If you’re interested in learning more about the methodology, click here.

Today, in collaboration with our primary research partner Yrdstck, we’re excited to unveil the inaugural class of winners of the Front Office Sports Best Employers in Sports Award.

The Best Employers in Sports Award recognizes the organizations that are doing the best by their employees. Whether its competitive pay, a good work-life balance, or even great leadership, the Best Employers in Sports Award looks to recognize those who are pushing our industry forward.

Our goal in launching this award was to ensure that organizations strive to achieve this recognition year after year, and that those who aren’t recognized will ask themselves what they can do better as an organization to foster a positive work environment for their employees.

The goal of this initiative is simple: create a benchmark that gives those organizations a chance to celebrate and reap the benefits of recruiting and retaining top talent within their organization. For those that fall short, the benchmark can be used as a goal they can look to obtain next year.

As we are with all of our intiatives, we want to offer complete transparency into how everything works. We believe the below should answer most, if not all, questions about the process. Of course, if you have others, please let us know!

How The 2019 Best Employers in Sports Were Chosen

In 2019, only 50 companies (or the top 10%) made the cut out of the 500+ companies in the sports industry that participated in the research. The Best Employers in Sports were selected based on anonymous surveys conducted among over 2,500 people currently employed within the sports industry. The survey period was open from September 10th, 2019 until October 15th, 2019.

Respondents were asked to rate statements about their employer regarding culture, diversity, advancement opportunity, compensation, trust and more. They were asked if they would recommend their employer to a friend or family member, and in a final open-ended question analyzed using patented AI technology free from human bias, they were asked to give reasons WHY they would or would not recommend their employer.

Three respected methods of sentiment analysis (Ekman, Plutchik and Canvs) were used in the evaluation of this final question that elicited remarkable insights into how employees truly “feel” about their employer.

The statement rating scores (quantitative research) and aggregate scores from the sentiment analysis (qualitative research) were used to create a final YRDSTCK.AI SCORE that determined the 50 winners.

In the sports industry, to our knowledge, there has never been a more comprehensive or unbiased process used when it comes to awarding a recognition like this.

In fact, no one at Front Office Sports had any role in the process until the list of the fifty award winners were given to us by the team at yrdstck.

We know how much of an impact this award can make and we wanted to make sure that there was no opportunity for bias, perceived or otherwise, whatsoever.

By opening up a survey opportunity without a paid or submitted application, we were able to get the true feeling of those actually doing the work in the trenches for their respective organizations.

That is also why you will see a list that includes companies that haven’t traditionally been winners of other industry awards.

How The Winners Can Leverage The Award

After the list of 50 was given to us by the team at yrdstck, we notified the winners and gave them two options to leverage it.

The first is sharing the announcement the day of (today) or purchasing a license to promote the recognition for an entire year across all of their platforms and anywhere they would like. This is the standard process for other awards like this that are given out by other publishers (for example, Fast Company’s Most Innovative Companies, Inc Best Places to Work, etc).

For those that purchase the license, they have the chance to include a badge that delineates them as a best employer in sports anywhere they would like (email signature, website, ads, social media etc) for the entirety of 2020.

All of the winners appear below, regardless of whether or not they have paid for a license. Instead, the license gives them the opportunity to promote this recognition year-round.

We know something like this has never been done before in the sports industry, so if you are unfamiliar with programs like this or have any questions, feel free to reach out to adam@frntofficesport.com.

Below you will find the list of the 2019 Best Employers in Sports. Congrats to all of the winners!

If you are interested in learning more about the methodology, click here.

If you’re a winner and interested in a license to promote the award, click here or email brian@yrdstck.ai.