Where to work, in terms of geographical location? Assuming this is an option, then there are some locales that offer a better quality of life than others. This includes the United Kingdom.
As of September 2024, 13 percent of workers in the UK worked exclusively from home, while 23 percent adopted a hybrid approach. Employees in the UK have said that amongst several factors, lack of commute and savings on costs are some the main benefits of working from home.
For those venturing out to work, which cities cater best for employees? The firm Adobe Express has looked into various aspects of working life to reveal the best cities for employees in the UK.
For the research, Adobe Express looked into factors including but not limited to; average annual salary, the price of a cappuccino, the cost of public transport and access to green space for 30 cities to find out which is the most employee friendly overall.
The UK top employee-friendly cities were established as:
- Swindon
- Milton Keynes
- Stoke-on-Trent
- Reading
- Plymouth
- Sheffield
- Leeds
- Peterborough
- Kingston upon Hull
- Brighton and Hove
This dataset ranks the 30 most populated UK cities, based on how good they are for employees. To do this, 11 different factors were used. Once the data for the factors was collected, the factors were then normalised, to provide each factor with a score between 0 and 1. If data was not available, a score of 0 was given.
The normalised values were then summed, to give each city a total score out of 12. The cities were then ranked from highest to lowest, based on their total scores.
Swindon ranks as the UK’s most employee friendly city
Swindon comes out on top when it comes to employee havens scoring 6.541 overall. The city’s employment rate is higher than across the South West as a whole in the year ending December 2023 and has one of the best scores for unemployment.
Overall, the Swindon and Wiltshire area has an above average number of large companies, including brands like BMW, Ministry of Defence and Nationwide Building Society. Swindon also ranks seventh in Britain when it comes to the rate of productivity per worker.
In second place, Milton Keynes ranks as one of the best employee friendly cities in the UK, scoring highly for average annual salary. According to Milton Keynes council, Milton Keynes has one of the highest rates of private sector opportunities.
Scoring highly for percentage of green space areas, Stoke-on-Trent ranks third overall with a score of 6.234. Stoke-on-Trent is centrally located in the UK with good transport links, including a direct rail link to major cities like Birmingham, Manchester, and London.
