We’re proud to introduce our latest UK employer brand survey, which you can find here. We asked participants to tell us which brands they’d be most interested in working for, as well as asking what the top three reasons would be for choosing a new employer. These questions yielded some revealing insights about the digital sector, the companies within it, and crucially, the psychology that candidates employ when looking for their next role.
The top 50 league table
The results of our survey had a lot to tell us about the top 50 companies that the UK digital workforce wants to work for:
- Top 30: an agency-free zone
The first big point is that out of all the companies mentioned, the top 30 contained no agencies. This doesn’t necessarily tell us that people have an active dislike of agencies – perhaps the first natural assumption – but what first comes to mind when you ask if they would like to for a brand like Google, Nike or Nintendo. After all, the average consumer identifies with brands, rather than agencies who deliver their work.
The top 3 agencies sit at positions 34 (Us Two),40 (R/GA) and 43 (AKQA).
- Introducing the “super class”
Out of all possible points, three companies took 44.9% of responses: Google, Apple and Microsoft, who placed 1st, 2nd and 3rd respectively. The company that placed 4th, Amazon, received only 39.8% of the total number of votes that Microsoft did, in 3rd place, suggesting that there is a super class of companies that the digital workforce would like to work for, which are the aforementioned big three.
- The tech top 20
The big focus in the top 20 is tech. 65% of the top 20 could be regarded as technology-oriented, and the “super class” trio at the top are exclusively tech. Companies like Virgin, Sky, Cisco, HP, Del, and Sony are well-known and well-established employers.
Reasons you chose
It’s good to know where people want to work, but why they want to work there is more valuable. We asked people to select their top three motivations:
- Where are the disruptors?
We’re living in the age of disruption. So where are the disruptors of the technology industry, such as Uber and Monzo in the top 50? You might have thought that companies seen as disruptive would rank highly amongst tech companies, but it is the more established tech companies like Google and Amazon who have attracted the most attention. Across the service areas, ‘pay and benefits’ came out as the most mentioned motivation, perhaps this suggests that candidates see more established companies as able to deliver greater financial reward.
- Size doesn’t matter
According to our respondents, the size of the company was the least important selection criteria, with just 5.7% of respondents mentioning it. We suggest that the reason for this is not that people care, but that they prioritise pay, career development and training, and flexible work-life balance, above size of the organisation.
- Consistency across roles
Each of the roles we examined – from account management to data analytics and business development – selected the same three motivations in a combination of orders. These were:
- Pay and benefits
- Flexible working/work-life balance
- Career development and training
The only exception to this trend was from those who work in UX, who substituted pay and benefits for work culture, which came as their top priority.
These are just some of the overall insights that can be taken from our UK Employer Brand Survey. For the full picture, take a look for yourself here.
We are specialists in digital consultancy, so whether you would like help optimising the presentation of your business to attract top talent, or you are looking for your next opportunity at a top-50 company, contact our teams today in London, Berlin, Singapore and Hong Kong.
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