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 Resources in Hilti, to find out.
We want to be a great employer for everyone, everywhere, as part of our people strategy. – Mathew Gallivan, Head of Human Resources
Why Hilti Chose Great Place To Work®
With a global reach of 170 countries and 20 million employees surveyed worldwide every year, Great Place To Work provides national benchmarks for organisations in workplace culture, particularly around trust. “So many of our customers ask us about what Great Place To Work CertificationTM means. They see it as a benchmark of quality of how we look after our people and have people that trust us,” Mathew shares.
In 2021 I began hearing that more and more Hilti market organisations around the world were partnering with Great Place To Work and started to understand its global reach. It’s extremely important that we partner with what we believe is the number one global workplace authority when it comes to culture audits and benchmark ourselves based on global best practices. We would rather not compromise and go with a local provider because we want to have a global standard that we adhere to. – Mathew Gallivan, Head of Human Resources
The inaugural Best Workplaces ListTM for New Zealand will be announced on 18 September 2025, setting the standard for New Zealand companies that want to prioritise their employee experience. “It’s music to our ears – we really want New Zealand to have a Best Workplaces List. We want a benchmark for companies within New Zealand,” says Mathew.
It isn’t just about Hilti – Mathew has a broader mission: “We want to ensure our customers, our suppliers, our partners, and more New Zealand companies are aware of what Great Place To Work means and how they can be certified, to recognise this as a symbol.” More than just a badge in employees’ email signatures, Hilti ensures all employees understand the value-add of certification as a conversation-starter with customers to explain its strong culture of trust.
We want people to see the certification and ask questions to understand more. We’ve had several customers decide that it’s something they want to get behind as a result of seeing our certification. Nothing gives us more satisfaction than seeing a customer become Great Place To Work CertifiedTM. Until about a year ago, I didn’t see any construction companies from New Zealand on the list – and all of a sudden we see our clients receiving certification. It’s a mark of quality. With certification, you know you’ve got trust, camaraderie, pride within your business. – Mathew Gallivan, Head of Human Resources
Employer Branding Challenges Addressed
One challenge faced by Hilti is finding the right talent for critical roles. “We have a tight and narrow [labour] market in New Zealand. There are many global businesses here and we have very narrow talent pools and a lot of critical profiles – positions which are the most important in Hilti, positions that are launchpads for many long-term careers,” Mathew says.
Great Place To Work Certification has given Hilti access to a wider talent pool to address this challenge.
Employer branding is critical for us to elevate our positioning, particularly among fresh graduates. We may not be top of mind for anybody new to the job market, so Great Place To Work CertificationTM is one way we can be proactive in our hiring, an extra tool in our belt to access potential candidates in different demographics and industries we may not have had access to in the past. – Mathew Gallivan, Head of Human Resources
Candidates’ Trust in Hilti – Hiring For All
When asked how Great Place To Work impacts Hilti’s strategy, Mathew replies, “It’s intrinsic with our talent acquisition strategy.” Hilti maintains a strong relationship with the University of Canterbury in New Zealand and has been ‘very targeted’ in how it engages with the universities after deciding to conduct the Trust IndexTM survey.
“Recognising the Great Place To Work badge is a reason candidates choose to interview with Hilti,” Mathew acknowledges. “A lot of people that join us may not have necessarily heard of Hilti, but they may have heard of Great Place To Work. We always check to see whether that was a reason for applying. Great Place To Work is very active on social media, as are more and more of our candidates. It may give people reassurance that they’re interviewing with a company that takes culture seriously. That’s important to us – if that’s a reason to get people through the door, they’re the sort of people we want to be speaking to.”
What Makes Hilti New Zealand Great Place To Work Certified™?
95% of Hilti employees in New Zealand say that they are made to feel welcome when they join the company. What else can you expect when you’re working at Hilti?
Feedback is a Gift at Hilti
It’s part of our DNA. We strongly encourage constructive feedback, and we act on it. – Mathew Gallivan, Head of Human Resources
Hilti takes employee feedback from the Trust Index survey and its internal survey seriously. 78% of employees in Hilti New Zealand say that the management recognises honest mistakes as part of doing business. Here are two instances where employee feedback was taken onboard and addressed:
- A Monday-&-Friday-meetings-only practice was set for Sales leaders to recognise their need to spend time with their field-based team members. As a result of this change, leaders were able to spend more time coaching their people and increase the number of frequent conversations, leading to more engagement and productivity.
- Based on the understanding that a handwritten card can mean a lot for an employee based in a remote location, Hilti provided all leaders with Recognition Toolkits in the shape of Hilti tool cases, to support formal and informal moments of personal and professional recognition.
Employees Entrusted to Identify Non-Inclusive Practices
87% of Hilti employees in New Zealand say that they are treated as a full member in the organisation regardless of their position. How does Hilti achieve this?
