Lemongrass Marketing wins Sunday Times Best Places to Work Award 2023

Published by

Peter Davison

Bicester-based Travel PR and Content agency Lemongrass Marketing has been awarded a Sunday Times Best Places to Work Award.

The Sunday Times Best Places to Work Awards recognise and celebrate organisations with the highest employee engagement and wellbeing levels in the UK.

The agency was selected from the results of an employee survey with questions specially designed by Employee Experience experts.

The survey’s 26 questions included topics ranging from Empowerment, Reward & Recognition, Job Satisfaction and Information Sharing to Wellbeing and Instilling Pride.

Lemongrass teams’ scores ranked at almost 100 per cent at every level. The overall engagement score for all categories was deemed as ‘excellent’ at 97 per cent.

Lemongrass Marketing is an independently owned travel PR and communications agency based in an eco office in Oxfordshire.

The company develops PR strategies for travel brands based on digital audience insights. The firm was founded in 2008 and is led by CEO Mirjam Peternek McCartney, managing partner Abi Best and a passionate and dedicated team of travel PR and content specialists.

The values led company has long been forging the way in modern working practices.

Flexible and hybrid working has been a policy for 10 years, and in March 2023 Lemongrass officially became a four day week employer, following a five-month trial.

Based on the 100:80:100 model – 100 per cent of pay for 80 per cent of the time, in exchange for a commitment to maintain 100 per cent productivity – the team at Lemongrass get paid for five days but work only four.

The company is currently awaiting B-Corp assessment. B-Corps are companies that use the power of business as a force for good and B Corp certification is dependent on measuring a company’s entire social and environmental impact.

Mirjam said: “We are delighted to be recognised as a great place to work by the Sunday Times Best Places to Work awards. We are passionate about being a forward thinking, values-driven business and investing in and maintaining staff wellbeing and satisfaction.

"The PR industry is renowned for its fast pace, long hours and huge staff attrition, which can ultimately lead to burn out and mental health issues. At Lemongrass we've taken a different path. As a company with an ethical code of practice, we have rethought what culture is required for our employees to flourish. This in turn has led to increased client happiness and this award is a testament to that.”

Chris Longcroft, EVP Publisher, The Times and The Sunday Times, said: “The Sunday Times Best Places to Work awards recognise companies that create a happier and fulfilling working environment for all, by fostering engagement from their teams, yielding great business and performance in return. Wishing all of those companies who made the grade this year many congratulations.”

Peter Davison

Peter Davison is deputy editor of The Business Magazine. He has spent his life in journalism – doing work experience in newsrooms in and around Bristol while still at school, and landing his first job on a local newspaper aged 19. By 28 he was the youngest newspaper editor in the country. An early advocate of online news, he spent the first years of the 2000s telling his bosses that the internet posed both the biggest opportunity and greatest threat to the newspaper industry and the art of journalism. He was right on both counts. Since 2006 he has enjoyed a career as a freelance journalist. He lives in rural Wiltshire with one wife, two children, and three cats.