These days, finding happiness at work can seem like a luxury most workers can’t afford. Facing a competitive job market and rising cost of living, many employees are burnt out from navigating what seems like an endless minefield of obstacles in the workplace, from restructuring and mass layoffs to return-to-office mandates and long hours.
In fact, overall happiness is down in the United States. And for the first time, America is no longer one of the top 20 happiest countries in the world, according to the Gallup World Poll’s World Happiness Report 2024.
But it turns out that the elusive happy employee does exist, at least according to Comparably, a leading workplace culture and corporate brand reputation platform.
Comparably released its annual list of the highest-rated companies with the happiest employees, part of its annual Best Places to Work series. The ranking is based on anonymous employee feedback to a variety of questions related to their overall happiness at work over a 12-month period (from August 2023 to August 2024), along with data from 20 million ratings of 70,000 companies in the U.S. and Canada on Comparably’s platform.
Winners are divided into two lists: the top 100 large companies (with more than 500 employees) and top 75 small-to-midsize companies (with 500 employees or fewer).
It may surprise you, or not, but none of the tech giants such as Amazon, Apple, Google, Meta, or Microsoft have been on this list since 2020. However, Uber took top honors in the large company category. It’s come a long way since its early days, when it faced numerous workplace culture challenges.
ADP, Adobe, Boston Consulting Group, CarGurus, Elsevier, Experian, HubSpot, RingCentral, and TopGolf all maintained their top 25 rankings from the previous year. HR/payroll software company Paycom came in at #5, while notable newcomers to this year’s list include CRM leader Salesforce at #10 and geospatial mapping software Esri at #7.
Here are the top 10 large companies with the happiest employees:
- Uber
- Adobe
- ADP
- Elsevier
- Paycom
- Proofpoint
- Esri
- HubSpot
- TopGolf
- Salesforce
Chronosphere tops the list for small-to-midsize companies. It got high marks for creating “an environment where [employees] encourage and support each other to achieve impactful results.”
The complete list of winners, including company rank, location, and industry, is available here.