Globally, Hilti has employee-led resource groups called Own It!. Own It! stands for all employees taking ownership on a local level and bringing a sense of inclusion and belonging at Hilti a step forward, ultimately fostering equitable, inclusive and diverse workplaces. They are entrusted to identify non-inclusive practices in the business. “Every Own It! group has a road map of activity. It’s not a social group by any means. It’s a group whose job is to uncover non-inclusive or exclusive behaviours and bring the organisation together,” says Mathew.
Every Own It! group has a sponsor from the Executive Management team, who is in the driving seat to ensure the team has the right level of resources, ensuring sign-off for operational expenditures steered in the right way. Feedback from Own It! received from the ground is channelled directly through the sponsor. Giving the group a voice at the top table is very important. – Mathew Gallivan, Head of Human Resources
Mathew also emphasises it’s crucial that Own It! groups are grassroots, run independently, that can grow and evolve. “In New Zealand the HR team is not involved at all. The moment it becomes viewed as a HR instrument, it’s not going to be as viable as it should be. That’s not because my team doesn’t want to participate; you’re just more likely to get honest reflections if people feel they are empowered to make change,” Mathew explains. “It’s a partnership approach. We don’t want to dictate what the group is focusing on because then it’s not authentic in purpose.”
Mathew gave a few examples of feedback received from employees in Own It! that Hilti addressed:
- “How does Hilti ensure the way we approach candidates in the market is inclusive? We looked at the way we were advertising roles and now include Maori language. We’ve had comments and feedback from candidates that it was one of the driving factors to apply, which was always great to hear.”
- “How do female employees act in situations involving sexist behaviour at construction sites? What support can the business and team leaders give? We ran an awareness exercise and gave our customer-facing female employees the tools to interrupt such behaviours.”
In its most recent Trust Index survey, 100% of Hilti employees in New Zealand say that they are treated fairly regardless of race, affirming Hilti’s dedication to inclusive practices. Female employees also attest to the support provided to them at work – 75% say they are given the resources to do their job, and 85% say they are treated fairly regardless of gender, despite it being a male-dominated industry.
[Although] the ratio of women [can be improved], I appreciate [that] being related directly to construction we’re well above industry average. – Hilti NZ employee
Customised Professional Development
Hilti’s approach to developing its people is called MOMENT. “It’s only in the present moment where each of us can make a tangible difference – to our careers, for our customers, our team, and our company”, Mathew explains.
“One way MOMENT is practised in Hilti is through the Hilti People Review, full-day off-site bi-annual reviews where team leaders present details on their direct report’s development needs, future potential, and career plans,” Mathew says. Through this, the senior leadership team is able to add value to employees’ development journey of talents by identifying opportunities for them to grow.
“Through this process in 2024 we have been delighted to promote our people domestically and globally (including to North America, Great Britain, Singapore, and Australia) to fulfil their development needs. It is our culture of individuals owning their development which makes Hilti such a great place to work,” Mathew says. Employees also have 1-on-1 coaching sessions, with goal-setting and check-in sessions called MyContribution. 80% to 90% of all leadership roles within the business are filled internally, and Hilti’s approach to Learning and Development is centred on an in-house approach where onboarding and learning plans are created from within.
73% of Hilti employees in New Zealand say that they are given training or development opportunities:
I think it’s incredible how encouraging Hilti is with giving people the choice on how they want to develop, and then following that up with providing what’s needed to develop into our next roles. I also think getting to go and train in Singapore is such a cool experience. – Hilti NZ employee
There is a significant emphasis on the professional development of individuals within the organization. This investment in people shows Hilti’s dedication to nurturing talent and enabling growth opportunities globally. – Hilti NZ employee
What is one practical advice you would give to other companies in building a great workplace?
“The first step is knowledge. You have to deal with the elephant in the room, particularly if you need to know how people feel. They may give you raw and authentic feedback that you may not want to hear. But it’s important that you understand where your gaps are.
When you understand how people feel, you can practically begin to build from that. Let people have a voice, give people the opportunity to speak up, and respond to that. Sometimes, you feel pretty uncomfortable, and it may not be nice, but that’s how you build a culture of trust.
Think about why you want to hear from people, what you want to achieve. If it’s just a feeling that ‘we’re doing the right thing’, that’s probably not enough. People need to know what’s in it for them, how feedback is going to improve their workplace and environment, so it all starts with doing this for the right reason. If you want to improve your organisation from the ground up, there’s no better place to start,” Mathew Gallivan says.
The Trust Index survey gives us a sentiment of what’s going on. whether it’s the result that we hope for or not the result we hope for, at least it’s an honest dipstick in time. – Mathew Gallivan, Head of Human Resources.
