Win awards and gain benefits of nation’s best places to work

The Australian has partnered with WorkL, to find and celebrate the very best organisations which care for employee happiness and engagement. Take the time to join the list of the best workplaces.

Enter the awards and be known as one of The Australian Best Places to Work 2025.

The Australian, powered by global employee experience platform WorkL, is looking for Australia’s Best Places to Work.

The Australian has partnered with WorkL, a leading employee experience platform that helps companies like yours to measure, track and improve staff engagement. Together with WorkL, we’re on a journey to find and celebrate the very best organisations with consistently high levels of positive employee experience in Australia.

Leader in the field

WorkL, founded by Mark Price, former managing director of Waitrose and deputy chair of the John Lewis Partnership, is the leading global employee experience platform.

WorkL’s benchmarking data from more than 100,000 organisations demonstrates that workplaces with happy and highly engaged employees typically experience higher productivity, reduced staff turnover and sick absence, and higher profits. These workplaces also find it easier to retain employees and recruit new staff. This is why WorkL’s mission is to help individuals work happier and enable organisations to boost commercial performance by prioritising employee wellbeing.

“The Best Places to Work Awards shine a spotlight on organisations that go beyond the basics to create exceptional workplace cultures,” says Price.

“These awards matter because they celebrate the organisations that truly understand the value of their people – fostering environments where employees feel empowered, included, and inspired to deliver their best.

“Winners of the Best Places to Work Awards set the standard for what a great workplace looks like, serving as a blueprint for others to follow and proving that investing in employee wellbeing drives sustainable success.”

With flexible surveys, advanced data insights and predictive analytics, WorkL empowers businesses to measure, track and enhance workplace satisfaction.

WorkL proudly powers the prestigious Best Places to Work Awards in partnership with leading publications across the globe – The Times (UK & Ireland), The Australian, Khaleej Times, Sunday Times South Africa and BusinessWorld in the Philippines.

“A happy and engaged workforce doesn’t happen by accident – it requires a strategic, intentional approach,” says Price. “The Australian Best Places to Work Awards highlight organisations that understand the importance of building great workplace cultures. These organisations recognise that investing in their people leads to higher productivity, lower turnover, and a thriving business. I urge every organisation to take this opportunity to benchmark their efforts, gain insights and inspire positive change in their teams.”

Global initiative

Scan the QR code to enter the awards.

The Best Places to Work Awards are a global initiative to put a spotlight on the companies that take employee engagement and wellbeing seriously.

At the heart of the awards is the proven methodology based on six key drivers of workplace engagement:

1. Reward and Recognition

2. Information Sharing

3. Empowerment

4. Wellbeing

5. Instilling Pride

6. Job Satisfaction

You can find out more about the methodology in Mark’s latest book, Happy Economics.

The awards are based on real employee feedback, so the recognition you receive is a true reflection of the positive culture you’ve built.

Awards categories:

● Best Places to Work: Small Organisation (10-49 Employees)

● Best Places to Work: Medium Organisation (50-249 Employees)

● Best Places to Work: Big Organisation (250-1999 Employees)

● Best Places to Work: Very Big Organisation (2000+ Employees)

Spotlight Categories

● Best Places to Work for Women

● Best Places to Work for Disabled Employees

● Best Places to Work for Ethnic Minority Employees

● Best Places to Work for LGBTQA+ Employees

● Best Places to Work for 16-34 year olds

●Best Places to Work for 55+ year olds

● Best Places to Work for Employee Wellbeing

Identifying the best

To identify the best workplaces, WorkL’s employee engagement survey – developed by behavioural scientists, data analysts and psychologists – focuses on the above-mentioned six key drivers that are absolutely essential to workplace engagement.

The six areas form a comprehensive framework to measure how employees feel about their workplace.

A highly engaged workplace will perform well across all these dimensions.

How the survey works

The survey includes 31 questions that measure employee engagement on a 0-10 scale.

Each company’s overall engagement score is calculated by combining responses and presenting them as a percentage. To qualify for the awards, organisations must achieve a minimum 70 per cent overall engagement score.

To achieve a high overall engagement score, a company must consistently perform well across its six-step framework, encompassing Reward and Recognition, Instilling Pride, Information Sharing, Empowerment, Wellbeing and Job Satisfaction.

It’s not possible to trade off one of these six dimensions against another – in a highly engaged workplace all six steps will be seen positively by employees, albeit to varying degrees.

An organisation’s overall engagement score is the sum of all question responses, divided by the maximum possible value as a percentage.

WorkL’s banding threshold is based on both independent and WorkL-commissioned research on employee engagement initiatives and is reinforced by WorkL’s benchmarking data of more than 100,000 organisations.

For an accurate representation of employee sentiment, organisations are required to send the survey to as many current employees as possible.

The survey takes five minutes to complete and the platform is fully mobile optimised.

Organisations are required to complete a supplementary information survey, which is analysed in conjunction with their survey score to help support their entry.

Those participating have to also reach minimum average response rates to qualify across their organisation:

● Very Big – 25 per cent.

● Big – 35 per cent.

● Medium – 45 per cent.

● Small – 50 per cent.

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To enter The Australian Best Places to Work 2025 awards, use the QR code on this page or go to:

https://workl.com/business/workplace-awards/the-australian-au/

Surveys must be completed by May 31, 2025.