Benefits tailored to talent personas

Switzerland Professional Ranking 2022

4500 professionals in Switzerland participated between October 2021 and March 2022 in the annual Universum Talent Survey. This study shows the preferences of professionals and aims to help companies improve their recruiting and retaining activities.   

Understanding the talent personas 

This year’s respondents can be characterized as “senior workers” with 26% of them with 9 to 15 years of experience, and a total of 72% with more than 4 years of experience. We will further be able to look at the data and compare it to our yearly Students Survey, highlighting several findings from what Gen-Z wants from their employers before they start their career.  

We uncovered five key talent personas through our global surveys, that reach over 1 million respondents annually and called them: Go-Getters, Globe-Trotters, Ground-Breakers, Change-Makers, Balance-Seekers. Switzerland’s professionals are mostly made up of Ground-Breakers, with 30% and Balance-Seekers, with 27%. The Ground-Breakers are team-oriented leaders with a passion for technology and innovation. Balance-Seekers are satisfied with secure jobs that enable them to explore their wider life-loving interests to the full. These main characteristics already tell us how different their needs and preferences are when it comes to their job and requirements from their employer. 

What makes professionals chose to stay in a job or leave it? 

While a competitive base salary remains the most important attribute to Professionals for all Main fields of studies throughout the past three years, High Future earnings seem to have regained importance to the level of pre-Covid.  

Secure employment grew in importance between 2020-21 and dropped back again, a clear sign that talent is not considering covid as a threat to their careers’ anymore. Challenging work environment gave up its second place in 2020 to flexible working conditions and dropped as far as the 6^th place in 2022. 

“As a result of the changes in the last three years, professionals now see work differently. Despite the fact that compensation offers are always going to be a top priority for professionals, the ideal job is evolving. There’s no doubt that both professionals and students are looking for balance when choosing companies, flexible working conditions and encouraging work-life balance are here to stay” says Leo Marty, Country Manager Universum for Switzerland & Austria.  

Top 10 Employers for Professionals working in Business

Several noteworthy findings revealed from this year’s research 

The salary gap is decreasing, year by year, from 20% in 2018, 18% in 2019 and 2020, it lowered more substantially in 2021 to 13% and reached 11% in 2022.  

The most interesting finding from our study highlights that the differences when it comes to the sum depend strongly on the industry.  

While for engineering, the gap between female and male engineer salaries per year is as low as 3k, in IT this expands to 19k and in Business and Natural Sciences is between 10 and 12k. 

Reaching talent needs smart recruitment marketing activities  

The most preferred communication channel used to learn about their future employer is Linkedin, chosen by 71% respondents, an even higher percentage than for students. It grew in importance from 63% last year, and 58% in 2020 when it was behind the employer corporate website chosen by 66% professionals.  

Find the full Universum ranking here: https://universumglobal.com/rankings/switzerland/

If you’re interested in other countries, they can all be found here!