In 1991, the Corporate Research Foundation (CRF) was founded as a joint initiative of academics, business journalists, trade associations, researchers and international publishers to showcase the best practices in the field of HR management. With the objective of offering independent HR assessment and acknowledgement, CRF was launched.

Since then, CRF has grown into an international organisation with over 2,500 unique participants worldwide. The CRF methodology proved to be successful. As Professor Pedro Nueno, founder and Executive President of Asia's #1 MBA the China Europe International Business School and Professor at IESE, stated: "I have used many of the CRF Institute’s studies as a guide for my work over the past decade (...). I believe that the effort put into identifying top employers (...) has considerable merit; the results can be used as inputs for many business decisions."

Obviously Professor Nueno’s observations are also relevant to a larger audience like journalists, investors and most importantly the employees.

Over the past 10 years the CRF Institute has further refined its methodology. This has resulted in a thorough and objective selection and screening process. This enables CRF to develop an interactive and incisive tool that compares Top Employers. Today CRF's own comparative research methods have become internationally recognised as best suited to assess and certify the top performing organisations in HR.