Who Are the “Most Admired for HR” for 2018?

A good reputation is a prerequisite for becoming one of Fortune’s Most Admired Companies. Inclusion on Human Resource Executive®’s “Most Admired for HR” list–now in its 14th year–requires another level of scrutiny.

The process of developing this definitive report card on corporate reputations begins when Los Angeles-based management-consulting firm Korn Ferry teams up with Fortune to determine the “World’s Most Admired Companies,” which they’ve done since 1997. They started with the Fortune 1000–the 1,000 largest U.S. companies ranked by revenue–and non-U.S. companies in Fortune’s Global 500 database with revenues of $10 billion or more. They then selected the 15 largest for each international industry and the 10 largest for each U.S. industry, surveying a total of 680 companies from 29 countries.

To create the 52 industry lists, Korn Ferry asked executives, directors and analysts to rate companies in their own industries on nine criteria, from investment value to social responsibility. To arrive at HRE’s “Most Admired for HR” rankings, Korn Ferry recalibrated the Fortune attribute scores, isolating four criteria that have a bearing on HR–management quality, product/service quality, innovation and people management.

This article accompanies Building Organizational Agility.