Best workplaces have an edge in a tight market

This year’s top-ranked big employers are a diverse mix of businesses and institutions. There is no sector that dominates and the kind of work people in these firms are doing varies.

What many of the top employers have in common, though, is their fairly defined working cultures.

In a striking number of cases, they also have a need to structure these cultures around well-defined workplaces and spaces – whether it is a Pfizer laboratory, Harvey Norman shop floor or one of Coffey’s construction sites.

Even if there’s truth to the idea that a sense of place makes a workforce cohesive, it isn’t a hard rule that working from home puts a dampener on employee satisfaction.

Ebay is an outlier among the big digital technology employers here, not only because it consistently scores close to the top of these tables as other tech firms drop down.

Crucially, it has copper-fastened flexible working practices, long after much of the sector rowed back on Covid-era remote working.

Google came in at number one in 2021 when the Sunday Independent and Statista published the inaugural ‘Best Employers’ rankings. Tech firms were a big feature that year.

Google scores a relatively healthy 21st on this table, but after jobs cuts in recent years, tech has lost some shine.

What the businesses topping this year’s rankings have in common is their success in managing the post-pandemic landscape.

This is not just in relation to their staff working at the coal face, but for workers who will never don a lab coat or hard hat even if that’s what their employer is known for.

In a tight labour market – and Ireland’s labour market has never been tighter – being one of those employers of choice can give businesses a real edge.