Many companies look at numerous metrics to see how their own firm stacks up against their peers. One of those benchmarks is revenue per employee and we decided to look at The Global 5000 database and do some calculations. Normally, there are significant differences in these kind of metrics when comparing organizations by geography, industry vertical or size of company.
Here we take a look at the rev / employee ratio by the main regions for The Global 5000. By using our database, we naturally are focusing on the high end of the market and not the overall region … but it does help set a benchmark. The companies included are organized by the region reflecting where the company is headquartered. With this approach we are not trying to estimate and employees and revenue in every region they operate in. Rather, it is by the HQ location and will reflect the operating philosophy of that culture.
Using data from 2009, the rev per employee (in USD)by region is as follows:
- AsiaPac = $346,724
- Europe = $400,588
- MEast/Africa = $392,330
- North America = $356,165
- South America = $361,151
One theory we have seen put forward is that Europe and North America are both outsourcing a lot of work and therefore have proportionally lower number of employees resulting in a higher rev per emp number. The flip side with this is that AsiaPac countries have less other costs and do more with workers. And because those employees are paid less, they can hire more. The profitability can work out the same or better.
One Response