When she began her list quest in the 1990s, Edward Jones had a 15 percent growth rate. "When we started to see the pace of consolidation accelerate, we realized that we would have to grow even more quickly--25 percent a year," she says. "I wondered, what could we [in public relations] do to support this? With Jones not being a household name, we saw that rankings--with that third-party endorsement--would be very powerful as a recruiting tool."

    The path to the top was rocky. The first three times that Heying tried to get Edward Jones on Working Mother magazine’s 100 Best Companies for Working Mothers list, she failed. (Jones has made that list only once.) She tried to make contact with various list researchers, but somehow was overlooked when Milton Moskowitz and Robert Levering, now of the Great Place to Work Institute, launched the first Fortune Best Companies list in 1997. Finally, Edward Jones was invited to participate in the 1998 edition of the project. "My goal, initially, was that if we could be number 99 on the list, I would be really happy," Heying says. The firm debuted at number 11 and has been moving up ever since.

    That’s as good as it gets in the high-stakes world of Best Company lists, where companies’ reputations as employers of choice go up and down according to their placement on well-publicized lists that are run by self-appointed panels of journalists, researchers, and industry groups. Inclusion on a list is a great way to showcase a company’s culture, policies, and amenities. The effort doesn’t always pay off in a high ranking, but a high ranking always pays off in invigorating a company’s reputation among recruits, employees, shareholders, investors, and customers.

    Placement on a Best Places to Work list is a sure source of corporate pride, and a low-cost marketing and recruitment tool. "It’s a beauty contest," says Larry Silver, senior vice president of marketing for Raymond James & Associates, a St. Petersburg, Florida, broker that has been on the Fortune 100 Best list. "When you make the list, you can market that on your Web site (and) you can put out information to shareholders. You look pretty good to clients and existing and prospective employees."

    There are risks, however, in the land of lists. The process of applying for list ranking means that a company is opening itself up to judgment by a self-appointed panel. Companies can’t control the outcome. Falling off a list can be embarrassing, and can invite unwanted questions. Once a company is established as a "best" employer, employees’ expectations continue to rise, and there’s the inevitable pressure that comes with living up to an outstanding reputation. And the application process itself can be a nightmare--taking anywhere from hours to grueling weeks. Publications that are looking for ways to spice up their annual list also can take a potentially less-than-flattering tack. Boston Magazine, for example, publishes a Best Places to Work list, and in 2002 matched that with a cover feature on the Worst Places to Work.

The nature of lists
    While it seems obvious that there is a public- and employee-relations bonanza in being named number one on a list, the exact return on the investment of time and money is fuzzy. Many companies that place on lists say they haven’t tried to measure exactly what they get for the effort--partly because measurement itself can be pricey and partly because it seems self-evident that high rankings bolster a company’s reputation. Independent evidence that high placement on a list pays off in dollars is hard to come by.

    Despite mostly sketchy statistics, there are industry insiders who say that the good practices that get companies on lists can significantly bolster a company’s worth. Daniel Simon, an assistant professor with the Department of Applied Economics and Management at Cornell University, analyzed the financial performances of companies on the Working Mother 100 Best Companies for Working Mothers list. He estimates that companies on the list are worth 3 to 6 percent more than peers that aren’t. His conclusion is that companies that offer work/life benefits good enough to earn a ranking on the Working Mother list are worth $12,000 more per employee than stingier peers.

    Mark Weiner, CEO of Delahaye, a division of Medialink that tracks corporate reputations, says that lists represent many different things. They are like "the Dow Jones industrial average. People don’t know the components or the weighting, but if it’s up, you’re happy. People assume that the lists are credible." Silver adds that human resources executives who are in charge of lists must examine the underlying methodology to make sure it’s credible. He says it’s important to look at the nature of the questions asked, the scoring methodology, and the reputation of the publication that’s sponsoring the list before proceeding.

    Experts say that another list plus is the marketing payback. Salespeople, customers, and clients consider list status when scrutinizing potential suppliers, especially before signing big long-term contracts. If diversity is a key component of a list, for example, then that list might be used by a company to find like-minded corporations as suppliers. "More clients are looking for diverse project team members, representing lots of different thought and backgrounds," says Robert

    Sobiech, director of human resources for the Midwest Cluster of Deloitte & Touche, which is on several national lists. "There’s a real interest in the kinds of cultures that [Deloitte] brings to a project. They are assessing whether they want to work with you and they’re looking for evidence. They will say, ‘We notice that you’re on this list. We’re interested in that list. Let’s talk about that.’"

    Many companies have found out the hard way that you learn more about the value of your company’s position on a list when you lose it. Dennis Butler, director of associate relations for Liz Claiborne, which is on Latina Style magazine’s list of best companies for Latinas and the National Association for Female Executives’ Top 30 Companies for Executive Women list, recalls what happened when the company dropped off the Working Mother list. "We were too complacent and we didn’t do a whole lot of new stuff and we slipped off. How does that feel? Really crummy. And that notice goes to the chairman."

