From Bain & Company’s consecutive victories to the surprising consistency of tech giants, this year’s rankings tell a compelling story about organizational excellence. But there’s an untold dimension to these workplace champions: every single top-performing company maintains dedicated marketing departments, suggesting a deeper connection between marketing investment and workplace culture than previously understood.

America’s Best Places to Work 2025: The Rankings

Multiple organizations evaluate workplace excellence using rigorous methodologies that prioritize authentic team voices. Glassdoor’s rankings for this year, determined exclusively through anonymous employee reviews without nomination processes or fees, place Bain & Company at the top for the second consecutive year with a 4.6 rating. The consulting firm previously held this position in 2021, demonstrating consistent excellence in team’s satisfaction.

The complete top 10 from Glassdoor includes Crew Carwash (4.6), In-N-Out Burger (4.5), NVIDIA (4.5), Eli Lilly and Company (4.5), Microsoft (4.5), eXp Realty (4.5), The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (4.5), RLI (4.5), and MathWorks (4.4). These rankings represent the 17th annual awards, recognizing 100 large companies with a headcount of 1,000+ and 50 small/medium companies based on feedback across multiple dimensions.

Forbes America’s Best Large Employers 2025, developed in partnership with Statista, surveyed over 217,000 U.S. employees at organizations with 1,000+ staff members. Their methodology evaluates atmosphere, development opportunities, compensation, image, diversity, and working conditions. The Forbes top 10 features University of Notre Dame, Trader Joe’s, Houston Methodist, NVIDIA, Navy Federal Credit Union, Microsoft, In-N-Out Burger, Delta Air Lines, and Costco Wholesale.

Fortune’s 100 Best Companies to Work For 2025 presents another perspective, with Hilton leading, followed by Synchrony, Cisco, American Express, and NVIDIA. The consistency of companies like NVIDIA, Microsoft, and In-N-Out Burger across multiple rankings demonstrates genuine workplace excellence that transcends evaluation methodologies.

The Importance of Organizational Culture in the Workplace

Organizational culture serves as the foundation for workplace excellence, directly impacting employee engagement, retention, and productivity. Research identifies eight critical reasons why organizational culture matters: increased employee engagement, decreased turnover, elevated productivity, strong brand identity, transformational power, retention of top performers, effective onboarding, and healthy team environments.

Companies with strong organizational cultures create work environments driven by purpose and clear expectations, motivating employees to be more engaged in their duties and interactions. This engagement translates into measurable business outcomes: employees who feel valued and respected are more likely to stay, reducing turnover costs and preserving institutional knowledge. The productivity benefits are equally significant, as organizational culture impacts workplace structure in ways that bring people with complementary skills together.

The transformational power of strong organizational culture cannot be understated. Companies that recognize employee efforts and celebrate team successes often witness ordinary employees becoming brand advocates. This transformation creates a virtuous cycle where engaged employees contribute to positive workplace environments that attract additional top talent, reinforcing the organization’s competitive advantages in both talent acquisition and business performance.

Marketing Department Analysis: Our Own Research Findings

Our comprehensive analysis using Apollo, LinkedIn Sales Navigator, and Veridion data reveals that every single company in the top 15 best workplaces maintains a dedicated marketing department, with team sizes ranging from 3 to 2,091 employees. This universal presence of marketing functions across America’s best employers suggests a correlation worth examining, though the relationship requires careful interpretation. But what’s more interesting is to see the huge differences between the sizes of the marketing department employees.

The dataset shows significant variation in marketing team sizes across industries and company scales. Microsoft leads with 2,091 marketing employees (probably no surprize here), followed by NVIDIA with 450 marketing professionals, and Autodesk with 244 marketing specialists. The average marketing team size across all analyzed companies stands at 253 employees, indicating substantial organizational investment in marketing capabilities.

Important methodological notes: These figures represent US-based employees only, extracted from the 3 daba-bases we used (Apollo, LinkedIn, and Veridion). The actual numbers may differ from real-world staffing levels, and global operations likely extend these figures significantly. The analysis focused specifically on employees with marketing-related titles and departmental classifications, providing a snapshot of marketing investment at these top-performing organizations.

