United States – October 17, 2026 -- Newsweek and Plant-A Insights Group built the America's Greatest Workplaces 2026 ranking on more than 2.7 million company reviews from more than 179,000 employees, making it one of the largest independent employee studies in the country.
Survey covers companies with more than 1,000 employees across 10 dimensions
The study evaluates employers with more than 1,000 staff on 10 key dimensions of worker satisfaction. It combines a national survey, desk research and third-party data. The survey ran from April 2025 to October 2025.
Results from three earlier studies, conducted between 2022 and 2024, are included at reduced weight. Those studies encompassed more than 4.9 million company reviews and more than 400,000 interviews.
Plant-A and Aniline.ai analyze 37 million data points across 120 KPIs
Plant-A partnered with HR analytics firm Aniline.ai to assess more than 37 million data points across more than 120 KPIs. These include Leadership, Integrity, Compensation and Work-Life balance scores. Desk research added satisfaction with management, employee happiness, worker appreciation and overall satisfaction scores from online employee reviews.
A proprietary scoring model calculates each company's overall score. It applies weights across target groups, questionnaire items, categories, desk research and third-party data.
Onclusive media screening excludes employers with labor and legal issues
Plant-A used the Critical Mention media monitoring platform from Onclusive to check for adverse media coverage and public records between December 31, 2023 and December 31, 2025. The screening covered legal and regulatory actions, discrimination or harassment lawsuits, union busting and toxic workplace allegations. Employers found engaging in such practices were excluded from the final list.
Newsweek and Plant-A ran multiple iterations of the monitoring process to validate the exclusions. One company has been deleted from the 2026 list since publication. Plant-A states that exclusion does not reflect a company's performance and is not disputed.
Publishers state the ranking is not investment guidance
Plant-A operates a strict no-pay-to-play policy and says all awards rest on independent research and unbiased data analysis. The ranking draws on data spanning the last 24 months and reflects historical information. Plant-A and Newsweek describe it as editorial content and state it should not serve as a basis for investment or business decisions. The editorial team decides which evaluated dimensions, such as veterans, women, LGBTQ+, leadership and culture, result in published rankings.