These are the 25 top companies to work for in South Africa
Professional networking platform LinkedIn has published its sixth annual top companies list, with South African companies included for the first time.
The companies were selected based on a combination of research and unique member data, with LinkedIn focusing on workplaces where professionals can ‘grow their careers’, and which make the biggest impact in the professional world.
To be eligible, companies must have at least 500 employees as of 31 December 2021, and employee attrition can be no higher than 10% over the prior 12 months.
Only parent companies rank on the list; majority-owned subsidiaries and associated data are wrapped into the parent company. All data counts are normalised based on company size across the pool of companies eligible for the list.
Ranking | Company | South African headcount | Most notable skills | Most common job titles |
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1 | Standard Bank Group | 34 740 |
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2 | FirstRand Group | 39 000 |
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3 | WPP | 5 950 |
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4 | Nedbank | 18 225 |
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5 | Absa Group | 26 480 |
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6 | The Coca-Cola Company | 3 330 |
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7 | Investec | 4 760 |
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8 | Vodacom | 11 925 |
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9 | Dimension Data (NTT) | 9 055 |
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10 | Amazon | 11 800 |
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11 | Discovery | 11 545 |
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12 | BP | 830 |
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13 | Johnson & Johnson | 1 345 |
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14 | Total Energies | 2 355 |
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15 | Assmang | 705 |
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16 | Deloitte | 4 865 |
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17 | Naspers | 5 800 |
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18 | Tongaat Hulett | 2 415 |
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19 | Openserve (Telkom) | 5 780 |
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20 | Unilever | 4 240 |
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21 | Anglo American | 10 960 |
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22 | ABB | 1 830 |
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23 | Sanlam | 20 065 |
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24 | RCL Foods | 5 335 |
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25 | TFG (The Foschini Group) | 6 925 |
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*Headcounts are provided by the companies directly or in public filings, unless otherwise noted
Methodology
This list is meant to be a resource for employees, guiding professionals at every stage – whether that means a career pivot, jumping back into the workforce after a hiatus or investing in new skills.
To put together this year’s rankings, LinkedIn considered data across seven pillars, each revealing an important element of career progression:
- Ability to advance tracks employee promotions within a company and when they move to a new company, based on standardised job titles.
- Skills growth looks at how employees across the company are gaining skills while employed at the company, using standardised LinkedIn skills.
- Company stability tracks attrition over the past year, as well as the percentage of employees that stay at the company at least three years.
- External opportunity looks at recruiter outreach across employees at the company, signalling demand for workers coming from these companies.
- Company affinity, which seeks to measure how supportive a company’s culture is, looks at connection volume on LinkedIn among employees, controlled for company size.
- Gender diversity measures gender parity within a company and its subsidiaries.
- Finally, educational background examines the variety of educational attainment among employees, from no degree up to Ph.D. levels, reflecting a commitment to recruiting a wide range of professionals.