Financial-services firm Edward Jones ranked number four on the newly released Best Workplace for Women by Great Place to Work and FORTUNE, according to the five financial advisors in Niles. The firm is the highest-ranking financial-services firm on the list.

The ranking considered more than 540,000 employee surveys from Great Place to Work-certified companies.

Great Place to Work, a global analytics and consulting firm, evaluated more than 50 elements of team members’ experiences on the job. These included the extent to which employees, particularly women, trust leaders; the respect with which people are treated; the fairness of workplace decisions; and how much camaraderie there is among the team.

“This ranking, based upon feedback from our own associates, confirms that we have a wonderful career opportunity for women. Our family-friendly workplace includes generous leave for caregivers and flexible work arrangements,” said Managing Partner Jim Weddle. “We offer women financial advisors a dedicated network of mentoring and support. Our financial advisors run their own businesses built upon the hard work of developing personal relationships with clients, and our success is measured by helping clients achieve their financial goals.”

The Best Workplaces for Women stand out for creating great workplaces for all employees, regardless of gender or other personal characteristics. Weddle was among the first 150 CEOs to sign the “CEO Action for Diversity & Inclusion” pledge, a nationwide initiative to advance diversity and inclusion in the workplace as a means to improve corporate performance, drive growth and enhance employee engagement.

Best Workplaces rankings are based on employees’ feedback and reward companies who best include all employees, and where women have equally great experiences as employees of other genders, no matter who they are or what they do for the organization.

“This year, we pledged to close the employee experience gender gap by 2020, and these winning organizations are leading the way in achieving this mission, proving that all companies, regardless of their industry, size or complexity, can be great workplaces for women,” said CEO Michael Bush, of Great Place to Work. “Empowering women in the workplace isn’t just the right thing to do — it’s a business imperative. Organizations can create their own equitable cultures by learning from the companies on this list, who get women’s buy-in of the mission and inspire them to innovate, driving the entire company forward.”

The Best Workplaces for Women list is among a series of rankings by Great Place to Work and FORTUNE based on employee feedback from Great Place to Work-certified organizations. Edward Jones also was ranked the number five overall Best Company to Work in 2018 and as a Best Workplace for millennials and those in the financial services and insurance industry, among others.

Edward Jones, a Fortune 500 company headquartered in St. Louis, provides financial services in the U.S. and, through its affiliate, in Canada. Every aspect of the firm’s business, from the investments its financial advisors offer to the location of its branch offices, caters to individual investors. The firm’s 16,000-plus financial advisors serve more than 7 million clients and care for $1 trillion in assets under management. To learn more, visit the business’s website at edwardjones.com and recruiting website at careers.edwardjones.com. Member SIPC.