Essentia Earns 2026–2027 Great Place To Work® Certification™

September 21, 2026

Essentia Earns 2026–2027 Great Place To Work® Certification™

A sixth consecutive year of employee-verified recognition — and a look at what that consistency means for the clients we build for.

84% of Essentia employees say it’s a great place to work — 27 points above the U.S. average — earning the company its sixth consecutive Great Place To Work® Certification™ for 2026–2027. Unlike awards decided by an outside panel, Certification is scored entirely on what current employees report — a confidential Trust Index™ survey measuring credibility, respect, fairness, pride, and belonging across the organization. Six straight years of certification means one thing: the culture holds up, survey after survey, team after team.

The Numbers Behind the Culture

That gap isn’t incidental. It reflects a set of deliberate choices about how Essentia builds and runs its teams:

  • A high-trust environment. 95% of employees say they were made to feel welcome when they joined, and 92% say people here care about each other.
  • Room to be yourself. 92% of employees say they can be themselves at work — the foundation of teams that speak up early when a build hits friction.
  • Flexibility that respects the work. 93% of employees say they can take time off when they think it’s necessary — meaningful in an industry where field schedules rarely make that easy.
  • Team-first recognition. 92% of employees feel a sense of pride in what the company accomplishes — recognition built around the crew and the project, not just individual output.

These aren’t abstractions. They’re the same operating principles — trust, consistency, clear communication — that show up in how Essentia describes itself on its Who We Are page: an organization built to be trusted, first, by the people who work there.

Linking Client Excellence to Employee Experience

Culture and delivery performance aren’t separate conversations at Essentia — they’re the same conversation. As a turnkey network design-build partner delivering engineering, construction management, and deployment for critical digital infrastructure, Essentia’s clients don’t experience “culture” directly. They experience its output: whether crews show up prepared, whether field data is accurate the first time, whether a project stays on schedule when conditions change.

An engineering and construction management workforce that trusts its leadership and understands its priorities makes fewer costly errors and adapts faster when a build hits friction. That reliability is what allows eSpeed, Essentia’s proprietary technology platform, to do its job — standardizing visibility, handoffs, and execution discipline across every project.

“Culture isn’t a program here — it’s the operating system. Six consecutive certifications tell us the discipline scales: teams that trust their leadership catch problems before a client ever sees them,” said Lindon Hayes, Co-Founder & Executive Chairman of Essentia.

Certification is a 12-month recognition that has to be re-earned every year. Six consecutive years reflect investment held steady through growth, market shifts, and scale.

Join a Certified Great Place To Work

Essentia is hiring across engineering, construction management, and field operations — roles built for people who want ownership over their work and a direct line to how it impacts client outcomes. See the full certification details on Essentia’s official Great Place To Work profile, explore what the culture looks like day to day on our Culture page, and view open roles on our careers page.

About Essentia Inc.

At Essentia, we’ve assembled a team of trusted experts who design and build turnkey outdoor and indoor networks with unrivaled quality and record-setting cycle times. We know true breakthrough innovations are the ones that target real customer pain points, inefficiencies, and error-prone processes. That is why we deliver tech-enabled infrastructure services including drone data capture, engineering automations, and machine learning — all powered by our proprietary eSpeed Technology Platform. Founded in 2003 and headquartered in Charlotte, N.C., Essentia operates nationwide, supporting hyperscale, data center operators, neocloud and GPU infrastructure providers, ISPs and telecom carriers, electric utilities, and rural broadband cooperatives.

About Great Place To Work Certification™

Great Place To Work® Certification™ is the most definitive “employer-of-choice” recognition that companies aspire to achieve. It is the only recognition based entirely on what employees report about their workplace experience — specifically, how consistently they experience a high-trust workplace. Great Place To Work Certification is recognized worldwide by employees and employers alike and is the global benchmark for identifying and recognizing outstanding employee experience. Every year, more than 10,000 companies across 60 countries apply to get Great Place To Work-Certified.

About Great Place To Work®

As the global authority on workplace culture, Great Place To Work® brings 30 years of groundbreaking research and data to help every place become a great place to work for all. Their proprietary platform and For All™ Model helps companies evaluate the experience of every employee, with exemplary workplaces becoming Great Place To Work Certified™ or receiving recognition on a coveted Best Workplaces™ List. Learn more at greatplacetowork.com and follow Great Place To Work on LinkedIn, X, Facebook, and Instagram.

Media Contact: [email protected]

Follow Essentia on LinkedIn and X for expert perspectives and industry insights.

Benchmark source: Great Place To Work® 2021 Global Employee Engagement Study. All Essentia survey figures as published on the company’s Great Place To Work profile, updated July 2026.