How TIME and Statista Ranked the World’s Best Companies for 2024
TIME has released its second annual list of the World’s Best Companies, in collaboration with Statista, a leading provider of market and consumer data and rankings. The result of this comprehensive study: 1,000 companies leading the way into the future. Here’s how the winners were chosen.
Methodology
The research project “World’s Best Companies 2024” is a comprehensive analysis conducted to identify the top performing companies across the globe. The study was based on three primary dimensions: Employee Satisfaction, Revenue Growth, and Sustainability Transparency (ESG).
The first dimension, Employee Satisfaction, was evaluated using survey data from employees worldwide. The surveys were conducted in over 50 countries with data collected from approximately 170,000 participants. The evaluation encompassed evaluations of employers across the dimensions image, atmosphere, working conditions, salary, and equality by verified employees as well as direct and indirect recommendations.
The second dimension, Revenue Growth, was assessed using data from Statista’s revenue database and targeted research, which contains company growth data for the last three years. The companies had to meet certain criteria to be considered for the evaluation, including generating a revenue of at least US $100 million in the last available fiscal year and demonstrating positive revenue growth from 2021 to 2023*. Both relative and absolute growth were considered in the evaluation.
The third dimension, Sustainability Transparency, was evaluated based on ESG data among standardized KPIs from Statista’s ESG Database and targeted data research. To formulate a comprehensive ESG index, multiple data points were collected. For the environmental evaluation, this included the carbon emissions intensity and reduction rate, as well as the Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP) rating. The social dimension assessed the share of women on the board of directors and the existence of a human rights policy. The governance dimension evaluated whether a company had a Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) report adhering to the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) guidelines and a compliance or anti-corruption guideline.
Once the data was collected and evaluated, it was consolidated and weighted within a scoring model. The scores of all three dimensions were added on an equal percentage basis to form the final ranking score of a maximum of 100 points. The 1,000 companies with the highest score were awarded as the World’s Best Companies by TIME and Statista.
*When data from 2023 was not available, data from the last available fiscal year was used.