Contact the following staff for additional information:
What do IT workers want? Fair paychecks, challenging work and ample opportunities, for starters. Our annual listing showcases the organizations that excel at keeping their employees engaged and loyal with compensation, training and access to hot technologies.
Questions about Computerworld's Best Places to Work in IT program can be emailed to bestplaces@computerworld.com.
The report is published every spring.
Most Recent Survey:
100
Best Places to Work in IT 2011
Past Surveys:
100 Best Places to Work in IT 2010
100 Best Places to Work in IT 2009
100 Best Places to Work in IT 2008
100 Best Places to Work in IT 2007
100
Best Places to Work in IT 2006
100
Best Places to Work in IT 2005
100
Best Places to Work in IT 2004
100
Best Places to Work in IT 2003
Computerworld conducts an annual survey to identify the 100 best places to work for IT professionals. We invite Computerworld readers, PR professionals and other interested parties to nominate organizations they consider great employers for IT workers. We then ask those nominated organizations that meet our basic criteria to participate in our survey.
To be eligible, organizations must have a minimum of 50 IT employees. Organizations based outside the U.S. must have a minimum of 300 total employees at a U.S. headquarters and a minimum of 50 IT employees at a U.S. headquarters. At least 50% of non-U.S. organizations' IT employees must be based in the U.S. We consider IT employees to be those IT workers within the IT department who provide technology support and services to the entire organization. Workers who would *not* be included are administrative support staff for the IT department, staff who work in communications or PR for the technology department, IT contractors or those staff at a technology company who are involved with product development. Additionally, your IT staff must work in IT, at/for YOUR organization, not another organization.
In most cases, we prefer to have the parent organization, rather than subsidiaries or affiliates, apply for the Best Places to Work in IT list. However, a subsidiary or affiliate may be eligible, providing that it stands out as a separate entity from the parent organization, with separate business functions, IT leadership and so on. A subsidiary may also be eligible to apply separately if its parent organization is a holding company. In those cases, the parent organization and subsidiary may be able to apply separately. We encourage organizations to complete the nomination form or contact us at bestplaces@computerworld.com, and our Best Places research team will evaluate the submissions on a case-by-case basis.
Organizations need not be nominated to complete the survey. Additionally, participating organizations must distribute an employee survey to a randomly selected sample of their IT staff, as part of the survey process.
The Computerworld 100 Best Places to Work in IT survey resides on a secure server, which prevents network transactions from being decoded, thus preserving the privacy of sensitive information.
2011: The 2011 Best Places to Work in IT list was published on June 20, 2011.
2012: The 2012 Best Places to Work in IT list will be published on June 18, 2012.
Questions about Computerworld's Best Places to Work in IT program can be emailed to bestplaces@computerworld.com.
Does my organization have to be nominated to complete the survey?
No. Organizations may participate even if they were not nominated.
Does the Best Places to Work in IT list include public companies only?
No. The survey includes private as well as public organizations.
What criteria must my organization meet to participate?
To be considered for our Best Places to Work in IT list:
All organizations must have a minimum of 50 IT employees.
Organizations based outside the U.S. must have a minimum of 300 total employees at a U.S. headquarters and a minimum of 50 IT employees at a U.S. headquarters. At least 50% of non-U.S. organizations' IT employees must be based in the U.S.
In most cases, we prefer to have the parent organization, rather than subsidiaries or affiliates, apply for the Best Places to Work in IT list. However, a subsidiary or affiliate may be eligible, providing that it stands out as a separate entity from the parent organization, with separate business functions, IT leadership and so on. A subsidiary may also be eligible to apply separately if its parent organization is a holding company. In those cases, the parent organization and subsidiary may be able to apply separately. We encourage organizations to complete the nomination form or contact us at bestplaces@computerworld.com, and our Best Places research team will evaluate the submissions on a case-by-case basis.
Who should complete the survey?
An individual familiar with employment statistics, benefits, policies and programs of your IT department and your organization should complete the survey. This could be a human resources representative, a CIO or corporate PR representative -- or a team of all of the above.
What does the company portion of the survey ask?
Our online survey asks about organizations' benefits, training and development, average salary increases, percent of staff promoted, turnover rates, and the percentage of women and minority staff in management in IT departments. In addition, we will collect information on each organization's hot projects, mentoring programs and a variety of benefits ranging from elder care and childcare to flextime.
What does the employee portion of the survey ask?
The employee survey collects data on employee satisfaction with management, benefits, workplace culture, compensation and job duties.
Which employees are considered "IT workers" in this survey?
Answers to the survey should be based on those IT workers within the IT department who provide technology support and services to the entire organization. Workers who wouldn't be included are administrative support staff for the IT department, IT contractors or those staff at a technology company who are involved with product development, or staff who work in communications or PR for the technology department. Additionally, your IT staff must work in IT, at/for YOUR organization, not another organization.
What happens if I leave a question blank on the survey?
You can't leave a question blank if it is required. Many of the questions on the survey are required; the survey can't be processed if they aren't answered. Please answer to the best of your ability for questions with lists or options included. If any open-ended/text based questions aren't applicable to your organization, please indicate "NA" for "not applicable." If there is a question you can't answer fully given the format of the survey, you may briefly explain your answers in an addendum field that follows each survey section.
Organizations that withhold information used to rank the finalists will have points deducted from their ranking. Organizations that withhold certain IT employee demographics will not be eligible for consideration. Answers that are left blank or have unexplained N/As will be assumed to be 0 (zero).
Organizations must provide answers to questions related to data we run in our feature story and graphics in order to be considered. Please see below for the types of required information that are typically run in print or online.
Can I save my survey and come back to it at a later date?
