Company culture can make or break your experience at work.

Workplace atmosphere can mean the difference between an energized, productive work day and a stressed out, ineffectual 8-hour shift. So what workplaces have the best overall work environment?

Costco, Google and T-Mobile, according to a study conducted by the compensation, culture and career monitoring website Comparably.

"When you look at Costco, they overwhelm employees with benefits and employees feel like they're part of a family," said Jason Nazar, CEO and Founder of Comparably.

"At Google, you see strong employee voices, and the company handles issues thoughtfully," Nazar said. "T-Mobile is one of the companies that has really active ambassadors and people who really love the brand. It's an organization that really embraces the entire team."

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He said those top three large companies also get high points for their diversity and inclusion among employees.

The winners in the small-to-midsize business category are Highspot, a cloud-based sales platform; Drift, a marketing company; and SendGrid, a customer communication platform, Comparably found.

For smaller businesses, Nazar said it was important for "employees to really feel connected to the mission of the company."

The culture data website derived its list from nearly 10 million employee ratings of various companies. To qualify, large companies of more than 500 employees had to have a minimum of 50 participants. Midsize and small companies needed at least 15 participants to qualify.

The winners were determined based on a series of 50 questions across nearly 20 metrics. Workers voted on how they viewed topics such as work-life balance, compensation and future outlook of the business at their place of employment.

Best places to work, large companies

Highest ranked

1. Costco (Issaquah, WA)

2. Google (Mountain View, CA)

3. T-Mobile (Bellevue, WA)

4. Hubspot (Cambridge, MA)

5. Aflac (Columbus, GA)

6. Insight Global (Atlanta, GA)

7. Intuit (Mountain View, CA)

8. Salesforce (San Francisco, CA)

9. Blizzard Entertainment (Irvine, CA)

10. Starbucks (Seattle, WA)

11. UiPath (New York, NY)

12. Qualtrics (Provo, UT)

13. The Home Depot (Atlanta, GA)

14. Shipt (Birmingham, AL)

15. Delta Air Lines (Atlanta, GA)

16. Facebook (Menlo Park, CA)

17. Dynatrace (Waltham, MA)

18. Workfront (Lehi, UT)

19. Fanatics (Jacksonville, FL)

20. Nextiva (Scottsdale, AZ)

21. Nevro(Redwood City, CA)

22. Microsoft (Redmond, WA)

23. ADP (Roseland, NJ)

24. Globant (San Francisco, CA)

25. LinkedIn (Mountain View, CA)

26. Northside Hospital (Atlanta, GA)

27. LogMeIn (Boston, MA)

28. Overstock.com (Midvale, UT)

29. Sunrun (San Francisco, CA)

30. TaskUs (Santa Monica, CA)

31. Red Bull (Santa Monica, CA)

32. Axon (Scottsdale, AZ)

33. The Walsh Group (Chicago, IL)

34. Golden Hippo (Woodland Hills, CA)

35. Pegasystems (Cambridge, MA)

36. SmileDirectClub (Nashville, TN)

37. VMware (Palo Alto, CA)

38. Kaiser Permanente (Oakland, CA)

39. International Flavors & Fragrances (New York, NY)

40. Edifecs (Bellevue, WA)

41. Adobe (San Jose, CA)

42. General Mills, Inc. (Minneapolis, MN)

43. Indeed.com (Austin, TX)

44. Hyatt (Chicago, IL)

45. U.S. Bank (Minneapolis, MN)

46. Chick-fil-A (Atlanta, GA)

47. Liberty Mutual Insurance (Boston, MA)

48. Akvelon (Bellevue, WA

49.Sport Clips (Georgetown, TX)

50. H-E-B (San Antonio, TX)

Best places to work, small companies

Highest Ranked

1. Highspot (Seattle, WA)

2. Drift (Boston, MA)

3. SendGrid (Denver, CO)

4. TripActions (Palo Alto, CA)

5. Phenom People (Ambler, PA)

6. Pipedrive (New York, NY)

7. People.ai (San Francisco, CA)

8. CultureIQ (New York, NY)

9.Sitetracker (Palo Alto, CA)

10. Greenhouse Software, Inc. (New York, NY)

11. Gainsight (Redwood City, CA)

12. Wibbitz (New York, NY)

13. Disruptive Advertising, Inc. (Lindon, UT)

14. Periscope Data (San Francisco, CA)

15. Mobilewalla (New York, NY)

16.Eargo(San Jose, CA)

17.PeerStreet(El Segundo, CA)

18. Barry’s Bootcamp (Los Angeles, CA)

19. Branch Metrics (Palo Alto, CA)

20. Life360 (San Francisco, CA)

21. Impact (Santa Barbara, CA)

22. Pendo (Raleigh, NC)

23. KRT Marketing (Lafayette, CA)

24. Intersys Consulting (Austin, TX)

25. Bumble (Austin, TX)

26. Celtra, Inc. (Boston, MA)

27. Sonder (San Francisco, CA)

28. Revenue River Marketing (Golden, CO)

29. NUXEO (Brooklyn, NY)

30. HomeLight (San Francisco, CA)

31. OJO Labs (Austin, TX)

32. Acorns (Irvine, CA)

33. SmartProcure / GovSpend (Deerfield Beach, FL)

34. Cybereason (Boston, MA)

35. Help Scout (Boston, MA)

36. Divvy (Lehi, UT)

37. Overtime (New York, NY)

38. Axtria (Berkeley Heights, NJ)

39. Billtrust (Lawrenceville, NJ)

40. Clorder (El Segundo, CA)

41.Avionos (Chicago, IL)

42. Red Dot Storage (Louisville, CO)

43. The ExecRanks (Novato, CA)

44. Aptris (Rockford, IL)

45. Nylas (San Francisco, CA)

46. AdTheorent (New York, NY)

47. AgileCraft (Austin, TX)

48. SmartBug Media (Newport Beach, CA)

49. Buildium (Boston, MA)

50. Karat (Seattle, WA)

Methodology

Comparably Awards are derived from sentiment ratings provided by employees who anonymously rated their employers on Comparably.com between November 26, 2017 and November 26, 2018. There were no fees or costs associated with participating, nor was nomination required. To qualify, Large companies (more than 500 employees) must have a minimum of 50 employee participants and Small/Mid-Size companies (fewer than 500 employees) must have a minimum of 15 employee participants. The final data set was compiled from nearly 10 million ratings across 50,000 U.S. companies on Comparably.com.

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