Great Place to Work and “Fortune” name Northstar Recycling among best workplaces for women

East Longmeadow, Massachusetts-based Northstar Recycling has been named by Great Place to Work, San Francisco, and Fortune as one of the 100 Best Workplaces for Women. The honor followed a survey of more than 135,600 female employees.

Northstar Recycling states in a news release, “As the sole representative of the waste and recycling industry, we consider this honor exceptionally notable because the recognition is based on women’s own assessments of the quality and fairness of our workplace.”

Seth Goodman, CEO and co-founder of Northstar Recycling, says, “When my brother, Noah, and I started Northstar Recycling, we wanted to create a workplace where all employees would feel valued and would be eager to come to work every day. That is why feedback like this is so meaningful to us. To know that these rankings were based off a combination of feedback from our employees’ survey responses as well as Great Place to Work’s overall analysis of our company says a lot to us, and we are thrilled to know our team has built such a supportive work environment.”

Northstar Recycling and the 99 other companies that were acknowledged on the list were selected based on evaluations by more than 135,600 female employees on Great Place to Work’s Trust Index employee survey. Women considered everything from the fairness of their company’s promotions to who has access to information and leadership, the level of support for employees’ personal lives and the degree of inclusiveness and connection they feel with colleagues. Scores also took into account how well-represented women were within the workforce, management and executive positions, how positively women experience fairness in the workplace; and how favorable women’s experiences are compared with the 138,000 men also surveyed.

Across the 637 companies studied, Great Place to Work found that men’s and women’s experiences were most likely to differ on measures assessing the fairness of their workplaces, as well as several measures rating their access to communication and involvement in workplace decision-making. By contrast, researchers’ analysis of women’s and men’s results show that the 100 winning workplaces create a more consistent and inclusive environment for both genders across a range of day-to-day trust-building behaviors, including employees’ access to special recognition, fair treatment regardless of role and management’s approachability.

“The companies on this list are leaders who recognize the strategic importance of creating workplaces that attract and support the best talent in their industries,” says Michael Bush, CEO of Great Place to Work United States. “While specialized programs supporting women’s equal access to opportunity are often strategic, in many ways it is just as important—and challenging for leaders—to establish a pattern of inclusiveness throughout everyday workplace interactions, since these rely on everyone to overcome their blind spots. Ranking on this list a great indicator that these companies’ efforts to create great workplaces are resonating throughout their teams.”

The 100 Best Workplaces for Women ranking is one of a series of rankings by Great Place to Work and Fortune based upon employee survey feedback from published Great Place to Work Reviews.