2012 Top 15 Global Workplaces Dominated by Tech

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Great Place to Work, a research and consulting firm, has released a list of the best multinational workplaces. Many of the leaders are U.S. tech companies.

Great Place to Work, which is celebrating its 20th anniversary and is headquartered in San Francisco, narrowed down a list of 5,700 companies that applied to participate in its Best Workplaces contests to a final list of 25 firms.

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For this list, the companies were judged from employee surveys. They also had to appear on at least five national Best Workplaces lists, and have at least 5,000 employees worldwide with at least 40 percent of the workforce outside their home country.

This year, the tech company SAS Institute grabbed the top honors, taking the crown from Microsoft, which won last year. Google inched its way up to the second highest spot, after placing fourth last year.

New to the 2012 top 25 list were: W.L. Gore Associates (8th), Autodesk (10th), PepsiCo (11th), Ernst & Young (12th), Monsanto (14th), General Mills (17th) and Accor (19th).

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"The workplaces on this year's list understand the importance of creating workplaces that foster trust, pride and camaraderie amongst their employees," said Susan Lucas-Conwell, Global CEO of Great Place to Work. "The companies that are new on the list this year, or jumped farther up the list, did so because they did not settle for their own status quo; those companies actively pursued new ways to increase trust in the workplace, and those efforts reflected positively in their ranking."

Voluntary turnover at 15 of the 25 companies was 8 percent per annum, compared to an all industry average in the U.S. of 9.1 percent, according to CompData Service.

At SAS, the annual employee turnover rate is about 2.6 percent, the company said. SAS also said about 98 percent of SAS employees want to work at SAS for a long time, would recommend it as a great place to work, feel proud to work there and believe they make a difference at SAS.

Here is a list of the 2012 top 15 global workplaces: