Made in New Zealand: Lessons From Homegrown Best Workplaces
Homegrown businesses held their own against giants like Hilton and Specsavers on the Best Workplaces in New Zealand 2026, based on the strength of their own employees’ feedback. realestate.co.nz, NZ’s dedicated property portal,, ranked first in the Small category of the Best Workplaces in New Zealand 2026. Auckland telecommunications firm Grapevine Communications placed seventh in […]
What Best Workplaces In New Zealand Do Differently
The Best Workplaces in New Zealand are keeping their people through a tough year with an asset that rarely appears on the balance sheet: pride. Our data shows that staff who are proud to tell their friends where they work are the ones most likely to stay. It has been a hard year to love […]
These Are New Zealand’s Best Workplaces in 2026
Hilton and realestate.co.nz are the Best Workplaces™ in New Zealand for 2026, taking first place in the Medium & Large and Small categories. Both held the same crown in 2025, and keeping a title decided by your own employees for two years running takes a great deal more than a good Christmas party. Key insights […]
How To Write A Case Study To Boost Your Employer Brand
Key insights 3 in 4 job seekers weigh an employer’s brand before they apply. A case study turns culture into something candidates can assess. A well structured case study can help with Google authority and traffic, and show up in LLMs and AI overviews. Three in four job seekers weigh an employer’s brand before they […]
81% of Kiwi Workers Say Their Work Perks Are A Miss
Key insights Only 19% of NZ workers say their workplace benefits are useful and well matched. 66% of Kiwi workers have never been told the dollar value of their benefits. Forced to pick one benefit, 39% of Kiwis chose time and flexibility. A new study by Cultivate found that only 19% of employed New Zealanders […]
How To Use The Best Workplaces List To Build Your Employer Brand
Welcome to the Best Workplaces in New Zealand list for 2026 This year 12,256 EMPLOYEES ACROSS AOTEAROA NEW ZEALAND WERE SENT THE SAME WORKPLACE SURVEY What came back was the list that can’t be bought The answers your employees gave us about trust, fairness, recognition, pride and if leaders walk the talk are what put […]
Employment Leave Bill New Zealand: What Employers Need to Know
Key Insights Annual and sick leave will accrue in hours from day one. Most employers have a 24-month transition period to prepare. Part-time sick leave will be based on hours worked, not 10 days. For years, New Zealand employers have struggled to apply leave rules consistently, particularly where staff work variable hours, receive allowances or […]
Employee Resource Groups Explained: What They Are And How To Build A Great One
The inclusion gap 83% vs 59% Employees who say their ERG is effective are far more likely to feel included at work: 83%, compared with 59% for employees who rate their ERG ineffective, according to McKinsey research involving almost 25,000 employees. For HR leaders, employer branding teams and people managers, ERGs can be one of […]
The Employer Brand Mistakes Candidates Always Notice
KEY INSIGHTS Employee reviews outrank polished employer messaging. A poor hiring process becomes public before day one. Leaders build credibility when their actions match their words. A candidate has one thumb scrolling through job listings, the other through reviews from people who have worked at the company. Your new careers video may be beautifully […]
Building an Employee Experience Survey People Trust
KEY INSIGHTS Trust relies on clear confidentiality and visible follow-through. Only ask questions your organisation can act on. Managers influence participation more than reminder emails do. The survey link arrives. Someone opens it on their phone between meetings, scans the questions and wonders two things: ‘Will anyone know what I say?’ and ‘Will anything […]
How To Turn Employee Feedback Into Meaningful Action
KEY INSIGHTS Employee feedback analysis requires looking beyond surface-level scores to uncover patterns across themes. Root cause diagnosis helps you identify why engagement challenges exist, not just where they appear in survey data. Great Place To Work’s Trust Index Survey gives organisations research-backed insights that connect employee feedback to culture improvement. Collecting employee feedback […]
Workplace Culture Benchmarks And How Top Companies Choose Theirs
KEY INSIGHTS The best workplace culture benchmarks compare your data to trusted external standards. Candidates pay most attention to recognised workplace awards and independent benchmarks. High-performing organisations benchmark culture by combining anonymous employee surveys, external indices, and outcome metrics. Even a casual analyses of engagement programs show that many organisations report benchmarked scores that […]
