FAQ
FAQ
Eligibility
As long as you employ at least 10 full- and part-time permanent employees in Chicago (Cook, DuPage, Kane, Lake (Ill.), Lake (Ind.), McHenry, or Will County), you are eligible!
Yes, we will treat each company as a separate employer and survey them individually. Each subsidiary company must still hold to the minimum requirement of 10 full- and part-time permanent employees working within Chicago (Cook, DuPage, Kane, Lake (Ill.), Lake (Ind.), McHenry, or Will County).
No. If you are one company with multiple locations in the program area that operates using the same EIN and same set of benefits and procedures, please submit one registration for all locations. Special exception for hotels: We understand that hotels have unique ownership and management scenarios so hotels may enter as individual locations; however, the number of US employees that you provide us with should be the number of employees who work for the same company as your employees. In most scenarios, the company used to determine the US employee count will be the company whose name appears on the employees’ paychecks and from whom the employees derive their employee benefits. If you have questions about this, please contact us.
Yes, as long as you have employees working in the state and are able to provide an in-state mailing address for your business, you are eligible to participate. Only employees working in or directly reporting into the state are eligible to participate in the survey.
Yes, but we will only survey the “in-house” employees. In keeping with our eligibility requirements, there must be a minimum of 10 “in-house” employees for your company to participate. Employees who are placed at other organizations will not be counted or surveyed.
The good news is we are looking for a response rate of 40% (or greater)** so it isn’t necessary that every employee who receives a survey chooses to participate; however, we certainly encourage submission of honest feedback as the higher the response rate, the more representative the analysis will be of your company as a whole. This will aid in your company getting the most out of the collected data. **Organizations with 10-24 employees must reach an 80% (or greater) response rate.
Reports
If purchased, you will receive access to the EnGauge platform which includes access to your organization’s data on our interactive online dashboard. This dashboard contains multiple levels of reporting with drill downs, charts and graphs. View percentage of positive and negative responses to each of the 77 questions asked of employees as well employee comments, and employee and employer benchmarking data. Benchmarking reports are great for comparing your organization to this year’s list-making participants. EnGauge will be delivered shortly after notification of list-making status have been sent to participating organizations.
Survey Process
You will receive a welcome email and an instructions packet detailing important deadlines for the program. Please refer to the Timeline for more information.
Participating organizations must complete a two-part process to be considered for inclusion on the list. The first part consists of evaluating each registered company’s workplace policies, practices, and demographics and is worth approximately 25% of the total evaluation. The second part consists of an employee survey to measure the employee experience and is worth approximately 75% of the total evaluation. The combined scores determine the top companies and which companies are included on the list. Best Companies Group (BCG) manages the overall registration and survey process and also analyzes the data and uses our expertise to determine the final rankings.
For this program, only employees working in Chicago (Cook, DuPage, Kane, Lake (Ill.), Lake (Ind.), McHenry, or Will County) are eligible to be surveyed.
No, please do not include any of the above in the survey process. We only survey full- and part-time permanent employees. Seasonal, temporary, per diem, independent contractors (1099), interns, volunteers or consultants should not be included in the survey process.
If you have 250 or fewer eligible employees in your organization, then the answer is yes! If you employ more than 250 associates in Chicago (Cook, DuPage, Kane, Lake (Ill.), Lake (Ind.), McHenry, or Will County), a random sample of up to 400 employees will be selected to complete the survey. We will perform this random selection for online companies based on the list we receive from you through the Email Upload Portal sent shortly after registration.
Managers, owners, and executives should all be included in the survey process as long as they are working in or reporting directly into Chicago (Cook, DuPage, Kane, Lake (Ill.), Lake (Ind.), McHenry, or Will County). We want to hear their opinion, too!
It should only take about 10 to 15 minutes for each associate to complete the employee survey.
The EQ may take up to an hour or more to complete, depending on how accessible the information is regarding your company’s policies, practices and demographics. We suggest viewing the sample under the Assessment Process tab to begin collecting data prior to the initial EQ launch. The EQ is completed and submitted online.
Companies will submit a list of employee email addresses. We will send a direct email invitation to employees which contains unique access information where employees can submit their confidential responses via the online survey. Please note: Company email accounts work best for our survey process.
Yes, employees without email addresses can use access codes to enable them to take part in the survey.
Yes, for a fee, the job role and department demographic categories can be customized on the employee survey. After registering, a survey specialist will work closely with you to determine the appropriate categories and help you get the most out of our survey process! Additional customization options are available including location breakouts, adding additional survey questions or surveying employees outside of the program area. Please contact BCG Support at [email protected] for more information or select “yes” to the customization option on the registration form and someone will contact you with more information. What is customization?
We do offer employee surveys in a variety of additional languages! There will be a $225 fee for the language bundle to cover the cost of translation. Please refer to the registration form for our current language options or contact [email protected] to learn more.
You will receive regular periodic email updates throughout the survey process. We’ve also included the Timeline on the website. Each organization is responsible for meeting all deadlines and completing each step in the process.
Notification
You’ll receive the news via a notification letter informing you of whether or not your company has made the list. Rankings of all list-making companies will be revealed shortly after the notification. See the Timeline page for more details.
Other
Certainly! Please see the Assessment Process page for samples of each survey.
We will make every effort to maintain the anonymity of employee responses and protect all summarized data provided by your organization during this process. In keeping with this level of confidentiality, we do not report any response data for less than five individuals in any one demographic category on the Employee Demographic Report. Please see our Statement of Confidentiality for more information.
In the event that you enter the program, but do not make the list, only you will receive notification of that result. We will not release the names of organizations that do not make the list. You will still receive your purchased BCG EnGauge Dashboard, and will then have the opportunity to focus on areas to improve your organization and potentially improve your standing the next year. We believe that all workplaces can be great, if energy is spent listening to employees and taking their feedback to heart.
Best Companies Group has very high confidentiality standards in place to protect companies that don’t make the list. We never release the number of participants in any of our programs, for any reason.
We know the ins-and-outs of employee surveying:
BCG has spent more than a decade focused solely on survey administration and data-reporting services.
Our team of friendly professionals has a strong track record of delivering exceptional, one-on-one customer service.
We’ve spent years developing credible survey tools and valuable and actionable response data reports.
We conduct annual surveys for thousands of employers all over the United States and internationally, resulting in a robust database of employee response feedback and trends in workplace benefits for benchmarking and comparative analysis.
Plus, we offer a two-part survey process. We collect data from both the employer and employee and use both data sets to determine the best workplaces.
Please contact BCG Support at [email protected].
Yes! Best Companies Group is identifying and recognizing great workplaces on national, state, regional and industry stages. For a complete list of programs or to learn more about our additional services, please visit www.BestCompaniesGroup.com.
