Large professional services firms named to UK's top 25 employers

06 May 2021 Consultancy.uk

Social business platform LinkedIn has unveiled the most attractive companies to work for in the UK. The list features five professional services firms, with the list finding that PwC, Deloitte, EY, Wipro and Accenture each offer industry leading opportunities for their employees.

LinkedIn is the world’s largest careers network platform, and as such it is constantly fed data by its global user-base of job seekers and professionals. Utilising information gathered from billions of actions taken by their hundreds of millions of members, the network’s insights and global editorial teams analyse the input annually to come up with a blended score to rank the most desirable employers in particular locales.

This year, LinkedIn’s analysis adopted a new methodology, focusing on seven key pillars, each revealing an important element of career progression: ability to advance, skills growth, company stability, external opportunity, company affinity, gender diversity and educational background. In the end, this saw the company find that five of the top 25 employers are from the professional services sector.

Large professional services firms named to UK's top 25 employers

Commenting on the changes, LinkedIn said in a statement, “The world of work is transforming. Not only have we been working through a once-in-a-generation global pandemic, but decades of automation, the rise of artificial intelligence and an accelerated shift to remote work have all reshaped what our professional lives look like – and what we’re expecting from our employers.”

The highest ranked of the professional services contingent was PwC, which has a UK headcount of 22,300, and bases in the nation’s largest locales, including London, Belfast and Birmingham. Explaining why PwC made the cut, LinkedIn pointed to the fact the audit and advisory firm was not only among the first of the Big Four accounting firms to announce plans for the future of post-pandemic work, but that in March, the firm informed staff they will now be able to spend two or three days a week in the office and the rest working remotely, while pledging to give staff greater flexibility to decide their own working hours.

Close behind was fellow Big Four firm Deloitte, which similarly specialises in the audit and advisory realm. Despite the pressures of the pandemic, Deloitte expanded on a number of fronts, acquiring technology consultancy Keytree and strengthening its regional presence across the north of England. This included creating a number of new roles with the launch of its Leeds hub for its creative agency, taking its UK headcount over 20,000.

EY was the third and final Big Four member to make LinkedIn’s list, which hosts 17,000 UK staff across top locations including London, Birmingham and Manchester. A tough year saw the firm have to cut more than 30 support jobs in late 2020, however it managed to keep its UK job losses to a minimum, while still recruiting for client-facing positions. According to LinkedIn, one of the key pulls for EY as an employer is its big focus on diversity – meaning that for student, recent grad or without a degree, there is possibly room to join.

Meanwhile, Wipro – the global parent of Capco – also ranked in the top 25. LinkedIn stated that the most common skills stated among its 3,660 UK staff were requirements analysis, business analysis and solution architecture, while the global IT firm’s benefits for staff extend beyond a competitive salary – also offering flexible working and stock options to help make it a top employer.

Finally, Accenture was also present on LinkedIn’s list. The firm’s most common functions are information technology, business development, and engineering, and it employs 9,800 professionals across the UK. One of the driving factors behind its ranking was that career development and learning are focus areas for Accenture. According to LinkedIn, the firm’s efforts to train staff means employees can be paired with career counsellors, access online learning tools or attend one of more than 90 connected classrooms across the globe.

The full list of LinkedIn’s Top Companies List for 2021 in UK:

1. Barclays
2. Tesco
3. NatWest Group
4. BT
5. PwC
6. Deloitte
7. Sainsbury’s
8. EY
9. Upwork
10. BBC
11. Bloomberg
12. Amazon
13. American Express
14. JPMorgan Chase & Co.
15. Cisco
16. Wipro
17. Alphabet
18. Accenture
19. Unilever
20. AstraZeneca
21. eBay
22. NFU Mutual
23. Stryker
24. Bristol Myers Squibb
25. G-Research

Elsewhere, LinkedIn’s Top Companies List in other countries – the analysis was conducted in 20 countries – named EY the top employer of Australia, while in the Netherlands KPMG took that title. Further to this, LinkedIn named the entire Big Four to its top 25 in Germany and Singapore (with EY leading the pack), and declared Accenture the top performing professional services firm in Germany and India.