Forbes and JUST Capital have announced the results of the 2017 Rankings of "America’s Most JUST Companies." This ranking of the largest publicly-traded U.S. corporations on issues such as worker pay and treatment, customer respect, and product quality, uses as a foundation surveys that determine the American public’s view of what qualities comprise a “just” workplace and their relative importance. The Behavioral & Economic Decision Making (BEAD) practice area of NORC at the University of Chicago partnered with JUST Capital on this project, designing and implementing the study so as to yield results with the very high degree of objectivity, representativeness, accuracy, and scientific rigor required by JUST Capital. The surveys were carried out through NORC’s AmeriSpeak panel.

The press release announcing the results of the Rankings follows:

The rankings are based on some of the most comprehensive surveys ever conducted on public attitudes towards corporate behavior, involving 10,000 American respondents in 2017 and more than 72,000 over the past three years. For the complete 2017 list of America’s Most JUST Companies, which includes the JUST 100 list of the top companies across all industries in absolute rank order, as well as the Industry Leader list, which features the 33 top performers by sector, please visit: www.justcapital.com. The JUST 100 will be featured in the December 26, 2017 issue of Forbes magazine, with additional feature stories at www.forbes.com/just100.

“Business can and should be a unifying force for good in America today, but what it needs is a new North Star, and that is what these rankings provide,” said Martin Whittaker, CEO of JUST Capital. “By trusting in the American people to define what really matters when it comes to measuring business performance, we think we can help breathe life into the vision of a more just economy that better serves the broader best interests of society.”

When asked what was most important for companies to prioritize, Americans ranked the following in order of importance: Workers, Customers, Products, the Environment, Communities, Jobs, and finally Management & Shareholders. JUST’s scoring system is weighted to reflect the relative importance of the public’s priorities. JUST Capital’s full methodology is available online at www.justcapital.com/methodology.

Compared to others among the 1,000 largest public corporations, companies in the JUST 100:

• Pay their median U.S. worker 33% more;
• Are more than 10 times likelier to have conducted gender pay equity analyses;
• Face 74% fewer employment discrimination cases per dollar of revenue, and pay 99% fewer fines to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission per dollar of revenue;
• Face zero Consumer Product Safety Commission or FDA fines;
• Face 83% fewer customer discrimination controversy cases per dollar of revenue;
• Use 74% less electricity, 80% less fuel, 87% less water, and emit 72% fewer GHGs per dollar of revenue;
• Employ on average 38% more workers in the U.S.;
• Have on average 8% higher return-on-equity.

“This year’s list of America’s Most JUST Companies serves as a report card for corporate America, providing unbiased data about how corporations are performing on the issues Americans care most about,” said Forbes editor Randall Lane. “At a time when corporate America, as a whole, struggles with low public approval, the companies represented on this list provide an example for their peers on how to win back the trust of the American people.”

The JUST Capital website empowers anyone to compare the largest publicly-traded U.S. companies on the issues that matter most to them. People viewing the 2017 rankings at www.justcapital.com/2017-rankings can explore how the companies rank overall, how they rank by industry, and how they rank on issues such as worker compensation and wellbeing, customer treatment, product impacts, environmental impact, supporting communities, generating jobs, behaving responsibly in sourcing and supply chains, and more. They can also compare companies head-to-head, or compare company scores against JUST 100 and Industry-average benchmarks.

JUST Capital rankings focus on the largest corporations because they:

• Employ over 30 million people.
• Generate trillions of dollars in profit.
• Provide nearly 50% of healthcare coverage.
• Represent nearly 90% of investable equities.
• Exert immense influence over the economy.
• Affect millions of working families, both directly and via their supply chains.

Corporations ranked as one of America’s Most JUST Companies on the JUST 100 and Industry Leader lists are awarded the JUST Seal to display on their websites, products, and environments, as well as advertising and promotional materials to recognize their alignment with the values and priorities of the American people.

JUST Capital conducted its 2017 surveys in partnership with NORC at the University of Chicago, an independent research institution that delivers data and rigorous analysis to guide programmatic, business, and policy decisions. JUST Capital then evaluated the performance of companies against the priorities that emerged in the survey and created a ranking model to develop the list of America’s Most JUST Companies. Company data was collected and analyzed from SEC filings, CSR reports, Glassdoor data, reputable third-party data vendors, and other publicly-available and crowdsourced information. The selection of companies draws from the Russell 1000 Index, which represents over 90 percent of the U.S. stock market value.