Samsung beats Apple, Google to earn title as world’s best employer

Samsung Electronics Co. has retained the world’s best employer title this year for the fourth consecutive year, according to US business magazine Forbes’ annual survey.

The South Korean tech giant on Wednesday cheered the results originally published by Forbes on Tuesday based on the magazine’s seventh annual survey to list the World’s Best Employers.     

Since Samsung Electronics topped the list for the first time in 2020, it has tightened its grip, holding at the No. 1 spot since then. 

It beat runner-up Microsoft Corp., as well as Google’s Alphabet Inc. and Apple Inc., which rank No. 3 and 4, respectively. The International Business Machines Corp. (IBM) and Adobe Inc. come in sixth and seventh place, respectively.

Samsung Electronics is the only Asian company in the top 20 club.

To come up with the list this year, Forbes surveyed more than 170,000 employees in over 50 countries working for multinational companies and institutions, according to the magazine. It partnered with German market research firm Statista for the survey.

It asked whether respondents would recommend their company to family or friends and how they would rate their employer in the categories of talent development, remote working options, parental leave benefits, diversity, work-life balance and pride in their company’s product or services.  

Samsung Electronics gained high scores in employees’ satisfaction with the company and their pride in its products and services, according to the survey.

Highlighting this year’s top honorees including Samsung Electronics, Forbes also emphasized the importance of offering workers talent development and global collaboration opportunities, as well as remote working options to be the best employer.

IMPROVEMENT IN CORPORATE CULTURE

Samsung’s latest victory comes after the Korean tech giant has steadily improved and innovated its working environment, system and corporate culture. It is also known to offer its employees a wide range of health and wellbeing benefits.

Its in-house startup incubating program C-Lab Inside, diversity and embracement promoting networking program ERG and social contribution programs like Solve For Tomorrow have helped Samsung employees have pride in their company, according to Samsung.

It also offers in-house idea-sharing platform MOSAIC, Samsung Talent Exchange Program (STEP) and The University of Samsung Electronics (The UniverSE) to groom its employees into global leaders.

Some 23 other Korean companies also joined Forbes’ World’s Best Employers list this year, up from last year’s 16.

KB Financial Group Inc. ranked 48th, Kia Corp. 109th, SK Group 114th and Naver Corp. 161th. LG and Hyundai Motor Co. came in at 228th and 229th, respectively.

Write to Jeong-Soo Hwang at hjs@hankyung.com

Sookyung Seo edited this article.