NEW YORK—Edelman has the strongest employer brand of any North American public relations firm, based on responses to our Best Agencies to Work For research, which asked employees which firm they most like to work for if they could not work for their current employer.

Edelman garnered more than twice as many points as any other agency in the survey, which attracted more than 3,500 individual responses—although almost as many respondents indicated that if they could not work for their current agency, they would either leave the industry or seek a position on the client side of the business.

Edelman's status as number one is unchanged since 2016, the last time we published Employer of Choice rankings.

The rest of top 10 employer brands are dominated by large multinational agencies owned by the giant holding companies, with Weber Shandwick, FleishmanHillard, Ketchum and Golin rounding out the top five.

“In general, the largest public relations brands are the most appealing places to work,” said Paul Holmes, PRovoke Media founder. “Whether this comes down to wider name regognition, or the fact that those firms offer greater opportunities for growth, variety, and international career development is difficult to say.

“But it is worth noting that at the highest end of the market there is little or no correlation between firms that score highest in our Best Agencies to Work For research and those that have the strongest employer brand. That’s not the case for midsize firms, however: midsize firms like Zeno, Allison  and Finn Partners perform well in surveys of their own employees and in the employer brand survey.”

The top 15 North American employer brands are:

  1. Edelman
  2. Weber Shandwic
  3. FleishmanHillard
  4. Ketchum
  5. Golin
  6. Ogilvy Public Relations
  7. Zeno
  8. BCW Global
  9. Real Chemistry
  10. Allison+Partners
  11. Finn Partners
  12. GCI Health
  13. Evoke Kyne
  14. Hunter PR
  15. M Booth