TIME and Statista Detail Methodology for World's Best Companies 2025 List

TIME and Statista on Friday published the methodology behind the World’s Best Companies 2025 ranking, identifying 1,000 firms worldwide that scored highest across a quantitative assessment of employee satisfaction, revenue growth and sustainability transparency.

The joint research project used three equally weighted dimensions to determine rankings: a global employee-satisfaction survey, company revenue-growth data and a standardized sustainability-transparency index. TIME and Statista said the results reflect both internal workplace conditions and external financial and environmental performance.

The employee-satisfaction dimension drew on responses from more than 200,000 verified employees worldwide. Survey measures included likelihood to recommend the employer, and ratings across employer image, workplace atmosphere, working conditions, salary, workplace facilities and equality. Statista aggregated and validated the survey data to produce a composite score for each participating employer.

Revenue growth was assessed using Statista’s revenue database, which contains company growth figures for the prior three years. To qualify for consideration, companies were required to have posted at least US$100 million in revenue in 2023 or 2024, depending on the most recent available data at the time of research, and to demonstrate positive revenue growth across the three-year window. The analysis considered both absolute and relative growth in assessing performance.

Sustainability transparency — the study’s ESG component — combined Statista’s ESG database with targeted data research to build a composite index from multiple key performance indicators. Environmental metrics included 2023 carbon-emissions intensity and the rate of emissions reduction compared with 2021, along with Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP) scores where available. The social dimension evaluated the proportion of women on corporate boards and whether the company maintained a human-rights policy. Governance measures reviewed the presence of a corporate social responsibility report aligned with Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) guidelines and the existence of compliance or anti-corruption policies.

After data collection, the three dimension scores were standardized, consolidated and weighted equally in a scoring model that yields a maximum of 100 points. Companies were ranked by their total score, and the 1,000 highest-scoring firms received recognition as the World’s Best Companies 2025.

TIME and Statista described the project as a comprehensive, quantitative study designed to combine employee perspectives with verifiable financial and ESG data. The methodology emphasizes transparency of inputs, including the revenue threshold, the three-year growth requirement and the specific ESG KPIs used to construct the sustainability index.

This initiative is the third annual edition of the World's Best Companies ranking. By publishing the methodology alongside the list, the partners sought to provide readers and stakeholders with a detailed account of how employee sentiment, commercial performance and sustainability reporting were integrated into a single comparative framework. TIME published the full list of ranked companies on its website.