Deadline for Top Workplaces extended to March 23

The deadline to nominate a company for the Minnesota 2018 Top Workplaces honor has been extended until March 23.

This is the ninth year the Star Tribune has partnered with Pennsylvania-based Energage (formerly WorkplaceDynamics) to survey Minnesota companies and identify those with the best workplace practices.

For the past two years, Minnesota has had the most participation out of more than 40 Top Workplaces programs nationwide. Last year, Energage surveyed more than 2.5 million employees, 69,192 of them in Minnesota.

Anyone can give a nod to a company at startribune.com/nominate or by calling 612-605-3306.

To make the final list, a company must have 50 or more employees in Minnesota and allow Energage to conduct five-minute, 24-question surveys with its workers.

A special section showcasing the 2018 Top Workplaces winners will be produced in June, and a luncheon will be held to honor them.

Energage asks employees to rank 24 statements to measure the following three elements of the workplace:

• My job — pay, training, managers and work/life balance.

• Engagement — employees' motivation, desire to stay and willingness to recommend their workplace to others.

After the surveys were tallied last spring, 252 employers scored high enough to earn honors. The top 150 workplaces were ranked based on employee feedback scores and by size, plus 102 National Standard Setters, which exceeded a national benchmark but didn't score high enough to crack the rankings.

Minnesota scored above the average on the surveys for every factor except for retention, which employers said was not surprising because of the tight workforce in the state.