Jollibee, Ayala, Aboitiz among world’s ‘best employers’

Three Philippine blue chips—fastfood giant Jollibee Foods Corp. as well as conglomerates Ayala Corp. and Aboitiz Equity Ventures (AEV)—landed on Forbes magazine’s 2021 list of the world’s “best employers.”

South Korean conglomerate Samsung topped the global list, which comprised 750 companies, followed by American tech firms IBM, Microsoft, Amazon, Apple, Alphabet and Dell Technologies.

Chinese telco equipment firm Huawei ranked eighth while software service provider Adobe was ninth. Automotive giant BMW completed the top 10 list.

Jollibee was ranked 256th on this global list, while Ayala and Aboitiz—two of the country’s oldest business houses—ranked 487th and 665th, respectively.

Jollibee, one of Asia’s most valuable restaurant groups, operates over 5,800 stores across 17 brands in 34 countries. In the Philippines alone, it operates 3,217 stores, 15 manufacturing plants and 19 distribution centers, directly supporting 11,808 jobs, based on its 2020 annual report.

Emergency response

When the COVID-19 pandemic reached the Philippines early last year, Jollibee allocated P1 billion in emergency response fund to provide local employees with financial support even as it spent P7 billion for a global business restructuring program.

At end-2020, Ayala Corp. recorded more than 60,000 direct permanent employees, 57 percent of whom consisted of women. The conglomerate has interests in property, banking, telecommunications, renewable energy and infrastructure, health care and electronics manufacturing.

Based on its 2020 sustainability report, Ayala implements a recruitment, compensation and retrenchment policy to ensure inclusivity and nondiscrimination. It also provides competitive compensation and benefits packages that are benchmarked against industry standards.

Persons with disabilities have also been hired by some business units, recognizing their competencies and skills that are aligned with the job opening at hand.

Aboitiz Equity Ventures— which has interests in energy, banking, property, food, cement and infrastructure—has over 40,000 employees across 11 countries.

In its 2020 sustainability report, the conglomerate reported that early investments in future-proofing its businesses had given it “a huge advantage in seamlessly transitioning from a physical work setup to a digital workforce and ensuring all the proper channels and support are in place.”

Communications, stakeholder management, product sales, financial services and employee learning were all delivered through online platforms. To ensure the financial security of team members, salaries and bonuses were released early. A select number of essential team members continued to work in their respective areas to ensure delivery of highly needed basic services, such as power, banking and food.  Forbes partnered with market research company Statista to compile the ranking by surveying 150,000 full-time and part-time workers from 58 countries working for multinational companies and institutions, Forbes said in an Oct. 12 publication.

Survey participants rated their willingness to recommend their own employers to friends and family and also evaluated other employers in their respective industries that stood out positively or negatively.