(FORTUNE Magazine) – To pick the 100 Best Companies to Work For, we rely on two things: our evaluation of the policies and culture of each company, and the opinions of the company's own employees. We give the latter more weight: Two-thirds of the total score comes from employee responses to a 57-question survey created by the Great Place to Work Institute in San Francisco. The survey goes to a minimum of 350 randomly selected employees from each company and asks about things such as attitudes toward management, job satisfaction, and camaraderie. The remaining one-third of the score comes from our evaluation of each company's demographic makeup, pay and benefits programs, and the like. We score companies in four areas: credibility (communication to employees), respect (opportunities and benefits), fairness (compensation, diversity), and pride/camaraderie (philanthropy, celebrations). After evaluations are completed, if news about a company comes to light that may significantly damage employees' faith in management, we may exclude that company from the list.

About 1,000 companies contacted us or were recruited to participate; of those, 356 completed the exhaustive survey process. (Any company that is at least seven years old with over 1,000 U.S. employees is eligible.) The deadline for applying to next year's list is March 31, 2005; for an online nomination form, go to www.greatplacetowork.com. -- R.L. and M.M.

NOTES

N.A. Not available. U.S. employees: Includes part-timers as of time of survey.

Job growth, new jobs, and voluntary turnover: Full-time only.

Average annual pay: Yearly pay rate plus additional cash compensation for the largest classification of salaried and hourly employees. Data from summer 2004.

2003 revenues or latest fiscal year. All data based on U.S. employees.