A woman's voice on the phone, anxious: "Did we make the list?" This is one of the rare opportunities I have -- in a profession that's too often filled with dreary skepticism and dismal prediction -- to be the bearer of good news.

"You made the list!" I say. She lets out a giddy laugh, and for a moment I get to share in the joy this HR manager experiences at doing something purely good in the world of business: helping to create a 100 Best Company to Work For in Oregon, a place where people want to show up every day to make a contribution and a difference.

If only managing the 100 Best were all sweetness and light. This has been a year of change and reinvention for our 100 Best process, and getting to the point of "congratulations" or "better luck next time" has been quite a challenge.

Prior to this year, we had used a relatively traditional survey methodology in selecting the top companies. Senior management answered an employer survey about company policies; and employees, in a separate survey, agreed or disagreed with statements about the workplace -- for instance, "Managers treat workers with respect" -- using a standard 1-to-5 scale. The employer and employee surveys each accounted for 50% of a company's score.

The process was thorough and comprehensive. But it could also be skewed by an over-eager employer trying to give his or her company a high score, or disgruntled employees trying to make their company a sure loser.

We wanted something better and more enlightening, and landed with the current methodology, developed by the social scientists at Portland polling firm Davis, Hibbitts & Midghall.

The key to our new survey is that it asks employees to compare pairs of statements about the workplace and choose from each the better description of their own company; secondly, which would be more true of a "great place to work." This takes some thinking on the part of the survey-taker. But the methodology delivers highly reliable and valid results. Employer input is limited to objective measures of employee benefits. And in the end, the survey delivers an unprecedented portrait of what Oregon employees want their workplaces to be like, and how they think their actual workplaces stack up.

We believe this year's 100 Best process is the best yet. We knew it was a risk to launch a new product when few thought the old one was broken. But we took a leap of faith and went for it.

All the companies that participated also took a leap of faith, putting their good names and reputations in the hands of their own workers. They let 16,000 hard-working Oregonians from Portland to Bend to Grants Pass to The Dalles pick this year's winners.

We thank those companies for the trust they put in their employees, and the trust they put in us, to find out which truly are the 100 Best Companies to Work For in Oregon.

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Copyright 2004 Oregon Business magazine