Methodology

To be eligible for the list, companies had to be headquartered in the United States and have over 5,000 employees. Overall, Forbes evaluated more than 2,500 companies on over 50 metrics in four key domains:

• Employee trust: Employees' ratings in different Glassdoor categories like opportunities for advancement and whether they would recommend their workplace to a friend were considered. People Data Labs' measures of employee tenure, which can help measure trust from the workforce, were also considered.
• Customer trust: Survey ratings from the research company HundredX were used to assess how customers felt about companies' brands and products, social stances, treatment of employees, and community support.
• Investor trust: Each company's one- and five-year stock performance, revenue growth, and net income growth were considered.
• Creditor trust: Dun & Bradstreet's PAYDEX scores were used to assess how reliably a company paid its vendors, suppliers, and creditors.

Within each domain, metrics for each company were combined into one score, which was normalized and then adjusted when appropriate to show how the company compared to competitors in the same sector. The scores across the domains were then combined to create a final score. The top 300 companies were ranked.

"Trust is crucial for a brand to exist," said Joe Feldman, a senior retail analyst at Telsey Group. "You treat your employees right, they'll treat your customers right, and you'll get rewarded with more visitation, more dollars."

The most trusted healthcare companies

Of the 300 companies included on the list, 16 were in healthcare, including 8 Advisory Board members.

*Denotes an Advisory Board member

Pharmaceuticals & biotechnology

195. Gilead Sciences

230. Cencora*

Pharmacies

88. CVS Health

Surgical instruments — Manufacturers

83. Cook Group*