The Top Employers Institute has certified 136 companies in South Africa as ‘Top Employers’ in 2024 – with 20 standing out above the rest.

For 2024, Vodacom emerged as the best employer in the country.

While the company has been listed as a Top Employer for seven consecutive years prior (2017-2023), this is the first time the company has attained first position in the overall Top Employer for Africa and South Africa.

Ranking second in South Africa is Indian multinational tech group, HCL Technologies, which has local operations based in Sandton. The group focuses on enterprise and business technologies.

Unilever, the owner of household brands like OMO, Sunlight, Dove and many others, ranked third, followed by another brand owner, Mondelez International (Cadbury, Oreo, Royal), in fourth.

Rounding out the top five is Daimler Truck Southern Africa, which carries major truck brands like Mercedes Benz and Freightliner.

Outside of the top 5, several well-known South African companies also made the cut for the top 20, including Santam, the country’s largest short-term insurer, Sanlam and Tiger Brands.

Santam cracked the list for the eighth consecutive year, moving up to eighth position from tenth in 2023.

The Top Employers institute describes the certification programme as enabling organisations to assess and improve their workplace environment, “recognising excellence in [employer] people practices” in the process.

The Top Employers Institute has certified over 2,300 organisations across 121 countries, impacting around 12 million workers.

Organisations that have more than 250 employees are eligible to “undergo a rigorous process to assess and validate their policies, [to see whether] conditions adhere or exceed industry best practices,” in order to see whether they meet the requirements to become a certified top employer, said the institute.

The evaluation process is based on 20 topics, including people strategy, work environment, talent acquisition, learning, diversity, inclusion and wellbeing.

Additionally, the evaluation process does the following:

• Validate the provided answers and supplemental proof;
• Review the consolidated results;
• Independent external audit of the certification process;
• Objective scoring based on the final results.

The top 20 employers in South Africa for 2024 are: