Great Place to Work® and Fortune Name Greenleaf Trust as One of the 100 Best Workplaces for Women

September 2015, Kalamazoo, Michigan – Great Place to Work® and Fortune magazine, having surveyed more than 135,600 working women nationwide, have recognized Greenleaf Trust as one of the 100 Best Workplaces for Women. Greenleaf Trust considers the honor especially notable owing to the fact that the recognition is based on its women employees’ candid assessments of the quality and fairness of the Greenleaf workplace.

“At Greenleaf Trust, culture is not a mission statement. It’s a behavior consistently practiced publicly and privately by our team, and positively experienced by our clients,” said Greenleaf Trust President, Michael F. Odar. “It requires leadership across and throughout our company. Our ranking on Fortune’s and Great Place to Work’s 100 Best Workplaces for Women attests to the value we place on creating an exceptional and inclusive workplace environment. As our Chairman and founder, William D. Johnston says, ‘Culture wins and culture with a great workplace environment and great talent really multiplies the opportunity to win.’”

Greenleaf Trust and the 99 other winning companies were selected based on evaluations by over 135,600 female employees on Great Place to Work’s Trust Index© employee survey. Women considered everything from the fairness of their company’s promotions, to who has access to information and leadership, the level of support for employees’ personal lives, and the degree of inclusiveness and connection they feel with colleagues. Scores also take into account how well-represented women are within the workforce, management and executive positions; how positively women experience their workplace’s fairness; and how favorable women’s experiences are compared to the 138,000 men also surveyed.

Across the 637 companies studied, Great Place to Work found that men’s and women’s experiences were most likely to differ on measures assessing the fairness of their workplaces – as well as several measures rating their access to communication and involvement in workplace decision-making. By contrast, researchers’ analysis of women’s and men’s results show that the 100 winning workplaces create a more consistent and inclusive environment for both genders across a range of day-to-day trust-building behaviors, including employees’ access to special recognition, fair treatment regardless of role, and management’s approachability.

“The companies on this list are leaders who recognize the strategic importance of creating workplaces that attract and support the best talent in their industries,” says Michael Bush, CEO of Great Place to Work® United States. “While specialized programs to support women’s equal access to opportunity are often strategic, in many ways it is just as important – and challenging for leaders— to establish a pattern of inclusiveness throughout everyday workplace interactions since these rely on everyone to overcome their blind spots. Ranking on this list a great indicator that these companies’ efforts to create great workplaces are resonating throughout their teams.”

The 100 Best Workplaces for Women ranking is one of a series of rankings by Great Place to Work® and Fortune based upon employee survey feedback from published Great Place to Work® Reviews.