees
• Best big companies: 5000+ employees

The Best Companies Process

We use the same unique process for both the Best Companies Accreditation and The Sunday Times 100 Best projects. The process consists of two elements:

• An Employee Survey
• Organisation Questionnaire

Your organisations score comes from the employee survey and is dependent upon how highly your people score the organisation according to the eight factors the survey measures.

Workplace Visits

• Gain a greater understanding of your organisation and clarify particular aspects
• Confirm details of the way in which the survey was performed at your organisation
• Highlight the next steps of the process and what you can expect
• Share some of the findings highlighted by the survey
• Inform you about some of the opportunities that are now available to help you
• Receive any feedback you may have for us on how you have found the survey process, how it could be improved and ways in which we might further help you

Reporting Process

The output from the survey is provided through our ‘Workplace Insight Tool’ (WIT) ™. WIT is our interactive web based tool which will provide your organisation with secure access to your scores from the Best Companies Employee Survey. All organisations that participate receive a FREE online interactive summary to reveal how your organisation has scored in each of the eight workplace factors that Best Companies measure: Leadership, My Manager, Personal Growth, Wellbeing, My Team, Giving Something Back, My Company, and Fair Deal. Your organisation also has the opportunity to gain extensive additional data regarding your workplace by upgrading your WIT summary, helping your organisation to pin point specific areas for improvement. Learn more about WIT.

Costs

There is an administration fee (dependent on the size of the organisation) for participating in the Accreditation project. This fee is payable within 21 days of registering online. If a company is a registered Charity the administration fee will be waived. We require the appropriate Commissions number to validate charity entries.