Technology companies demonstrate the largest marketing investments, with MathWorks and Autodesk representing software development companies that maintain substantial marketing teams. Smaller organizations in the rankings, such as Crew Carwash and RLI Insurance, maintain more smaller marketing departments.

America's Best Places to Work

Ten Key Insights: Connecting Marketing Investment and Workplace Excellence

1. Universal Marketing Presence:

very top 15 workplace maintains dedicated marketing departments, suggesting marketing is considered essential for most companies that want to attract the best talent out there.

2. Technology Leadership in Marketing Investment:

Software companies (Microsoft, NVIDIA, Autodesk, MathWorks) lead in marketing team sizes, indicating the technology sector’s recognition of marketing’s strategic importance.

3. Scale-Appropriate Marketing Teams:

Smaller companies maintain proportionally smaller but strategically important marketing departments, demonstrating that effective marketing doesn’t require massive teams.

4. Revenue Generation Enables Employee Investment:

Companies with substantial marketing capabilities generate the revenue streams necessary to fund competitive compensation, comprehensive benefits, and superior workplace amenities.

5. Marketing as Business Growth Driver:

The average marketing team size of 253 employees across top workplaces reflects understanding that marketing drives customer acquisition and revenue growth that enables workplace excellence.

6. Consistent Cross-Platform Recognition:

Companies appearing across multiple ranking systems (NVIDIA, Microsoft, In-N-Out Burger) demonstrate that workplace excellence transcends evaluation methodologies.

7. Industry Diversity in Top Workplaces:

From consulting (Bain & Company) to retail (In-N-Out Burger) to technology (Microsoft), workplace excellence spans industries while maintaining consistent marketing investment patterns.

8. Employee-Driven Evaluation Methodologies:

Rankings based on anonymous employee feedback (Glassdoor) and comprehensive surveys (Forbes) provide authentic insights into workplace quality rather than corporate marketing claims.

9. Marketing Investment Correlation with Stability:

Companies with substantial marketing departments often demonstrate the business stability and growth orientation that contribute to job security and career advancement opportunities.

10. Strategic Marketing Enables Workplace Culture:

Marketing-driven revenue growth provides the financial foundation for organizational culture investments, professional development programs, and employee experience enhancements that define exceptional workplaces.

Conclusion: The Strategic Connection Between Marketing and Workplace Excellence

The analysis of America’s best workplaces reveals a compelling pattern: exceptional employers consistently invest in marketing capabilities that drive the business success necessary to fund superior employee experiences. While correlation doesn’t establish causation, the universal presence of marketing departments across top-performing organizations suggests that marketing serves as more than promotional function. It operates as a business driver that enables workplace excellence.

Organizations seeking to improve their workplace culture should consider marketing investment as part of their employee experience strategy. Marketing-driven revenue growth provides the financial foundation for competitive compensation, comprehensive benefits, professional development opportunities, and workplace amenities that attract and retain top talent. The most successful companies understand that marketing excellence and workplace excellence are interconnected, requiring integrated approaches that support both customer satisfaction and employee engagement.

The future of workplace excellence will likely depend on organizations that recognize marketing’s role in enabling superior employee experiences through sustainable business growth. Companies that understand this connection, like the technology leaders and service organizations dominating the rankings, will continue to attract top talent by leveraging marketing success to fund exceptional workplace cultures that benefit employees, customers, and stakeholders alike.

Key Takeaways:

  • Bain & Company leads this year’s workplace rankings for the second consecutive year across multiple evaluation systems
  • Every top 15 workplace maintains dedicated marketing departments, ranging from 3 to 2,091 employees
  • Technology companies demonstrate the largest marketing investments, with Microsoft leading at 2,091 marketing professionals
  • Organizational culture drives employee engagement, retention, and productivity through purpose-driven work environments
  • Marketing-generated revenue enables competitive compensation, benefits, and workplace amenities that define exceptional employers
  • Cross-platform ranking consistency demonstrates genuine workplace excellence that transcends evaluation methodologies
  • The average marketing team size of 253 employees reflects strategic business investment rather than promotional overhead
  • Employee-driven evaluation methodologies provide authentic insights into workplace quality and satisfaction levels