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Workplace
Announcing the 2024 Gallup Exceptional Workplace Award Winners
Workplace

Announcing the 2024 Gallup Exceptional Workplace Award Winners

by Jon Clifton and Kristen Lipton

For nearly two decades, Gallup has recognized world-class organizations with the Gallup Exceptional Workplace Award. Learn more here.

As workplaces navigated the challenges of 2023, marked by record-high employee stress, manager burnout and a need for long-term hybrid work strategies, many organizations struggled to maintain employee engagement and customer satisfaction. The aftermath of pandemic disruptions led to a culture shock with headlines dominated by resignations and the emergence of "quiet quitting.” Another particularly concerning trend emerged: The percentage of employees who feel connected to their organization’s mission and purpose is either declining or stagnating.

While all companies face adversity, those that prioritize engagement emerge as resilient. Organizations succeed amid these challenges by adopting innovative engagement, wellbeing and communication strategies. A commitment to engagement enables business outcomes such as lower turnover, higher productivity and improved profitability -- while generating record levels of employee engagement and wellbeing.

The proof? It lies in these organizations, recognized as the 2024 Gallup Exceptional Workplace Award winners. They’ve distinguished themselves by not merely weathering the storm but by using it as an opportunity to enhance their organizational cultures.

Our review panel examined what exactly sets these exceptional workplaces apart and how they transformed challenges into thriving cultures:

  • They integrate engagement into every stage of their employee and manager lifecycle. These workplaces create outstanding employee and manager experiences and foster brand advocates by clearly communicating hybrid work strategies, prioritizing manager development and incorporating individual contributor feedback in action planning. For these organizations, engagement isn’t merely a buzzword -- it’s a practice that transforms employees into champions for their work and employer.
  • They promote wellbeing. These organizations care about the individual both at work and in life. Their flexible work strategies allow all employees to thrive, and they advocate for Employee Assistance Programs (EAPs). Workers are encouraged to take time off and focus on their holistic wellbeing, and leaders model this as a priority.
  • They prioritize communication and listening strategies. A cornerstone of these winners’ success is their emphasis on transparent communication and listening. Leaders not only pledge to listen, but also translate the feedback they receive into action. Engagement surveys aren’t a one-time event -- they are an ongoing commitment to ensuring every employee feels heard.

2024 GEWA Winners by the Numbers

Engagement among Gallup Exceptional Workplace Award winners is 70%, based on Q12 employee engagement surveys administered between Jan. 1 and Dec. 31, 2023. On average, these 60 world-class organizations have 14 engaged employees for every one actively disengaged employee -- nearly seven times the rate in the U.S. and 11 times the global average.

Exceptionally high levels of employee engagement allowed these organizations to adapt and adjust in response to the challenges last year held. Gallup's engagement meta-analysis found that top- and bottom-quartile business units and teams had the following differences in business outcomes:

  • 81% in absenteeism
  • 58% in patient safety incidents (mortality and falls)
  • 18% in turnover for high-turnover organizations
  • 43% in turnover for low-turnover organizations
  • 28% in shrinkage (theft)
  • 64% in safety incidents (accidents)
  • 41% in quality (defects)
  • 10% in customer loyalty/engagement
  • 18% in productivity (sales)
  • 23% in profitability

Congratulations to the 2024 Gallup Exceptional Workplace Award winners for their extraordinary achievements:

What makes Gallup's award criteria so rigorous?

The Gallup Exceptional Workplace Award criteria are more rigorous than other workplace awards. While many workplace awards only require a small sample of survey participants, we ask for every employee's opinion, and winners must achieve a qualifying score that places them in the top tier of organizations. Each company measures its engagement using Gallup's Q12 -- a survey that asks employees about performance, commitment to their organization and business metrics. The organizations that meet the required criteria are among clients in Gallup's historical database including more than 43 million respondents and more than 5 million workgroups from 212 countries.

Applicants submit information about their strategy, leadership, performance, accountability, communication, knowledge management, development and ongoing learning. A panel of Gallup workplace scientists and experts evaluates applicants and assesses them against criteria established by the most comprehensive workplace study ever conducted. Applicants have to measure up to some of the most productive and profitable organizations in the world.

Additionally, our 2024 Winners With Distinction Award celebrates organizations that place employee engagement at the center of their business strategy. These organizations are selected by our review panel for their particularly compelling engagement stories and their commitment to engagement within both their culture and every stage of the employee life cycle.

Learn more about the Gallup Exceptional Workplace Award criteria.

Author(s)

Jon Clifton is the CEO of Gallup. 

Kristen Lipton is Managing Director of Business Development at Gallup.

Rachael Yi contributed to this article.


Gallup https://www.gallup.com/workplace/642581/announcing-2024-gallup-exceptional-workplace-award-winners.aspx
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