Inc. has published its Best Workplaces list since 2016, and in recent years it has named a few hundred companies out of several thousand that apply. Every one of them got there the same way: their own employees filled out a survey, and enough of them said good things. There are no essays, no judges reading a pitch, and no interviews. If you want to know how to get on Inc. Best Workplaces, the short answer is that you have to earn it from the people who already work for you.
The longer answer covers four things that decide the result, and that is what this guide walks through.
How Inc. Picks Best Workplaces
The program runs once a year. Companies apply through Inc.’s site and pay an application fee. Inc.’s research partner, Quantum Workplace, then sends an anonymous engagement survey to the company’s employees. At the same time, the company completes an assessment of its benefits, perks, and policies.
The final score combines the two. The employee survey carries most of the weight and covers management effectiveness, trust in leadership, perks, professional development, and overall engagement. The benefits assessment reviews what the company offers, from health coverage and retirement plans to parental leave and flexible work. Companies that clear the bar make the list, which Inc. publishes in print and online with company profiles.
It helps to compare this with Great Place to Work Certification, which many companies also pursue. Both rely on anonymous employee surveys run by a research partner, and both reward engagement over polish. The differences are in output. Certification is pass or fail against a fixed threshold and lasts a year. Inc. Best Workplaces is a ranked editorial list with a single annual cycle, so the bar moves with the strength of each year’s applicants. Some companies run both, using the same improvements to support each.
Eligibility rules change, so read the current requirements before you pay. Inc. has historically limited the list to independent US companies with a minimum number of US-based employees and excluded government agencies and some nonprofit structures. Check the employee minimum and the survey participation requirement for your size, since response thresholds apply.
Small companies sometimes assume the list favors big employers with big benefits budgets. In practice, the list is grouped and reported by company size, and many honorees are firms with under 100 employees. A 25-person company with high trust and clear communication can outscore a 2,000-person company with lavish perks and disengaged teams. That is part of why learning how to get on Inc. Best Workplaces is more about management habits than about budget.
The calendar matters too. Applications typically open months before the list publishes, and the survey window is short. Companies that apply late get less time to prepare their teams, which affects participation.
The Employee Survey Is the Whole Game
Because the survey decides most of the score, the real question is not how to write an application. It is how your employees feel, and whether enough of them will say so.
That is the first of the four things that count: engagement you already have. A survey cannot create it. The questions ask whether people trust their managers, whether they understand how their work matters, whether they have chances to grow, and whether they would recommend the company. A company where those answers are mixed will not make the list this year, no matter how strong its benefits are.
The second thing that counts is participation. Low response rates hurt two ways. They can disqualify you under the program’s thresholds, and they skew the result toward whoever happens to answer, which is often the most and least engaged employees. A strong launch message from the CEO, time set aside during the workday to take the survey, and daily participation updates by team are the practical tools here.
Before applying, we suggest a quick internal exercise we call the Survey-to-Score Gap. Run a short, anonymous pulse survey of your own, five to eight questions covering trust in leadership, growth, recognition, and whether people would recommend the company. Compare the share of strongly positive answers to the scores of companies on recent lists, which Inc. and Quantum Workplace describe in their published methodology. If your pulse results are weak, spend the next six months on the gaps and apply next cycle. A cheap pulse survey costs far less than an application that will not make it.
The third thing that counts is the benefits assessment. It carries less weight than the survey, but it can separate companies with similar engagement scores. Gather your benefits documents before the application opens: health plan details and employer contribution, retirement match, paid leave, parental leave, professional development budget, remote and flexible work policies, and wellness programs. Describe each accurately. The assessment rewards what you actually offer, and overstating it creates risk if Inc. follows up.
What you must not do is coach answers. Telling employees how to respond, offering rewards for positive scores, or pressuring teams undermines the survey, violates the program’s rules, and tends to show up in the data anyway. Managers can explain why the survey matters, promise to share results, and commit to acting on feedback. That is the line.
Plan the survey invitation as carefully as you would a product email. Send it from a named leader, explain in two sentences why the company is taking part, state plainly that answers are anonymous and handled by an outside firm, and give a deadline. Follow it with one reminder midway and one in the final two days. Three touches is usually enough.
Prepare Your Team Without Coaching Answers
The best preparation happens months before the survey, and it looks like ordinary good management.
Start with communication. Employees who understand the company’s direction and their part in it score higher on almost every engagement measure. A monthly all-hands with real numbers, a short written update from leadership after big decisions, and managers who explain the reasons behind changes all move scores.
Next, close the feedback loop. If you have run surveys before and nothing changed, employees remember. Pick the two lowest-scoring areas from any previous survey and show visible action on them, with a public note explaining what you heard and what you did.
Then look at growth. Professional development consistently ranks among the drivers of engagement in Quantum Workplace’s research. A clear path for promotions, a learning budget people actually use, and regular career conversations are among the most effective changes a company can make in a few months.
Recognition is the other lever that shows up again and again in engagement data. Employees who feel their work is noticed answer more positively across the board, not just on recognition questions. That does not require a new program. A manager who names a specific contribution in a team meeting, or a leader who writes a short thank-you note about a result, does more than a points-based reward platform that nobody uses.
Watch your managers most closely. Survey results tend to vary more by team than by company policy, because the manager is the person who turns policy into daily experience. If one team scored far lower than the rest on your last internal survey, the most useful step before an Inc. application is a direct conversation with that manager about what is going wrong, followed by support to fix it.
Finally, give the survey a fair window. Schedule it outside your busiest season, announce it a week ahead, and set aside 15 minutes during work hours for people to complete it. Participation is the one part of the result you can influence directly without touching what people say.
Is It Worth Applying?
The application fee is modest for most companies, but the real cost is attention. Running the survey well takes leadership time, manager time, and a few weeks of focus. Whether that is worth it depends on what you need.
Apply if you are hiring steadily and competing for talent against better-known employers. A national workplace honor from a recognized business publication gives a smaller company a credible signal that candidates can check. Apply if you already run engagement surveys and your results are strong, since you have the evidence and only need the outside validation.
Wait if your last internal survey showed serious problems, if you are in the middle of layoffs or a reorganization, or if leadership is not ready to share results with employees. The survey will still be useful as a diagnostic, but you may pay for an application that cannot succeed this cycle. Run your own pulse survey first and decide in six months.
Think hard if your main goal is press. The list does generate coverage, but most of it is local or trade, and the strongest use of the honor is recruiting rather than sales. If you want customers to see your name in Inc., a separate earned media plan will do more for you than the workplace list alone.
Whatever you decide, the survey data is often the most valuable thing you get. Many companies learn more about their culture from one external survey than from years of internal check-ins, because employees answer more openly when a third party runs it.
Using the Honor After It Lands
If you make the list, the value comes from what you do in the weeks after.
Recruiting is the obvious use. Add the honor to job posts, your careers page, and recruiter signatures, using the official logo assets Inc. provides. Candidates who see a third-party workplace award tend to apply with more confidence, and it gives recruiters a credible talking point.
Press is the second use. Local business journals and trade publications often run short items on companies that make national workplace lists. Send a brief announcement within a week of publication with one concrete practice that explains the result and a quote from an employee, not only an executive. Share it on LinkedIn and tag the employees who are comfortable being named.
The fourth thing that counts, and the most overlooked, is consistency. Companies that appear on the list several years in a row get more value from it than one-time honorees, because repeat recognition reads as a durable culture rather than a lucky year. Treat the survey data as a management tool between applications, and the next cycle becomes easier.
So, knowing how to get on Inc. Best Workplaces comes down to engagement, participation, benefits, and consistency. Which of those four would your employees rate lowest today?