Here Are The Top 25 Companies To Work For In The UK

Published on22nd March 2018 at 12.55pm

You may love your job, you may hate your job, but thanks to LinkedIn, we now know exactly how our company compares to the rest of the nation. At least, you do if you work for one of these ‘top 25’ companies. Every year, LinkedIn gives us a glimpse into the UK’s best businesses to work for, and the list may surprise you.

Basing the leaderboard on data from their own users, they use ‘four pillars’ to rank companies. The variables range from interest in the company, to engagement with the company’s employees, job demand and employee retention. So essentially, if a lot of people really want to work somewhere and then they stick around once they’ve got the job, LinkedIn surmise that’s ‘where the UK wants to work now’.

So, who has nabbed the allusive top stop? The online retail giant ASOS, of course, jumping one spot from second place last year. With ‘long service awards’ including bonuses and extra time off, they also hired 30% more staff last year, the same percentage their sales went up by.

In second place is media big wig BBC, which despite gender pay gap controversy has an amazing employee retention rate of 7.4 years. Stealing third place was McKinsey & Company, a management consulting agency which receives 225,000 applicants every year, for only 2,000 spots.

They’re closely followed by Richemont, a Swiss luxury jewellery and goods group, whose subsidiaries include Cartier and Chloe. According to LinkedIn, the company’s two-day induction involved flying over to their HQ in Geneva which is supposedly as luxurious as the jewellery they sell. The popularity of luxury groups doesn’t end there either, as Kering takes the number 5 spot. Owning Gucci, YSL, Alexander McQueen and Balenciaga, they increased their headcount by almost 20% last year following their most profitable year to date. They’re also in some tax trouble though, which could explain that ginormous £2.6bn profit.

The top ten is finished off by JPMorgan Chase & Co, Amazon, EY, HSBC (yes despite having the largest gender pay gap of any financial services company) and The Boston Consulting Group in that order. Then comes Selfridges, Apple, Barclays, L'Oreal, Vodafone, Goldman Sachs before Facebook gets a look in at number 17. It may be in the midst of a huge data breach scandal, but according to LinkedIn the new London office will be their biggest engineering hub outside the US, with many employee benefits included.

Following Facebook is Lloyds Banking Group, Accenture, Salesforce and Sky.

Surprisingly low on the list is Alphabet at 22, which owns Google, the notoriously amazing employer. Google employees are treated to holiday parties, healthy bonuses, three gourmet meals a day, free commuting and have access to top of the line facilities including indoor rock-climbing walls, napping pods and outdoor exercise facilities as well as their gym. Receiving 1.1 million applications every year, they are also opening a HQ in London, which they started working on in November last year.

Finishing off the list are Virgin, Volkswagen and Dell Technologies.

So there you have it, the 25 best companies to work for in the UK, apparently. Did your company make the list? if not, maybe it's time to start preparing for Google's new HQ openings, the napping pods alone are enough reason to make the switch...