Detailed Findings

While Glassdoor identified career opportunities, trust in senior leadership, and company culture as the factors most closely tied to employee satisfaction, job seekers often put greater emphasis on other factors when looking for work.

“When job seekers are looking for their next opportunity, salary is the number one factor they consider,” Stoddard said.

Indeed, a paycheck is the reason most of us go to work in the first place — and many companies on this list likely attract flocks of applicants by offering generous compensation packages. Average salaries for many common positions at Silicon Valley tech companies like Adobe, Facebook, and Google are in the six-figure range. The same can be said for management consulting firms like McKinsey and Bain.

While Google, Facebook, and the other tech companies on this list offer well-paying jobs, salary alone does not explain high employee satisfaction. “Tech employees and tech employers are excited about the opportunity to work on products that have the potential to make an impact on thousands, if not millions, of people’s lives,” Stoddard said.

Meanwhile, the high employee satisfaction at staffing and consulting firms also often stems from the rewarding nature of the work, though in slightly different ways. “[Consultants] have the opportunity to work with other companies to solve really big complicated problems […] and really help a company grow,” Stoddard explained.

At staffing agencies like Insight Global and Manpower, workers often derive satisfaction by helping others succeed. “Somebody working for a staffing company has the opportunity to help other people find jobs that they’re passionate about and so there’s this inherent interest from employees to really help other people find opportunities that will fit their lives,” Stoddard said.

Trust in senior leadership also appears to be a precondition for high employee satisfaction. In every company on this list, CEOs have approval ratings of at least 87%. For several companies on this list, CEOs have near perfect ratings of 95% or higher.

Methodology

To determine America’s best companies to work for, 24/7 Wall St. independently reviewed employee ratings and testimonials on Glassdoor retrieved on Sept. 8, 2018 – this is not a Glassdoor.com commissioned report. Employee satisfaction is measured by Glassdoor on a scale of 1 to 5, where 1 is very dissatisfied and 5 is very satisfied. Only companies with scores of 4.1 or higher made our list. In cases where two companies had the same score, the one with more reviews ranked better on our list. Glassdoor ratings are based on current and former employee reviews and calculated using a proprietary algorithm that favors more recent reviews.

To be considered, a company had to have a minimum of 2,000 reviews on Glassdoor and be currently operating and headquartered in the United States. Government agencies as well as nonprofit companies were excluded from our analysis. Employee totals and revenue figures are for the most recent fiscal year available, and employee counts are sometimes listed as rounded figures when provided as such by companies or in official documents. Sources include company documents and Securities and Exchange Commission filings. In the case of subsidiaries for which profit or employment was not broken down, we used parent company figures and noted them as such. Employment information for private companies was often unavailable.