Employee Trust Fuels Financial Success at the 100 Best Companies to Work For in 2025

Winning companies earn 8.5x more revenue per employee and more than triple their stock market performance, delivering ‘incredible’ business performance.

April 2, 2025, Oakland, Calif. — Can employee trust be measured in dollars and cents? The 2025 Fortune 100 Best Companies to Work For? have proven that the answer is a resounding yes.

On average, the 100 Best Companies earn 8.5 times more revenue per employee (RPE) than the U.S. public market RPE. This astounding outperformance includes both public and private companies, with public companies reporting RPE that’s more than 9.4 times higher than market RPE, while private companies see more than 7.7 times higher. This financial advantage trends across industries, reinforcing the financial benefits of high-trust workplaces.

The annual list of top-performing companies is determined by employee surveys, corporate data, and a comprehensive audit of an organization’s workplace programs, benefits, and practices — all powered by Great Place To Work, a UKG company since 2021.

“The 100 Best Companies don’t hit high RPE numbers by slashing headcount and overworking their teams,” says Michael C. Bush, CEO of Great Place To Work, which has produced the list since 1998. “Well-being isn’t sacrificed for productivity.”

The 100 Best Companies are more profitable and productive because they’ve created consistently positive work experiences, resulting in lower burnout rates and higher levels of psychological and emotional health compared to typical workplaces. They outperform their peers in every employee experience metric, with nine out of 10 people describing their workplace as caring.

High levels of agility and discretionary effort fuel high RPE levels at the 100 Best Companies. “That doesn’t happen by giving them perks like free food or Apple watches,” Bush says. “If it were that simple, every workplace would be great. It happens by listening to people and involving them in decisions that affect them.”

Leaders at the 100 Best Companies ensure all employees have opportunities for special recognition and make sure they believe that what they do matters; that they matter as human beings first and workers second. They’ve built organizations where transparency, well-being, and high levels of cooperation are cornerstones.

Outperforming the market

FTSE Russell, a global index and data provider, analyzed the annual returns of the publicly traded companies on the 2025 100 Best Companies list and found they achieved total stock returns of 21.0%.

In looking at the historic 27-year return of the 100 Best Companies, it found this portfolio beat the market average by a factor of 3.50 relative to the Russell 1000 Index, a leading benchmark of U.S. large-cap equities. Returns in 2024 boosted the cumulative outperformance margin of the 100 Best Companies to 2,267 percentage points, an increase of 371 percentage points year-over-year.

“As a general rule of thumb, if you can outperform by 2% to 3%, that’s considered quite noteworthy,” says Ryan Giannotto, CFA, manager of equity index research at the London Stock Exchange Group. “A cumulative 27-year outperformance factor of 3.50 is incredible. This analysis gives credence to the contention that employee experience contributes to market returns.”

Historic analysis confirms outperformance isn’t just a snapshot in time. The 100 Best Companies achieved a total return of 3,174% compared to the 907% total return of the Russell 1000 Index from December 1997 to December 2024.

“This is why investors do not look at just a one-year return,” Giannotto says. “They look at a comprehensive history of returns because they want to see how a company performs in different market conditions.”

The 100 Best Companies exemplify how high-trust cultures drive business success: Leaders shape the employee experience, which in turn shapes the culture, and that culture drives business performance.

Giannotto points out that the market returns have been driven by some of the largest companies, known as the Magnificent Seven, which comprise about 34% of the market.

“For the 100 Best Companies to get competitive market returns without all those trillion-dollar market cap company names is very impressive,” he says. “They don’t rely on the Magnificent Seven to drive performance.”

FTSE Russell developed a hypothetical index of the companies who make the annual 100 Best Companies list, giving each company equal weight in the portfolio. Even then, the 100 Best Companies outperformed historically.

“In the past decade, equally weighted portfolios have substantially underperformed as, again, these ultra-large tech companies have driven a lot of performance and have only gotten larger,” Giannotto says. “To have an equally weighted portfolio that substantially outperforms like this is a compelling and impressive rethink of what factors can influence market outcomes.”

Here are the top 10 on this year’s list:

Hilton

Synchrony

Cisco

American Express

NVIDIA

Wegmans Food Markets, Inc.

Accenture

Marriott International

Pinnacle Financial Partners

World Wide Technology

“Fortune is happy to have collaborated with Great Place To Work for the 28th year to recognize the 100 Best Companies to Work For,” says Alyson Shontel, editor-in-chief of Fortune. “In a difficult macro environment with unprecedented challenges, these companies seemed to navigate their organizations toward steady and positive working environments for employees. Congratulations to all who were recognized.”

Images available: 100 Best Companies to Work For

Learn more about how trust fuels financial success at the 100 Best Companies.

About the Fortune 100 Best Companies to Work For

Great Place To Work selected the 100 Best Companies list by gathering and analyzing more than 1.3 million confidential survey responses representing the experiences of 8.4 million U.S. employees. Of those responses, over 670,000 were from companies eligible for this list. Companies must be Great Place To Work Certified? with 1,000 or more employees in the U.S. and cannot be a government agency. Organizations are assessed on their efforts to create generous, supportive, high-performance work experiences for every employee in the organization.

To be considered, all companies use the Great Place To Work Trust Index? Survey.  To get on this list next year, start here.

About Great Place To Work

As the global authority on workplace culture, UKG’s Great Place To Work brings 30 years of groundbreaking research and data to help every place become a great place to work for all. Its proprietary platform and For All? Model help companies evaluate the experience of every employee, with exemplary workplaces becoming Great Place To Work Certified or receiving recognition on a coveted Best Workplaces? List.

Follow Great Place To Work on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram or visit greatplacetowork.com and sign up for the newsletter to learn more.

About Fortune

The Fortune mission is to change the world by making business better. We achieve that by providing trusted information, telling great stories, and building world-class communities. We measure performance by rigorous benchmarks. And we hold companies accountable. Our goal is to make Fortune a force for good through its second century and beyond. For more information, visit?www.fortune.com.