// zokri uk revenue per employee index 2026 · v1.2

What MPG is your company getting?

Name: ZOKRI UK Revenue Per Employee Index 2026, v1.2
Creator: ZOKRI

We read 4,021,459 sets of filed UK company accounts and pulled three numbers out of each: turnover, gross profit, and how many people it took. Below is the spread, in real terms, and the instrument to find where you sit in it. Nothing you type leaves this page.

      9,275 companies benchmarked8,771 pairs, after an acquisition screen17 sectorsJuly 2025 to July 2026
    

// the finding

The median British company went backwards last year, in real terms.

Nominal revenue per head rose 1.9%. After inflation, that's a real decline of 1.1%. 55.6% of companies improved on the figures they filed; strip out prices and it's 46.5%, and in retail it's under four in ten.

Cars are remarkably alike: everything on a British road returns somewhere between 22 and 62 miles per gallon, under three to one, top to bottom. Companies are not alike at all. Within a single sector and size band, the gap from lower to upper quartile of revenue per employee is routinely four or five to one. Nobody would tolerate that variance in a vehicle fleet. Most boards have never measured it in their own.

We classified all 8,771 company-years into five states. The largest, at 31.4%, is companies whose revenue was flat or falling and whose revenue per head fell with it, which no amount of tuning fixes because the destination is what's wrong. Only 13.1% were in the state where hiring outran revenue, the state everyone assumes is the problem.

// the five findings

What the numbers actually change about the conversation.

In a big hiring year, RPE fell a median 5.3% that year, recovered 4.9% the next, and only 43.9% were back to where they started within twelve months.

Turns "should we hire" into "how long until this hire produces, how do we compress that, and who owns the number."

55.6% of companies improved RPE in the figures they filed. Strip out inflation and it's 46.5%, negative in retail, manufacturing, charities and hospitality.

The real question isn't whether revenue went up. It's whether it went up faster than prices did, and for most companies, inflation was doing most of the work.

31.4% of companies, the largest group by a wide margin, had flat or falling revenue and falling RPE. Only 13.1% were in the state where hiring outran revenue.

Before cutting costs, check the destination first. Most companies reach for the vehicle when the data says the problem is usually where they're headed.

Two companies both grew revenue. One hired fast to do it, and ended up 9.6% worse off per person in real terms despite a median 16% more revenue. The other barely hired at all, and gained 7.2% real, even though its revenue fell.

Growth on its own doesn't tell you anything. What matters is whether it's outpacing your hiring, or just keeping it company.

Within a single sector and size band, the gap from lower to upper quartile RPE is routinely four or five to one. Every car on a British road sits within about three to one on MPG.

Same industry doesn't mean the same outcome. The real question is which quartile you're in, and what the company one up is doing differently.

Companies that hired the most got worse at Revenue Per Employee (RPE), in real terms.

Median real change in RPE, by headcount-growth quintile · 8,771 UK company-years

Real terms, so inflation isn't doing the work for either end. The fifth that hired most grew revenue by a median 16% and still lost ground.

The most common problem in British business is direction, not efficiency.

Share of UK companies in each of the five states · 8,771 company-years, after an acquisition screen

"Same team, less revenue" is a direct read of the filed numbers: revenue down or flat, and RPE down with it, means the cost base hasn't responded to the top line. By sector it ranges from 18% in health & social care to 41% in manufacturing and 39% in wholesale & motor trade.

Same team, less revenue · 31.4%

Revenue flat or falling, RPE falling too. Red because tuning the operating model can't fix a top-line problem.

Same team, more revenue · 22.4%

Revenue up, headcount flat or down, RPE up sharply. Green because the same people produced more, though it's worth checking whether that was a choice.

Growing and gaining · 21.3%

Revenue and headcount both growing, RPE still rising. Green: the operating model absorbs growth without diluting output per person.

Hiring ahead of revenue · 13.1%

Revenue up, but headcount grew faster, so RPE fell. Red not because hiring is wrong, but because this is where the payback on that hiring most often goes unmeasured.

Shrinking faster than revenue · 11.8%

Revenue flat or falling, but headcount fell faster, so RPE rose. Amber, not green: the ratio improved because the denominator shrank, not because anything got better.

RPE, by sector. The bars are quartiles, not error bars.

10th to 90th percentile (thin line), lower to upper quartile (bar), median (tick) · log scale · cells below n=30 suppressed

Wholesale & motor trade tops this table at £425,495 a head on a 20% margin. Information & communication sits eighth of seventeen on revenue but climbs to second on gross profit, because it keeps half of what it bills. Construction runs the other way: second on revenue, fourth on gross profit. Revenue per head is a leverage measure, not a productivity one — use the gross profit field in the tool below if you have it.

// where you stand

Two readings, then a route.

The level tells you what MPG you're getting against your sector. The trajectory tells you which way the needle is moving. Together they place you in one of five states, and the state decides whether Monday's conversation is about your destination or your vehicle.

Example figures — edit to use your own

Your sector

Avg employees, latest year

Turnover, latest year (£)

Gross profit, latest year (£)

Optional — the margin-adjusted view

Avg employees, prior year

Optional — adds your trajectory

Turnover, prior year (£)

Optional

Show growth in real terms (inflation-adjusted)

Revenue Per Employee (RPE)

Your quartile

Efficiency gap

Change in RPE

Enter your figures

Waiting on inputs

Fill in this year's turnover and average employee count to see your position.

