What would your employees say if a stranger asked them, anonymously, whether they trust their managers? That question, asked dozens of ways, is the whole of Great Place to Work Certification. There is no essay to win it with and no judge to charm. The badge goes to companies whose own people say yes often enough.
That makes the process simple to describe and hard to fake. This guide covers how to get Great Place to Work certified, what the survey measures, the score you need, and a six-week plan that gets you from sign-up to badge without wasting a cycle.
What Is Great Place to Work Certification?
Great Place to Work is a global research and consulting firm that has studied workplace culture since the 1990s. It is best known for the lists it produces with Fortune, including the 100 Best Companies to Work For. Certification is the entry point to all of it.
A certified company has run the firm’s employee survey and cleared its threshold. Certification is not a ranking. Hundreds of companies earn it each month, from 15-person agencies to global employers, and each one gets the right to use the Certified badge in hiring and marketing for 12 months. Certification is also the prerequisite for most of the firm’s published lists, which use the same survey data plus additional material.
The reason companies bother is recruiting. Job seekers recognize the badge, recruiters put it on job posts, and local press often covers newly certified employers, especially in smaller markets.
For many companies, the badge also changes the internal conversation. Leaders who have never seen anonymous, benchmarked feedback from their own staff get a clear picture of where trust is strong and where it is weak. That is often worth more than the badge itself, and it is the main reason teams that learn how to get Great Place to Work certified keep surveying even after they have the logo.
Who Can Apply?
Most employers can. Great Place to Work offers certification to companies, nonprofits, and government organizations across many countries. Pricing scales with headcount, and the firm publishes its current tiers on its site. Smaller companies pay less, and the survey itself is the same.
There are practical limits. You need enough employees for responses to stay anonymous and statistically meaningful, and the firm sets minimum response requirements based on company size. If you have under about a dozen people, ask about the current minimum before you buy.
You also need to survey everyone eligible, not a hand-picked group. Contractors are usually excluded, but full-time and part-time employees are generally included. Surveying only the happy teams is not an option the platform allows.
Think about timing before you buy. A company in the middle of layoffs, a reorganization, or a leadership change will survey people at their most anxious, and the scores will show it. That is useful data, but it is a poor moment to chase a badge. If a major change is coming, survey after the dust settles, or survey now with the explicit goal of a baseline rather than certification.
How the Trust Index Survey Works
The core of certification is the Trust Index, a survey of about 60 statements that employees rate on a five-point scale from almost always untrue to almost always true. The statements cover five dimensions the firm has used for decades: credibility, respect, fairness, pride, and camaraderie. Examples include whether management is honest and ethical, whether people are treated fairly regardless of their role, and whether employees are proud to tell others where they work.
The survey is anonymous and runs on the firm’s platform. Employees get a link, answer on any device, and can add open comments. You see aggregated results, never individual answers, and results are suppressed for groups too small to protect anonymity.
Most companies keep the survey open for one to three weeks. Response rate matters, because the firm requires enough responses for the result to be reliable. Higher participation also makes the result more representative, which helps if you plan to use the data for anything beyond the badge.
The Score You Need
The headline rule in the US is this: at least 65% of employees must report a consistently positive experience. In practice that means the average share of positive responses across the survey statements needs to reach 65%. The firm also reports a single statement on its own, “Taking everything into account, I would say this is a great place to work,” which companies often quote in their announcements.
Sixty-five percent sounds modest. It is not, for a company with one troubled department. A team of 40 people at 40% positive can drag a 200-person company under the line.
That is why we use a pre-survey exercise we call the 65 Gap Map. Before you launch, list every team, its headcount, and your honest estimate of how positive it will be, on a scale from 0 to 100. Multiply each team’s estimate by its headcount, sum the results, and divide by total headcount. If the weighted number is under 70, you have a gap. The map shows which teams are pulling the average down, so leaders can talk to those teams before the survey, not after. It is a guess, not a measurement, but companies that run it are rarely surprised by their result.
Here is how the math plays out in a simple case. Picture a 120-person company with three groups: 70 people in product and engineering running at an estimated 78% positive, 30 people in sales at 70%, and 20 people in customer support at 45%. The weighted average is about 70%. That clears 65 on paper, but support is far below the line, and a bad month there could pull the total down several points. The Gap Map tells leadership to spend the weeks before the survey with that support team, asking what is wrong and fixing at least one visible thing.
The open comments matter as much as the score. Employees write things in an anonymous survey that they never say in a one-on-one, and the comments often point straight at the problem behind a low statement score. Read every one, sort them by theme, and share the themes back with the company.
The Culture Brief
After the survey closes, the firm asks for a short Culture Brief: basic facts about the company such as headcount, locations, benefits, turnover, and demographics. It does not affect certification. It does matter for list eligibility, and it is quicker to fill out the week you survey than six months later when you decide to apply for a list.
Larger companies applying for competitive lists may also be asked for a Culture Audit, a longer written account of programs and practices. Treat it as a separate project with its own owner.
A Six-Week Timeline From Sign-Up to Badge
Week one is setup. Buy the certification package, load your employee list, pick the survey window, and decide who sends the invitation. A message from the CEO explaining that the survey is anonymous and that results will be shared gets better participation than a system email.
Week two is preparation. Run the 65 Gap Map, brief managers, and tell employees the survey is coming. Managers should explain why it matters and promise to share results. They should not tell people how to answer, and the firm treats coaching as a violation.
Weeks three and four are the survey window. Track response rate daily by team, and send reminders to the teams that lag. Keep reminders about participation, never about scores.
Week five is results. If you clear the bar, you can usually access your certification and badge assets shortly after the survey closes. If you miss it, the platform still gives you the data, which is the more valuable outcome in the long run.
Week six is the announcement, covered below.
What If You Miss the Threshold?
Missing the bar is common for a first survey, and it is not public. You do not get a badge, but you get a detailed report showing which statements and teams scored lowest.
Pick the two or three statements with the lowest scores and address them directly. If people say promotions are unfair, publish how promotions work. If they say management does not listen, set up a recurring forum and report back on what changed. Then survey again once the changes have had time to land, which for most companies means at least a few months. A second survey with real changes behind it is far more likely to clear the line than a quick retake.
Turning the Badge Into Press
The badge on your careers page is only part of the value. Newly certified companies are a reliable local business story, and business journals, regional papers, and trade outlets often run short items on them.
Write a brief announcement within a week of certification. Lead with a number from your survey, such as the share of employees who said the company is a great place to work, compared with the US average the firm publishes for typical workplaces. Add a quote from an employee, not only the CEO, and one concrete practice that explains the result. Send it to your local business journal, your trade press, and any industry associations that publish member news.
Then put the badge on job posts, your LinkedIn company page, and recruiter email signatures.
Use the data inside the company as well. Share the overall result, the three highest-scoring statements, and the three lowest, along with what leadership plans to do about the low ones. Employees who see their feedback acted on tend to participate more in the next survey, and participation is part of what keeps the result credible year after year.
If you plan to compete for one of the published lists, certification is the first gate. Lists such as the Fortune Best Workplaces series rank certified companies using the survey results and additional information, and the deadlines for each list are tied to when you survey. Ask your Great Place to Work contact which lists your survey window qualifies you for, so the same survey can serve both goals. Knowing how to get Great Place to Work certified is half the job. The rest is making sure every candidate sees it.
Start with the 65 Gap Map this week, and you will know before you spend anything whether your culture is ready for the survey.