TIME has published its third annual list of the World’s Best Companies, in partnership with Statista, a leading international provider of market and consumer data and rankings. The result of this quantitative study: 1,000 companies forging the path into the future. Here’s how the winners were selected.
Methodology
The research project “World’s Best Companies 2025” is a comprehensive analysis conducted to
identify the top performing companies around the world. The study is based on three primary
dimensions: Employee satisfaction, revenue growth, and sustainability transparency (ESG).
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The first dimension, Employee Satisfaction, was investigated based on survey data from a large
sample of over 200,000 employees from around the world. The evaluation encompassed
recommendations of companies as well as evaluations of employers across the dimensions image,
atmosphere, working conditions, salary, workplace and equality by verified employees.
The second dimension, Revenue Growth, was assessed using data from Statista’s revenue
database, which contains company growth data for the last three years. The companies had to
meet certain criteria to be considered for the evaluation, including generating a revenue of at least
US $100 million in 2023 or 2024 depending on when the most recent data was published during
the research phase. Additionally, the companies had to demonstrate positive revenue growth in
the last three years. Both relative and absolute growth were considered in the evaluation.
The third dimension, Sustainability Transparency, was evaluated based on ESG data among
standardized KPIs from Statista’s ESG Database and targeted data research. To formulate a
comprehensive ESG index, multiple Key Performance Indicators were collected. For the
environmental evaluation, this included the 2023 carbon emissions intensity and reduction rate
compared to 2021, as well as the Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP) score. The social dimension assessed the share of women on the board of directors and the existence of a human rights policy. The governance dimension evaluated whether a company had a Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) report adhering to the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) guidelines and a compliance or anti-corruption guideline.
Once the data was collected and evaluated, it was consolidated and weighted within a scoring
model. The scores of all three dimensions were added on an equal percentage basis to form the
final ranking score of a maximum of 100 points. The 1,000 companies with the highest score were
awarded as World’s Best Companies 2025 by TIME and Statista.