Source: ZOKRI UK Revenue Per Employee Index 2026, v1.2, from 4,021,459 sets of filed UK company accounts. 203 pairs where revenue and headcount both jumped over 50% were screened out as likely acquisitions. Bands below n=30 fall back to the sector or whole-index row, noted above. Runs entirely in your browser. The efficiency gap is a definitional instrument, computed straight from your two growth rates, not a discovered result — use it to measure yourself, not to rank yourself.

// before you trust this

What a CFO would say back to us.

We put this to a sceptical cross-examination before publishing it. Here is the short version of what survives and what doesn't.

Isn't revenue per employee just leverage, not productivity? +

Yes, and this is the strongest objection there is. Wholesale & motor trade tops the revenue table at £425,495 a head on a 20% margin, but Information & communication, eighth of seventeen on revenue, climbs to second on gross profit because it keeps half of what it bills, and Construction runs the other way, second on revenue but fourth on gross profit. Gross margins across sectors run from 20% to 59%, which is the size of the distortion a revenue-only table carries. That's why v1.2 adds gross profit per employee alongside revenue per employee, from the same filings. If you have your gross profit figure, use it in the tool above.

Where does pharmaceutical manufacturing sit? +

Inside Manufacturing, not as its own row. The earlier version filed pharma under "Healthcare," which was wrong by the official SIC classification and also mostly measuring care homes: of that old bucket, 95% turned out to be residential care, other human health and social work, with only 17 genuine pharmaceutical manufacturers. Those 17 have a median revenue per head three times the care-sector figure, but 17 is below our n=30 publishing floor, so pharma can't be shown separately. The likely reason the bulk data holds so few: large pharmaceutical groups mostly file on paper, or split turnover and headcount across entities the filings can't rejoin.

Aren't the growth figures nominal? +

Not by default any more. Every growth figure on this page is shown in real terms, because UK inflation ran between 2.5% and 3.4% over this period, and a nominal 2% improvement is a real decline. In real terms the median British company went backwards on revenue per head last year: 46.5% improved, against 55.6% nominally. In retail it's under four in ten.

Isn't the hiring finding just an accounting identity? +

Partly, and we say so plainly: revenue per head is revenue over heads, so of course headcount growth correlates with it. The efficiency gap is a definition, not a discovery, which is exactly why it's useful as an instrument you can compute yourself. What isn't circular: the fifth of companies that hired hardest grew revenue by a median 16% and still lost ground, so their growth genuinely didn't keep pace, and the payback data (a fall of 5.3% in a big hiring year, only 44% fully recovered within twelve months) has no shared terms with the thing it's measuring.

2% of filings tag both figures, is that a real sample? +

The small-company disclosure threshold explains most of it: companies below it file employee counts without turnover. As a check, the Department for Business and Trade's independent estimate puts UK turnover per employee at £196,411 as a mean; our median is £160,180, which is exactly where a median should sit relative to a mean in a right-skewed distribution, not a sign of bias.

What about contractors and part-time staff? +

Both distort the metric and both are disclosed on this page. A business that outsources heavily looks artificially efficient because contractors don't count as employees. A part-time-heavy business (hospitality, retail) reads low because filed accounts count headcount, not full-time-equivalent hours. If you know your FTE figure, use it in the tool instead of the filed one: less comparable to the benchmark, more honest about your own business.

Do you sell OKR software, and does that bias the advice? +

We sell strategy and OKR implementations, to improve how a company sets and pursues its goals, which in turn improves growth and RPE. That conflict is real, so the index itself carries no product claim: no mention of what we sell, and the state-by-state advice is labelled as judgement, separate from the measured findings. We set out to prove that low-growth companies have deteriorating revenue per head. The revenue half held. The hiring half came out backwards, which wasn't the answer we wanted, and it's on this page anyway.

// for the CEO and SLT

What can we learn from this, and what might it change?

Five plain takeaways, and the question each one is worth asking in your next leadership meeting.

A rising number doesn't always mean something got better.

It can just as easily mean you shrank faster than revenue fell. Ask: is our number up because we grew, or because we got smaller?

Most struggling companies don't have a hiring problem. They have a revenue problem.

Cost cutting is the reflex, but for three in ten companies the top line is what's actually wrong. Ask: are we about to fix the vehicle when the destination is the issue?

Every hire has a payback date, whether or not anyone wrote it down.

Half of companies that hired hard hadn't recovered a year later. Ask: for our last five hires, could we say when each one became worth what we pay them?

Doing well this year doesn't mean you'll still be doing well next year.

The healthiest companies slip into over-hiring quietly, often two quarters before anyone notices. Ask: would we catch it if this started happening to us right now?

Comparing yourself to "the market" tells you less than comparing yourself to companies actually like you.

The spread within one sector and size band is often wider than the gap between sectors. Ask: do we know our number, or just a rough sense of it?

// improving your rpe

Whatever state you're in, it starts with how goals get set and pursued.

We help companies improve their RPE by looking at how they set and pursue goals: building high-performing teams, an experimentation mindset with faster and shorter learning loops, and an employee experience that turns goal-setting and reporting from admin into something people find rewarding rather than a tax on the work.

Talk to us about your state →