On Feb. 8, Forbes published their annual rankings of Canada’s Best Employers. In a drastic ascend from 17th last year, Queen’s topped the list at number one. 

The list, which included 300 of the country’s most favourable companies functioning in a range of sectors, factored in nearly 5,900 listed employees at Queen’s.

Nav Canada placed second while Toronto Hydro, the provider for all the street light electricity and roughly one-fifth of Ontario’s total electricity consumption came third. Companies like Google, Ubisoft and Costco rounded out the top 10 in fourth, sixth and ninth place respectively. 

Graphic by Rachel Liu 

Queen’s was also the only employer from the education sector to break the top 10, with Western University at 12th place being the next runner up.

In an email to The Journal, Forbes Leadership Editor Frederick Allen wrote that “in collaboration with online statistics provider Statista, Forbes asked 8,000 Canadian employees — 81 per cent full-timers — working for large  institutions to rate their willingness to recommend their own companies on a scale of one to 10.” 

“The employees who took part in the survey were consulted not via their employers but anonymously through several online access panels.” Data was recorded this past September. 

Employees were also asked if there were any Canadian companies in their sector that they would, or wouldn’t, recommend to their peers. 

Statista — a database company — measured answers through a direct score, based on employees 1-to-10 rating of likelihood to recommend their employer, and an indirect score based on employees’ willingness to recommend others companies. 

According to the Forbes article, automotive company Mercedes-Benz “plummeted” this year from 11th to 67th place while other educational institutes like the University of Guelph dropped from sixth to 63rd and Sheridan College in Toronto fell off the list completely after placing as high as 13th in 2016.