‘Running on empty’: Why NZ frontline workers are at breaking point
KEY INSIGHTS Around half of frontline workers live pay cheque to pay cheque: 55% in Australia and 51% in New Zealand 76% of Australian and 76% of New Zealand frontline employees work voluntary overtime at least occasionally. 65% of Australian and 58% of New Zealand frontline employees feel they are “living to work” rather than […]
How to Benchmark Employee Experience Against Industry Standards
Knowing how your employees feel about their workplace is only half the picture. The other half is understanding how that experience compares to other organisations in your industry. A strong engagement score may look encouraging on its own, yet it tells you little about how your workplace experience compares with others competing for the same […]
Celebrating LGBTQIA+ Inclusion in New Zealand Workplaces
Coming out is not a one-time declaration; it’s a recurring decision that LGBTQIA+ individuals face repeatedly throughout their professional lives. Each new interaction, whether with a new colleague, a new manager, or during cross-team collaborations, poses the question of whether to reveal their true selves. In fact, the seminal Counting Ourselves survey (the first national […]
Is Your Employee Engagement Survey Asking the Right Questions?
KEY INSIGHTS The best employee engagement surveys use specific prompts about everyday work experience. The right survey questions measure trust, voice, support, and growth, because those are the factors that shape engagement. Survey data matters only when leaders share findings, act on them, and report back on progress. Most employee engagement surveys collect opinions. […]
How New Zealand Job Seekers Are Researching Employers
KEY HIGHLIGHTS Job ads in New Zealand were up 13% year on year through early 2026. Applications per job ad have fallen for six straight months as candidates get choosier. Here’s how to use Great Place to Work to boost your employer brand. Somewhere in Auckland right now, a very talented senior marketing manager […]
New Zealand’s New Visa English Rules Put Workplace Inclusion in Focus
KEY INSIGHTS Half of all skilled work visa applicants now need new English standards from June 2026. A record 72,700 New Zealand citizens left in the year to September 2025. NZ employers cannot outbid Australian poachers, so culture is the new retention lever. In the year to September 2025, a record 72,700 New Zealanders […]
Why Employees Stop Giving Extra Effort
KEY HIGHLIGHTS 55% of employees at Best Workplaces report a great deal of trust in leadership, compared to just 26% at typical New Zealand organisations. Trust is significantly higher in top-performing organisations, with Best Workplaces scoring 90 on the Trust Index versus 61 in the New Zealand benchmark. In lower-trust workplaces, core culture metrics like […]
Do You Know The Difference Between EVP, Employer Branding and Culture?
In any given talent strategy meeting, culture, EVP, and employer brand will be used interchangeably at least once. Usually more. They’ll appear on the same slide, get assigned to the same team, and be discussed as though they’re different words for the same work. In a highly competitive hiring age, your people knowing the difference between […]
Connecting High Trust Leadership With Better AI Adoption
“The pace of change has never been this fast, yet it will never be this slow again.” – Justin Trudeau Throughout history, humans have always struggled with adapting to change. Our minds are wired to create routines and habits that allow us to navigate our lives in a predictable way. However, despite this need for […]
New Zealand Is Rolling Out Its Most Significant Employment Law Overhaul In A Decade
In late 2025, over 100,000 New Zealanders, everyone from nurses to teachers, and firefighters, walked off the job in a historic mega-strike that brought the country to a standstill. Preceded by months of disruptive rolling strikes, the message from the picket lines was unequivocal: the social contract between employers and workers is fracturing. It is […]
How Downloadable Insight Reports Help Turn Data Into Action Faster
Your company has run the Trust Index™, the data’s in. It’s rich, revealing, and genuinely useful, but now you need to explain it to people who’ve never even logged into the platform. Downloadable Insights Reports are presentation-ready documents that pull directly from your Trust Index data. You download them, customise them, and share with whoever […]
How Ageism is Shrinking New Zealand’s Talent Pool
A third of New Zealand’s workforce is over 50, and 85% of them say getting hired gets harder every year. Here’s what that bias is actually costing them. For something that happens to every human on Earth, if we’re lucky, it’s shocking how biased New Zealand employers have become about age. While a third of […]
