Top Workplaces: How Voting Works & How to Win

What the Top Workplaces program is and who runs it

Top Workplaces is a workplace recognition program published for the Philadelphia region of Pennsylvania by The Philadelphia Inquirer. The Inquirer is the organizer whose masthead carries the ranked list, while the program itself is run by Exton-based Energage, a firm that specializes in workplace surveys and awards. The ballot does not sit with any third-party contest platform: it is hosted on Inquirer property, and the confirmed voting URL is the ranked list page at sponsored.inquirer.com.

The exercise is described as celebrating workplaces going above and beyond, and its subject is companies rather than restaurants, shops or attractions. The ranked list separates businesses into tiers for large, midsize and small employers, with the large tier defined as companies with 500 or more employees in the region. In the 2025 list, the top 21 large companies were ranked, with Long & Foster at the top of that tier.

Because the publisher is a newspaper and the operator is a survey firm, the program reads differently from the reader-voted entertainment ballots that dominate Pennsylvania. Supporters encounter it through their employers or through the Inquirer's sponsored pages rather than through an open entertainment ballot, and the route into each cycle runs through a dedicated nomination page at Inquirer.com/nominate.

The dated facts for Top Workplaces editions

Two editions are anchored to Inquirer pages for this program, one each in 2025 and 2026. The 2025 ranked list was published on August 27, 2025, covering large, midsize and small companies across the Philadelphia region. The 2026 cycle is already open for participation: the organizer directs businesses that want to take part in the 2026 Top Workplaces awards, or that want more information, to the nomination page at Inquirer.com/nominate.

Timing for the cycle that produced the 2025 list places the nomination phase in August, spanning that month. What the organizer leaves unpublished is everything a cautious entrant would want beside those anchors: the exact days the round opens and closes, the roster of ballot categories, and any rule limiting how often a supporter may vote; confirm on the live ballot each cycle.

No earlier edition years are printed on the pages carrying the 2025 and 2026 material, so the program's history before 2025 is not stated anywhere a reader can point to. The expected next step is a 2027 cycle, following the pattern of consecutive years, and the organizer announces it through the same nomination page. Until a new cycle appears on the Inquirer's sponsored pages, the August 2025 publication date and the 2026 participation call remain the firm dated anchors.

How a supporter takes part today

Participation runs entirely on Inquirer domains, which makes the route easy to describe. A business that wants into a cycle begins at Inquirer.com/nominate, the dedicated nomination page the organizer names for participation and for more information. The ballot mechanic is a public vote: supporters vote for workplaces, and the outcome is the ranked list the Inquirer publishes at sponsored.inquirer.com, split across large, midsize and small employers.

For a supporter, the practical sequence is to check whether the company they back is part of the current cycle, then follow the organizer's pages rather than any contest hub, because no outside platform is involved. That also means the voting interface a reader sees is whatever the Inquirer prints on its sponsored pages in that cycle, and it can change between the 2025 and 2026 material. Anyone planning a support push for a nominated employer should read the organizer's rules before acting, and can consult our guide on how to get more votes online for campaign practice that does not depend on any single ballot's format. There is no paid tier anywhere on this ballot: the organizer sells nothing to voters.

How this ballot sits beside its Pennsylvania neighbours

Top Workplaces belongs to the best-of family of programs on these Pennsylvania pages, but it is the only entrant in the group devoted to employers. Its closest connection is Philly Favorites, which shares The Philadelphia Inquirer as publisher, though the two programs carry different names and different subjects, so they stand as separate ballots rather than editions of the same thing.

The wider set of neighbours are reader-voted best-of ballots across the state: Best of Philly (Philadelphia Magazine), Best of Berks (Berks County Living Magazine), Best of the Lehigh Valley (Lehigh Valley Style), Bucks County & Chester County Readers' Choice, Best of the 'Burgh and Erie Reader Best of Erie. Every one of those ballots answers to a different publisher on a separate schedule.

What separates Top Workplaces from that group is the subject and the judge: employers, measured through a workplace survey run by Energage and published by the Inquirer, rather than businesses voted up by general readers. It also sits on the organizer's own site, where most of the neighbours run on dedicated contest platforms, and its entry route through Inquirer.com/nominate marks it as a business-facing program even though the vote itself is public.