Key Takeaways
- Employees in Cambridge, Brighton and Bristol have the highest average employee satisfaction scores on Glassdoor, with Cardiff and other English cities making up the rest of the top ten.
- Although London has the highest salaries in the UK, it scores relatively poorly on satisfaction with compensation and benefits. This may in part be due to high income inequality or the high cost of living in the capital.
- Greater London dominates the rankings among Glassdoor’s workplace factors, scoring highest on Career Opportunities, Compensation & Benefits, Senior Leadership, Work-Life Balance, Culture & Values, Diversity & Inclusion, CEO Approval and Positive Business Outlook. The other southern English regions and North East England rounded out the rest of the top five.
After a year of sky-high inflation, labour disputes and gradually declining employee satisfaction, where can the most satisfied workers be found in the UK? To find out, Glassdoor looked at the average ratings for workers by city and region.
Smaller cities have the most satisfied workers
To examine job satisfaction scores by local area, we grouped employee reviews by reported job location to their respective travel-to-work area, a geography created by the Office of National Statistics to represent local labour markets. The map below shows job satisfaction ranking for 20 of the most populated travel-to-work areas in the UK.
Cambridge comes out as the happiest city for employees, scoring highest in overall job satisfaction (3.91 out of 5), career opportunities (3.67), culture & values (3.89), and positive business outlook (69 percent). Cambridge is a notable hub for scientific research, healthcare, education and technology jobs, despite its relatively small size.
Brighton scores top marks for compensation & benefits, senior leadership and work-life balance, while Newcastle’s employees are the most satisfied with their companies’ diversity & inclusion policies.
The charts below show scores for the rest of the workplace factors on Glassdoor across 20 cities, as well as the average ratings across the UK.
Table 1: Average Employee Workplace Factor Ratings by UK Travel-to-Work Area
| Travel-to-Work Area | Career Opportunities | Compensation & Benefits | Senior Leadership | Work-Life Balance |
| Cambridge | 3.67 | 3.57 | 3.59 | 3.78 |
| Brighton | 3.64 | 3.60 | 3.67 | 3.80 |
| Bristol | 3.63 | 3.54 | 3.58 | 3.74 |
| Newcastle | 3.61 | 3.56 | 3.63 | 3.74 |
| London | 3.64 | 3.51 | 3.54 | 3.70 |
| Leeds | 3.59 | 3.58 | 3.59 | 3.76 |
| Nottingham | 3.52 | 3.45 | 3.44 | 3.68 |
| Manchester | 3.58 | 3.50 | 3.53 | 3.67 |
| Oxford | 3.51 | 3.37 | 3.43 | 3.63 |
| Cardiff | 3.51 | 3.46 | 3.47 | 3.59 |
| Leicester | 3.45 | 3.42 | 3.42 | 3.60 |
| Southampton | 3.46 | 3.49 | 3.42 | 3.61 |
| Milton Keynes | 3.46 | 3.39 | 3.39 | 3.67 |
| Birmingham | 3.48 | 3.38 | 3.40 | 3.57 |
| Edinburgh | 3.47 | 3.42 | 3.37 | 3.64 |
| Glasgow | 3.44 | 3.37 | 3.34 | 3.53 |
| Belfast | 3.48 | 3.37 | 3.42 | 3.57 |
| Coventry | 3.41 | 3.38 | 3.31 | 3.53 |
| Sheffield | 3.42 | 3.33 | 3.35 | 3.54 |
| Liverpool | 3.35 | 3.30 | 3.36 | 3.54 |
| UK Average | 3.53 | 3.45 | 3.45 | 3.63 |
A surprising result was London not ranking higher on the list. Employees rated companies in the UK capital 5th for overall job satisfaction but upheld the city's reputation as a career-focused hub by naming it the 2nd best city for career opportunities and third best for positive business outlook.
London also ranked relatively poorly (6th) in compensation and benefits score, despite offering the highest salaries in the UK. Why then are London workers less satisfied with their wages than many other cities?
Firstly, London weighting may not cover the differential in the cost of living – although full-time London employees earn 27 percent more than the UK median, the cost of living is much higher as well. Households in the capital must spend up to 58 percent more than other urban UK households for a basic standard of living.
Secondly, some academic research has suggested that relative income positioning (or income inequality) is a stronger predictor of happiness than absolute income, and London’s income inequality is higher than anywhere else in the UK. The top 20 percent of London full-time workers earn over £66k, 57 percent higher than the median worker. In the UK as a whole, this same figure is only 40 percent.
Using this same measure, Brighton, our top scoring city for compensation and benefits, has the lowest income inequality. The top 20 percent in the city earn only 39 percent more than the average worker. The smaller gap might partially explain why the Brighton workers score their city top on the compensation and benefits measure, despite a median salary (£31k), on par with the UK average.
However, income inequality alone cannot fully explain the compensation and benefits rankings; high-ranking cities like Leeds have high income inequality (with the top 20 percent earning 52 percent more than the median) but also relatively high wages thanks to their low cost of living.
