It's getting harder and harder to pick the top workplaces in accounting — because so many of them are so good.
Or at least that's what we've been finding in our annual Best Firms to Work For ranking.
Firms that participate are scored on the results of an anonymous survey of their staff, and on their HR and employment policies; those with scores higher than the established baseline score are eligible for the list, and we simply take the hundred firms with
When Accounting Today and Best Companies Group first began ranking the top workplaces in accounting almost 20 years ago, the percentage of firms that qualified to be considered "Best Firms to Work For" was relatively small, and the gap between the highest-scoring participants and the lowest was extraordinarily wide.
Over the years, however, those gaps have closed, with more and more firms scoring above the baseline, and the spread among scores decreasing. This is a reflection of both some broad improvements across the profession, and increasing competition among firms for scarce staff.
It also means that more and more firms can legitimately say they are great places to work, and with that in mind, we decided to recognize a new tier among our Best Firms to Work For — our Honorable Mentions — the 25 firms who are just outside our 100 Best Firms, with scores from their staff surveys and HR policies that clearly indicate they are among the top workplaces in the profession.