2024 Best PR Agencies to Work For, EMEA

Our Best Consultancies to Work For research is possibly the only predictive PRovoke Media awards initiative. Over the years, we’ve noticed a direct correlation between the agencies on this list and those that take home additional honors. That's because building a great workplace culture—diverse and inclusive, flexible enough to accommodate a continuum of home-office preferences, respectful of employees’ mental health—has never been more critical than it is today.

In 2023, some of the changes we had seen in response to the pandemic—a massive increase in working from home, for example—were subject to rebalancing, so that most agencies expected (at least) a few days of in-office work from employees. At the same time, the difficult economic conditions that prevailed for most of the year meant that some of the emphasis on mental health gave way to a more demanding workplace.

Nevertheless, diversity, equity and inclusion remained a critical issue. For the PR industry in particular, this is an existential challenge: to create communications campaigns that reach all citizens, agencies need to look more like all citizens; the same is true whether the audience is a diverse employee population, communities of color, or specific marginalized populations too long neglected.

These Best Consultancies to Work For are all agencies that balanced the demands of financial success (it’s hard to be a great place to work without winning) and cultural excellence, balancing the economic reality with a steadfast commitment to making their firms an employer of choice in a hugely competitive market.

The winners will be presented with their trophies at the 2023 EMEA SABRE Awards dinner, which takes place in London on April 17. Full details of the awards ceremony and our EMEA Summit which accompanies it can be found here.

Best EMEA Consultancy to Work For

Winner:

Axicom (WPP)

Backstory

In a year when the tech economy had its biggest downturn for more than a decade and specialist PR agencies were navigating very choppy waters, AxiCom and its team of self-proclaimed pirates, led by swashbuckling European president Kate Stevens, won the sector’s biggest treasure: the coveted AMD account. AxiCom’s mission is to combine technical expertise with data, insights, emotional intelligence and creativity to earn brands a place in business and culture, as well as helping clients solve grand problems to advance business, people, and society.

Performance

After increasing revenue by 13% last year, it was a year of scale rather than growth for AxiCom, which still grew revenue by mid-single digits in 2023 across all its offices despite the challenging market. As well as winning the marquee seven-figure AMD account after an eight-month pitch process, AxiCom picked up work from the likes of Lavazza, Talk Talk, Outbrain, Capgemini and Razer. These joined Sage, Orange, Kantar, OnePlus, Equinix, Whirlpool, Proofpoint, Juniper Networks, Experian and AWS on the agency’s client roster.

Workplace Culture

Last year the agency launched the AxiCom Culture Council, made up of employees across its global network to drive culture and DEI efforts. The agency increased the number of mental health allies and added to its benefits package, including broadband subsidies, lunch vouchers, extending the £600 health and fitness benefit to general wellbeing. AxiCom also swapped its sector teams model for a matrix structure to increase collaboration and introduced the AxiManagers group to give line managers a greater say in the business and ways of working, appointed a social team to bring everyone together, ran AxiIntel learning sessions featuring senior execs from Microsoft and Adobe, and hired a European HR manager. The agency also maintained ‘Brake Day’: a day for employees to focus on themselves in honour of former European CEO, Henry Brake, who died in 2020.

Diversity, Equity & Inclusion

The AxiCom Culture Council’s DEI efforts include CultureAmp, global performance management platform to tackle bias at every level of the organization using 360-degree feedback. An unusually broad commitment extends the definition of DEI to encompass nationality, age, ethnicity, sexual orientation, disabilities both visible and invisible, neurodiversity, faith, socio-economic or educational background. The agency also has access to sister agency BCW’s Destination Diversity inclusion program.

What Employees Say

AxiCom’s people like “the continuous professional and personal support of upper management” and “the facilities provided by the agency to reconcile work and family life,” as well as “the people and their spirit.” Asked to describe the agency in three words, the most common selections are “inclusive, fair and friendly.” Asked what, if anything, they don’t like, the most common response involves the “bureaucracy” of the firm’s parent company, although the location of the Milan offices comes up more than once.

The top five:

1. AxiCom (EMEA)
2. Schwartz (Germany)
3. Tribeca (South Africa)
4. Trigger (Norway)
5. APCO (EMEA)

Best UK Consultancy to Work For