Measuring excellence | The data behind Forbes’ America’s Best Companies 2026

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Forbes' America’s Best Companies 2026 uses over 100 metrics across 11 categories to rank top-performing organizations, emphasizing financial performance, employee satisfaction, and sustainability.

As a data partner, Denominator provides insights on diversity and social data, highlighting the critical role human capital plays in driving innovation and success.

Each year, Forbes publishes America’s Best Companies ranking, highlighting organizations that stand out for their performance, innovation, and responsibility. The list has become a reference point for investors, professionals, and consumers seeking to understand which companies are not only financially successful but also socially conscious and operationally resilient. Behind this recognition lies a comprehensive analytical framework, designed to move beyond surface-level indicators and uncover a company’s true standing across multiple dimensions of excellence.

For the second consecutive year Denominator is a Forbes’ data partner, providing diversity data, offering a fact-based view of how companies perform on the social side of sustainability.

What makes a company one of Forbes’ America’s Best?

To be recognized as one of America’s best-performing companies is not a matter of perception or reputation, it is a result of rigorous measurement across a wide spectrum of indicators. Forbes applies a data-driven methodology that examines both quantitative and qualitative aspects of corporate performance, assessing how firms operate, grow, and sustain value for their stakeholders.

The 2026 edition of the ranking draws on more than 100 distinct metrics organized within 11 primary categories, encompassing areas such as financial performance, customer and employee satisfaction, cybersecurity, sustainability, remote work policies, and media coverage.

This year the list also jumps from 300 companies to 500 getting a bigger overview on the American companies.

Denominator’s role: assessing the social side of sustainability

As a data partner, Denominator contributes its diversity and social sustainability data, providing a fact-based lens on how companies perform in the social side of sustainability. In particular, Denominator provided representation data at both executive and lower levels of the company of different groups, such as gender, race/ethnicity, age, education, disability and nationality. Also corporate policies and commitments.

This granular data enables Forbes to include a robust social dimension alongside financial and operational metrics, making the ranking one of the most holistic assessments of corporate performance in the U.S.

"How corporations make, manage and monitor their human capital is critical for business performance,” “Companies that have more women on the board also have better credit quality.” - Emma Helbo, Head of External Relations & Communication at Denominator.

Denominator’s annual study with Moody’s has shown for the past three years that the amount of gender diversity on boards directly correlates with company credit scores.

The percentage overall of women has also increased, she says. Among companies in Forbes list, those with more gender diversity in leadership tended to do better, with those in the top quartile at 38% female management and 40% female boards, versus 20% and 29%, respectively, in the bottom quarter.

Behind the ranking: integrity, expertise, and rigor

The methodology behind Forbes’ corporate rankings was developed under the leadership of Alan Schwarz, a Pulitzer-finalist data journalist renowned for his rigorous and evidence-based investigations. With the collaboration of Heather Newman an award-winning business, gaming and technology journalist for more than 25 years.

As featured in a podcast episode by Signal AI, Schwarz’s approach reflects a commitment to accuracy, transparency, and cross-validation, qualities that ensure the final results are both credible and actionable.

Their work brings together leading data providers, including Morningstar, Sustainalytics, Glassdoor, SignalAI, HundredX, Security Scorecard, People data labs and Data Axle.