Yes. You will be able to save your partially-completed survey, and can save a partially-completed survey as many times as necessary. Please save your unique ID and password in order to re-enter the survey. When you return to the survey, you will be able to review/modify questions that you have already answered. However, we will continue to provide a printer-friendly version of the survey, and we recommend that you complete this survey, then enter your answers online.
How should I send my organization's information to Computerworld?
We accept company information from the online survey only. Please enter all data as accurately as possible. Provide organization name, location, Web address and other information, as you would like it to appear in print.
Can I get a copy of the survey to review before I go to the online survey and submit my organization's information?
Yes. A printer-friendly version of the 2012 Best Places company survey can be viewed here, for reference. Click here to download the file.
Will Computerworld provide us with a copy of our submitted survey?
Upon survey submission, Computerworld will e-mail you a password protected link to view your organization's survey responses.
What reports will be available to us?
For organizations that are named to the final list of 100, Computerworld will offer a custom benchmarking report with the organization's ranking vs. the average of the 100 Best Places, and the organization's aggregate employee survey results. Those reports will be available one month after publication, for a fee.
Is there an employee portion to this year's survey?
Yes. Organizations will be asked to randomly select IT staff to complete an employee survey. Organizations may sample their entire IT staffs, if desired, or a representative portion, as long as the following requirements are met: Organizations with 1,000 or more IT employees will be required to gather completed survey responses from at least 15% of their IT staff. Organizations with between 500 and 999 IT employees will be required to gather completed employee survey responses from at least 20% of their IT staff. Organizations with between 100 and 499 IT employees will be required to gather completed employee survey responses from at least 30% of their IT staff. Organizations with fewer than 100 IT employees must gather at least 30 employee survey responses. Organizations will be asked to document how they choose and contact their employees to take the survey. This portion of the survey is separate from the main company survey and will be available in January 2012.
A third-party research firm will receive the employee responses via a secure server. Responses can't be linked to specific employees, but only to your organization overall.
May we review the employee survey?
Yes. A printer-friendly version of the 2012 Best Places employee survey can be viewed here, for reference. Click here to download the file.
Is there a particular way we need to contact the employees we have randomly selected to participate in the survey?
Yes. Computerworld provides a sample letter that can be customized to announce their selection to complete the employee survey portion and explains the survey. Also, sample text is provided to serve as a reminder note about the survey.
Once we contact our employees about the survey and send them the link to the survey, what do we do next?
Computerworld will determine a minimum number of respondents required based on the size of your IT staff. Organizations with 1,000 or more IT employees will be required to gather completed survey responses from at least 15% of their IT staff. Organizations with between 500 and 999 IT employees will be required to gather completed employee survey responses from at least 20% of their IT staff. Organizations with between 100 and 499 IT employees will be required to gather completed employee survey responses from at least 30% of their IT staff. Organizations with fewer than 100 IT employees must gather at least 30 employee survey responses. Once you send the employees a link, Computerworld will keep you up to date as to the number of employee responses we have received. Organizations will be responsible for meeting that minimum requirement. Throughout that process, companies can contact bestplaces@computerworld.com for updates on the number of employees who have filled out surveys.
Do we have to explain whom we chose to participate in the survey?
Yes. Participants will be asked to read and fill out a short form.
Can we have the results to our employee survey?
Organizations that are named to the final list of 100 can receive a report, for a fee, that details results of their employee surveys if they meet a minimum response criterion and if the response base is not so small as to jeopardize employee anonymity. Please note: Results will be an aggregate of employee responses. Individual surveys won't be released.
When will the list be published?
The list of Top 100 Best Places to Work in IT is published annually in June in both the printed version of Computerworld and online at www.computerworld.com.
When can I find out if my organization is on the list?
Computerworld notifies the organizations that make the Top 100 list several weeks in advance of publication. Computerworld's marketing group contacts winners to offer a logo and boilerplate press releases.
Is there a timeline to which I can refer for survey action items?
Below is the 2012 Best Places to Work in IT timeline.
| Nomination process is closed. | |
| The printer-friendly version of the Best Places company portion of survey is available on Computerworld's Web site. Nominated organizations will receive an e-mail with link to the Best Places survey from Computerworld by the end of the second week in January. | |
| DEADLINE: Best Places company portion of survey is due to Computerworld. | |
| E-mail roll-out of employee survey information. Organizations that have COMPLETED a survey will receive an e-mail with a link to their organization's employee survey for distribution to selected employees. Organizations will also receive instructions on selecting a random sampling of IT staff as well as instructions on verifying the process used to select the employees and a sample cover letter. After this date, as organizations complete surveys, the links will be e-mailed to them | |
| DEADLINE: Letter that verifies selection process and cover letter due to Computerworld. Best Places employee portion of survey is due to Computerworld. | |
| Best Places to Work in IT list is published in Computerworld, and online at www.computerworld.com. |
What information will be printed in the issue?
Computerworld tries to avoid printing information that an organization may consider competitive. In recent issues, Computerworld has published the following information:
Organization
name
Location
Industry
Web site
Total number of employees
Total number of IT employees
Percentage of IT employee turnover
Percentage of IT employee promotions
IT training days
IT training budget
Percentage of IT managers who are women
Percentage of IT managers who are minorities
Percentage of IT staff who are women
Percentage of IT staff who are minorities
Information from a 50-word essay about what's special about your organization and IT department
Please note that individual company revenue and other similarly competitive information are not reported in our best places issue. Numbers and information such as these would only be used in aggregate format or for ranking purposes.
What if I have a question that was not answered in this FAQ?
Please e-mail your questions to the following address: bestplaces@computerworld.com.
In the subject line, please include your organization name and be as descriptive
as possible in the subject line as to the nature of your inquiry.
