Ayala Land, the 36-year-old “offspring” of Ayala Corp. (AC), the country’s oldest (founded in 1834) and largest conglomerate, tops the 2025 Best Employers list drawn up by the Philippine Daily Inquirer in partnership with Statista, the world’s leading data and business intelligence portal.

The well-established Filipino property development company received a score of 9.18 out of a perfect score of 10.

Ayala Land, listed in the real estate category, was third on the 2024 Best Employers list, which was topped by the Bureau of Fire Protection (BFP), government services. BFP is third in the 2025 ranking. 

In the first Best Employers listing in 2023, Ayala Land was ranked 48th.

AC’s real estate division, is joined in the Best Employers Top 10 list by other venerable and/or large global businesses.

They are Google, information technology, internet, software and services (the company was also second in 2024); Unilever, packaged goods; JP Morgan Chase, banking and financial services; Samsung, semiconductors, electronics, electrical engineering, technology; Procter & Gamble, packaged goods; Supreme Court of the Philippines (the country’s highest judicial body), government services; Accenture, professional services; and Toyota Aisin Philippines, automotive (automotive and suppliers).

Employee perception

The annual Best Employers list, as compiled by the Inquirer and the German market research firm Statista, features a total of 300 companies and government agencies ranked according to their employees’ perception of their performance as employers.  

Some 25 employers on the list are institutions of higher learning—colleges and universities. 

To choose the top employers, thousands of employees were asked to rate their employers. Respondents were invited to either rate their own company or rate other companies or institutions within their own industry that they could confidently recommend to friends or family.

The survey sought to find out from the employees themselves if a company or institution lived up to the public persona it cultivated. 

The annual exercise understood that what kind of an employer a company or institution was should be as important as the bottom line which, after all, is owed much to an inspired, motivated, dedicated and loyal human resource. 

How a company or institution treats its people is a reflection of its commitment to the good of the Filipino community, in general, and the country and the planet, as a whole.  And the annual project recognizes that employees are in the best position to know if their employers abide by the duties and responsibilities of good corporate citizenship. 

Valued opinions

The annual Philippines’ Best Employers project seeks to find out how well employers are perceived by their own people. It gives employees the chance to rate the companies or institutions they work for based on their personal experiences.

This focus on the employees’ opinions and beliefs makes the annual undertaking stand out, as it provides a definitive list of who really are the best out there, based on their own people’s assessment, among the thousands of companies in the Philippines that have at least 250 employees. 

Tens of thousands of evaluations, the opinions of thousands of employees, and the scores for hundreds of companies were taken into account. 

Employees were asked to rate their willingness to recommend directly their own employer to friends and family. Responses were analyzed on a scale from 0 to 10, with 0 meaning “I wouldn’t recommend my employer under any circumstances” and 10 meaning “I would definitely recommend my employer.”

Willingness to make indirect recommendations was gauged by the employees’ willingness to recommend other employers within their industry. Respondents were shown an industry list of preresearched employers and asked to give an opinion, positively or negatively, on those that stood out to them.

Statista preresearched an initial list of over 2,000 eligible employers via industry lists, employer databases and desk research. A registration form was also published prior to the survey that allowed companies to register for the employee survey. 

Nominees for Best Employer were listed according to the industries they represented. There were 28 industries covered by the Best Employer search.