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Mason named one of America’s best employers

George Mason University is one of America’s best employers, according to a new evaluation by Forbes.

George Mason is ranked 54th among 500 top midsize companies with between 1,000 and 5,000 employees. See the full list here.

“We hire employees who appreciate our purpose and values, and we try to live our values,” said Linda Harber, Mason’s vice president for human resources, payroll and faculty/staff life. “And it’s a very caring workplace. People care about each other and helping colleagues be successful.”

“We work hard to make Mason a great place to work,” Mason Senior Vice President Jennifer (J.J.) Wagner Davis said. “We are thrilled and honored that our workforce would recognize Mason and honored to be part of Forbes’ “America’s Best Employers.”

Forbes teamed with the market research company Statista to identify the best places to work. Statista anonymously surveyed 30,000 Americans working for businesses with at least 1,000 employees.

Respondents answered 30 detailed questions about working conditions and were asked to rate, on a scale of zero to 10, how likely they would be to recommend their employers to others. Statista then asked respondents to nominate organizations in industries outside their own.

Participation in the survey was voluntary, and respondents were recruited from thousands of sources to maximize reach and representation, according to Forbes’ methodology

“We can’t expect our students to be engaged and successful if our faculty and staff are not engaged,” said Kate Astor, HR metrics and project analyst for Human Resources/Payroll at Mason. “This is reflective of that sense that people do see Mason as a great place to work. People have an opportunity to advance themselves, and we do a lot of things around well-being to make sure people are engaged.”

“We’re a creative workplace,” Harber said. “We don’t just say, ‘We never did that.’ People are allowed to try things. You’re also around smart people all the time trying to do good.”

Mason also ranks second in Virginia as a best value school, according to bestvalueschools.org. See the full list here. It tied for 16th nationally (of 523 institutions ranked by payscale.com) as a best value college for engineering majors. See that list here. Mason also ranked third in Virginia among four-year institutions by schools.com. See it here.