Lately I've been reviewing and looking at all the best places to work lists. There’s a number of organizations that create these lists — from local or regional organizations like Built in Seattle to survey providers like Quantum Workplace.

I've worked for many companies who got that label of “best place to work”. It sounds really good to the HR team when recruiting, and it sounds really good to prospective hires.

Unfortunately, some of the companies with these labels are the same companies where I experienced toxic leadership, burnout, and high turnover of top performers.

It really got me thinking, what is it about these companies that made them earn these badges?

What does it take to make these lists and earn a best place to work badge? What are these organizations really looking at?

Many of them start by looking at the company's engagement scores. Sometimes these badges are being offered by engagement survey providers so a company has already opted into sharing their data with this organization.

Other factors include: compensation benchmarks, benefits that are offered to the employees, and some kind of measure on culture and diversity. Most of the organizations who offer the “Best Place to Work” badges have limited willingness to share the details of how they do their scoring. All of that's proprietary to them. So how are we to know that we can trust their scores?

Do these “Best Place to Work” criteria match up with our own expectations and values?

What makes these badges extra troubling is that it sends the wrong message to prospective hires that the company is going to be a great place to work.

What makes a great place to work is more than the benefits that you offer. It’s more than your engagement scores. Your engagement surveys can be very informative, on whether or not people feel good about working there.

And you know I LOVE engagement surveys for companies to leverage when learning about their teams. depending on what the benchmark is for those engagement scores by these best place to work organizations… the scores can be far too low.

When we look at averages on engagement scores, companies are happy and proud when they have averages that are in the 60+ range out of 100.

Turn that score around: If a company got an average engagement score that is between 60 or 70% that means that 30 to 40% of their staff is unhappy.

What it all comes down to is happiness -- feeling valued, respected, included, motivated, and inspired. These elements are the things that make a company a great place to work. But by my estimation, the organizations giving out these badges are setting up a misinformed and dangerous flag to new hires for these companies.

Now I realize that not everyone's going to have the same experience as I did. Many of these companies that earned a ‘Best Place to Work’ badge are actually creating a great experience. But we can’t just use this badge or award as the only sign.

It's time to stop seeing that badge as unbiased. That badge has biases embedded in them. Yes, it’s important to look at how a company provides benefits and if they pay their employees well enough.

BUT, compensation benchmarks might only mean that a company is not taking advantage of their employees. That doesn’t seem like a standard of a great place to work.

Many of the companies that offer more perks and better salaries also expect more out of each of their employees. And that leads to constant burnout and encourages toxic behaviors to strive to meet their end goal of consistently pushing harder and harder with no release.

Another bias can be found in engagement surveys. I love engagement surveys. I think that there is credibly valuable data in there.

However, with any data points, we have to remember that they tell the story through a specific lens. And the lenses that we view that data from contain all the biases, assumption, privilege, discrimination that we have as individuals. So an increase in engagement scores might feel like we’re making a difference. But if we’re honest what percentage of the survey respondents are new this year?

People are skeptical of engagement surveys -- they don't trust that they can be honest.

They don't trust that their results are anonymous and they might answer more positively than they feel about their workplace.

So take time when you see a “Best Place to Work” badge to discover whether that criteria matches up with your own values and expectations of the workplace.

As a leader at a company that has earned a “Best Place to Work” badge, make sure you don’t get complacent. This isn’t the entire story of what it is like to work at your company.