How Smart NZ Companies Are Responding To A Wobbly Jobs Market
On the surface New Zealand’s jobs market looks pretty good, with employment and wage growth both on the way up. But there’s something fishy going on underneath those numbers. Hours are down, pressure is building in key skill areas, and more and more people are having to take on side-gigs to get by. Employment Hero’s […]
Work Life and Leadership Predictions and Resolutions For 2026
2026 has arrived, carried in on the steady, high-frequency hum of a thousand autonomous agents and new buzzwords. We’re moving beyond the decade of disorientation into a phygital reality, where the boundary between our physical personhood and our digital personas has all but dissolved. The office is no longer a destination for a desk but […]
How To Create A Culture Of Psychological Safety At Work
Like a lot of young women who were good with words in the world before generative AI, Claire Hastwell was put in charge of the social media channels for a company she worked for earlier in her career. “When I shared a post to the company’s Instagram channel, one of my colleagues would often make […]
How Building Trust and Engaging Employees Can Drive Your Sustainability Goals
High-trust workplaces will be the most successful at meeting environmental, social, and governance (ESG) goals. Here’s how you can engage your workforce. Sustainability has become a global business imperative. Nine in 10 (90%) global institutional investors revise their investments when companies do not at least consider ESG criteria, per a recent survey from EY. In a […]
How ERGs and Inclusive Leadership Drive Workplace Innovation
Great Place To Work’s bold, three-year initiative unlocks new ways to hire, promote, and retain employees to build more resilient, innovative, and productive workplaces. The only constant in the workplace has been unprecedented change. Business leaders are searching for answers on how to succeed in today’s divisive, uncertain, and fast-changing environment. To uncover those […]
Hilti Built a Culture of Trust in the Construction Industry
Founded in 1941 with the purpose of “Making Construction Better”, Hilti instils its values of integrity, courage, teamwork, and commitment in all its 34,000 employees worldwide across more than 120 countries. How can a culture of trust be built in the construction supplier business? Great Place To Work® spoke to Mathew Gallivan, Head of Human […]
How Caring Leaders Create High Performance Workplaces
International Self Care Day on July 24 highlights the importance of recognizing the significance of self-care not only for individuals but also within the workplace. The well-being of employees directly impacts their performance, and fostering a culture of care can transform a good workplace into a great one. As Michael C. Bush, CEO of Great […]
Great Fun in Great Workplaces
Creating a fun and engaging workplace is not just about boosting morale but also enhancing overall employee well-being and productivity. At the core of this approach, organisations on the Best Workplaces lists are setting an example by integrating fun into their work culture. These companies understand that fun is a crucial driver of high well-being […]
International Day of Happiness emphasises the need for psychological safety in the workplace
International Day of Happiness is a timely reminder for organisations across Australia and New Zealand to reflect on the pivotal role of psychological safety in cultivating a happy and productive workplace. In a region celebrated for its vibrant cultures, breathtaking landscapes, and innovative spirit, the emphasis on mental well-being and happiness at work is more […]
Tips from Australia’s Best Workplaces for Women to Inspire Inclusion
In the pursuit of gender equity, this year’s International Women’s Day resonates with a call to “Inspire Inclusion,” urging individuals to understand and value women’s inclusion to forge. Great Place To Work remains focused on our commitment to acknowledging and spotlighting organisations that intentionally cultivate an equitable environment for women in the workplace. The Best […]
Three Insights on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion that may just change the way you think
The “Towards a Future of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion” webinar offered a glimpse into how Australian leaders are tackling the complexities of change and working towards creating a more inclusive environment. Esteemed guests, such as Mary Hogg from Hilton Hotels, Karen Clancy from Specsavers, and Brian Reeves from UKG, shared valuable perspectives and actionable strategies […]