Quintiles, a biopharmaceutical services company, has been named to Forbes magazine’s first-ever America’s Best Employers list as rated by more than 20,000 independent survey responses. 

Quintiles is ranked as the 30^th best employer in the U.S. and comes in third in the Drugs and Biotechnology category. In all, 500 companies are included in the 2015 Forbes list.

“Being named one of the top employers in the U.S. is a great honor for Quintiles and says a lot about our values, our people and company mission,” said Garrett Walker chief human resources officer. “Our organization is committed to building and sustaining a work environment that enables our talent to be high performing, successful in achieving their professional development goals and provides multiple career paths and opportunities.”

The Forbes ranking of top employers is drawn from an online survey of 20,000 American workers at large U.S. companies, nonprofit institutions such as hospitals, government agencies, and U.S. divisions of multinationals, asking them to provide their opinions on their employers and others in their industry with which they were familiar.

Surveyed employees were asked, “On a scale of 1-10, how likely would you be to recommend your employer to someone else?  How about other employers in your industry?”

Forbes’ statistics partner, Statista, evaluated the data and identified 3,500 employers for whom there was a statistically relevant result.  From that pool, the top 500 companies made the Forbes list. Those 500 were split up into 27 industry categories covering all aspects of the American economy.