Table 2: Average Employee Workplace Factor Ratings by UK Travel-to-Work Area
| Travel-to-Work Area | Culture & Values | Diversity & Inclusion | Positive Business Outlook |
| Cambridge | 3.89 | 4.00 | 69% |
| Brighton | 3.86 | 4.08 | 67% |
| Bristol | 3.84 | 3.97 | 67% |
| Newcastle | 3.85 | 4.10 | 66% |
| London | 3.81 | 3.95 | 67% |
| Leeds | 3.78 | 3.99 | 64% |
| Nottingham | 3.68 | 3.92 | 62% |
| Manchester | 3.74 | 3.97 | 65% |
| Oxford | 3.74 | 3.87 | 64% |
| Cardiff | 3.71 | 3.98 | 64% |
| Leicester | 3.69 | 3.95 | 65% |
| Southampton | 3.67 | 3.90 | 62% |
| Milton Keynes | 3.67 | 3.93 | 59% |
| Birmingham | 3.64 | 3.90 | 63% |
| Edinburgh | 3.68 | 3.93 | 62% |
| Glasgow | 3.59 | 3.86 | 61% |
| Belfast | 3.65 | 3.92 | 64% |
| Coventry | 3.57 | 3.85 | 59% |
| Sheffield | 3.54 | 3.82 | 57% |
| Liverpool | 3.58 | 3.82 | 59% |
| UK Average | 3.70 | 3.89 | 63% |
Greater London dominates other regions in workplace satisfaction
We next analysed Glassdoor ratings by UK region. The map below shows the mean overall workplace satisfaction, with higher scoring regions in darker green.
Greater London scores the highest in overall workplace satisfaction, with the other Southern English regions accounting for the rest of the top four. The most satisfied Northern region is North East England, which contains the university cities of Durham and Newcastle, our highest-scoring Northern city.
The charts below show the average regional Glassdoor rating for each workplace factor. Greater London continues its domination, scoring highest in each one. The rankings for most workplace factors are stable, although some regions outperform on certain factors. Yorkshire and the Humber, for instance, shows the second-highest career opportunities and third-highest senior leadership, most likely thanks to the strong performance of Leeds, its biggest city, on those measures.
Table 3: Average Employee Workplace Factor Ratings by UK Region
| Region | Career Opportunities | Compensation & Benefits | Senior Leadership | Work-Life Balance |
| Greater London | 3.64 | 3.51 | 3.54 | 3.70 |
| South West England | 3.51 | 3.47 | 3.46 | 3.66 |
| South East England | 3.50 | 3.45 | 3.47 | 3.65 |
| East of England | 3.49 | 3.43 | 3.47 | 3.64 |
| North East England | 3.47 | 3.44 | 3.48 | 3.64 |
| Yorkshire and the Humber | 3.51 | 3.47 | 3.47 | 3.64 |
| East Midlands | 3.47 | 3.41 | 3.42 | 3.61 |
| North West England | 3.51 | 3.45 | 3.47 | 3.63 |
| West Midlands | 3.49 | 3.41 | 3.40 | 3.59 |
| Wales | 3.45 | 3.43 | 3.40 | 3.56 |
| Northern Ireland | 3.47 | 3.37 | 3.41 | 3.56 |
| Scotland | 3.41 | 3.37 | 3.33 | 3.53 |
Why is Greater London the highest scoring region, but London is not the highest scoring city? With the exception of Greater London, whose boundaries are very similar to the travel-to-work city of London, each UK region covers hundreds of cities, towns and villages. South East England, for instance, includes not only the high-scoring city of Brighton, but also the 9th-ranked Oxford and 12th-ranked Southampton.
Table 4: Average Employee Workplace Factor Ratings by UK Region
| Region | Culture & Values | Diversity & Inclusion | Positive Business Outlook |
| Greater London | 3.81 | 3.95 | 67% |
| South West England | 3.72 | 3.89 | 64% |
| South East England | 3.72 | 3.92 | 63% |
| East of England | 3.72 | 3.91 | 63% |
| North East England | 3.69 | 3.94 | 62% |
| Yorkshire and the Humber | 3.67 | 3.89 | 62% |
| East Midlands | 3.64 | 3.90 | 62% |
| North West England | 3.68 | 3.92 | 63% |
| West Midlands | 3.65 | 3.89 | 63% |
| Wales | 3.63 | 3.88 | 62% |
| Northern Ireland | 3.63 | 3.91 | 64% |
| Scotland | 3.57 | 3.84 | 60% |
Conclusion
Examining Glassdoor’s reviews by local labour market shows that high employee satisfaction can be found outside London. Though the capital scored highly for career opportunities and positive business outlook, cities like Brighton, Cambridge and Bristol had more satisfied employees thanks to their better work-life balance and senior leadership.
Despite offering the highest pay in the UK, London’s lofty cost of living and high levels of income inequality might explain why other employees in other cities are more satisfied with their salaries and benefits.
On the other hand, Greater London performs the best of all 12 UK regions, with the other Southern English regions and North East England rounding out the rest of the top five. Opportunities for satisfying jobs exist everywhere, not just inside the boundaries of the M25.
Methodology
Glassdoor analysed reviews left by full and part-time employees between 1 January 2022 and 31 December 2022. Only current or former employees who had been employed in the time period were included. Cities, towns and villages were grouped into metropolitan areas based on proximity to a central city using user-entered job locations. Metropolitan areas were determined using the Office for National Statistics’ Travel to Work Areas December 2011. Regions were determined using the UK’s International Territorial Levels. Only metropolitan areas with 1,000+ Glassdoor reviews in the time period were analysed. Over 100,000 reviews were included in the travel-to-work analysis, whereas over 250,000 were included in the regional analysis.
Positive business outlook is the number of employees expecting a positive six-month outlook for their business divided by the number of employees answering the business outlook question. CEO Approval is the number of employees who approve of their business’s CEO divided by the number who approve plus the number who disapprove.
ONS figures on wages by travel-to-work area did not include Belfast. Rankings extend beyond the hundredths place for the purposes of rankings.