Central Florida employees are overwhelmingly positive about their workplaces, but workers’ concerns about pay and their well-being are higher than national averages.
Those are just two of the findings from surveys conducted for the Orlando Sentinel’s 2026 Top Workplaces programs.
For the eighth year, the Sentinel partnered with employee survey firm Energage to determine the best places to work in Central Florida. Not all can be winners, and the chosen companies are selected based on a comprehensive survey process that covers 26 factors and takes a few minutes to complete.
For 2026, a total of 5,706 organizations were invited to survey their employees and 164 agreed to do so. Based on the survey feedback, a record 134 companies doing business in Central Florida have earned recognition as Top Workplaces.
The award is open to any employer with 35 or more employees in Central Florida. Survey results are valid only if 35% or more employees respond, and employers with fewer than 85 employees have a higher response threshold, requiring responses from at least 30 employees.
Of this year’s winners, 34 are newcomers to the Sentinel’s Top Workplaces list, including Dan Newlin Injury Attorneys, Endeavors, Florida Virtual School and FlexPoint, Frank Gay Commercial Services, GEICO, ITI Engineering, Wermert Group Realty and YMCA of Central Florida.
There are also 14 companies who are being recognized as Top Workplaces for the eighth consecutive year. They are Acrisure Mortgage, Cole Engineering Services, DRMP, Fifth Third Bank, Florida Distributing, Leland Management, Massey Services, Orlando Magic, Robbins Property Associates, Source2, Taylor Morrison, Taylor Morrison Home Funding, Total Quality Logistics and Zimmerman Kiser Sutcliffe.
Employers are grouped into similar sizes to best compare similar employee experiences and earn Top Workplaces recognition if their aggregated employees’ feedback score exceeds national benchmarks. Energage has established those benchmarks based on feedback from about 30 million employees since 2007 and organizations are ranked within those groups based on the strength of the survey feedback.
The Energage survey asks employees to offer feedback about work factors such as pay and benefits, direction, leadership, meaningfulness, and appreciation. Energage crunches the feedback data and scores companies based on the responses.
To look at trends and make comparisons in its employee surveys, Energage also uses a positivity score which highlights the percentage of responders who answered that they slightly agreed, agreed or strongly agreed with some of the survey statements.
The statements “My manager helps me learn and grow,” “My job makes me feel like I am part of something meaningful” and “I believe this company is going in the right direction” were the top three in which Central Florida workers’ positivity scores exceeded the national average.
Conversely, the statements where Central Florida employees’ positivity scores were the lowest compared to the national average were “This company does a great job of prioritizing employee well-being” and “My pay is fair for the work I do.”
Despite lagging the national averages, those two responses still received positive scores of 73.2% and 63.7%, respectively, from local employees.