    Like other human resources executives who see an upside to falling off, Butler says that there’s a perverse power in losing. Embarrassment can be a powerful tool in the hands of reform-minded human resources staffers who are pushing for updated practices and policies. He says that he tries to leverage Claiborne’s position--no matter what it is--as proof of the importance of constantly refreshing human resources policies and programs. "Lists like the Working Mother one are lists that an awful lot of companies want a space on. Unless you improve the programs you offer, you won’t stay on," he says. "Once you get on, there’s no gracious way to exit. You get bounced off."

    The value of ranking well on a prestigious list resonates most strongly with current and potential employees. The high-fives that ripple through a winning company often translate to a "who knew?" attitude among employees who didn’t realize that the workplace was as good as it was. The same news often jolts managers into a stronger sense of commitment to the policies and practices that were cited in the award. They realize that they are the ones responsible for maintaining what is now an officially excellent place to work. Butler pushes for more management training and education on the heels of every "we made the list" announcement. "We are trying to give managers a positive reason to change--to rise to the level of an award-winning company," he says.

    Recruiters are the first to see the direct impact of a company’s new spot on a top list. "It’s huge in terms of being able to pick the best of the best," Heying says. At Edward Jones, a 30,000-employee enterprise, applications have gone from 7,000 in the year before it first landed on the Fortune list to 400,000 annually now. Heying says that’s all the proof she needs to know that she has achieved the goal she originally set out to accomplish: fuel the company’s ability to attract top talent.

    Specialty lists deliver a lift in inquiries, too. Companies that appear on Computerworld magazines’s annual Best Places to Work for IT Professionals list, for example, are inundated with inquiries from people who are motivated by nurturing, challenging corporate cultures, says Ellen Fanning, special projects editor. She’s in charge of the list and says she always warns winners that once the news gets out, the company must be prepared to respond to the flurry of inquiries in a manner befitting an outstanding organization.

    Of all the scores of lists that have cropped up in the past few decades, Fortune magazine runs the granddaddy of them all with its Best Companies to Work For, much-coveted rankings that are published every January. For the past 18 years, Working Mother magazine has been putting out 100 Best Companies for Working Mothers. Then there’s the Best 50 Companies for Latinas to Work For in the U.S., the Best 100 Companies for IT Workers, and the Best Companies for Workers over 50. Think of a niche and there’s probably a list.

    The latest list twist: regional business associations are starting to launch lists of their own. Just two years ago, the Michigan Business and Professional Association created a 101 Best and Brightest Companies to Work For list. Chicago magazine periodically publishes its list of the best employers in that metropolitan area. Reed Residential Group, a trade publisher, puts out 101 Best Companies to Work For in the Residential Construction Industry.

    With so much at stake--not to mention the actual hours and effort it takes to compile the requested information--human resources executives need to carefully weigh each list opportunity, industry insiders say. Lists typically are sponsored by magazines or associations. Few charge application fees. The big exception is the Great Place to Work Institute of San Francisco, which produces the Fortune 100 Best Companies to Work For in America and similar regional lists for Pennsylvania and Omaha. There’s no fee to apply for the Fortune project, but it costs $325 for medium-sized employers and $525 for large employers to apply for the regional lists. For that, participating companies get a basic, confidential scorecard that shows their company’s results and a few other metrics for comparison’s sake. A full-fledged, customized report from the institute costs $3,000.

    The real investment in list projects is time. Heying estimates that it takes 300 hours to apply for the Fortune Best Companies list. Executives at other winning companies say that regional lists can take as little as 20 hours, if the requested statistics are readily available. Every list has its own point of view, and often statistics and essay questions must be generated from scratch for each one.

    Getting everybody in the company on board with the project gets them thinking positively about the company and can cut the research time. Many list managers want to interview some employees to get a sense of the company’s culture. The Great Place to Work methodology calls for questionnaires on the quality of work life to be sent to a random selection of employees. That makes it even more critical to get employees excited about the process.

    Sobiech broadcasts information about Deloitte’s in-process list applications through its company e-mail system and asks employees to submit vignettes that can be used to illustrate the benefits of the firm’s policies and culture. Last year, he got 16,000 responses to requests for personal stories, such as anecdotes about managers generously granting spontaneous time off for minor family crises. Sobiech uses these internal testimonials throughout all list applications.

    The celebration that accompanies the announcement that your company has gained a spot on a list is soon followed by the realization that people will never look at you the same way again. "There’s no coasting," says Paul Davis, president of the Scanlon Leadership Network, a nonprofit research and advisory group based in Lansing, Michigan. "The biggest downside is not the time to apply, but the [danger] that the reality is not quite as good as the publicity. People can live with a little bit of a gap, but if it’s too wide, if you stop trying, it will turn into a joke. Expectations get pretty high and it’s easy to slip up. You do a layoff and make mistakes [in the process] and people hold you to it."

    It can be like keeping up with the corporate Joneses. Every edition of a list starts with a clean slate, and every company has to prove its case all over again. "The bar is always getting higher. It’s just because other employers continue to roll out imaginative benefits," Sobiech says. "You’re always wondering, what is the next thing and how can we keep up?"