Great Place To Work
Over the past 12 months, Great Place To Work surveyed 74,140 employees across Indonesia. Their responses represent the views of 179,248 workers nationwide, making this one of the largest employee surveys in the country. In a market shaped by rapid growth, a young workforce, and rising expectations, those voices define what working life in Indonesia looks like today. This is the new business as usual.
In this study, Best Workplaces are the companies that made Indonesia’s Best Workplaces list, based on how their people experience trust, fairness, and leadership. At these organizations, 89.1% of employees say they generally trust their workplace, compared to 71.4% at typical Indonesian companies. That gap shapes everyday life at work: whether people speak up, believe managers, and feel their work matters.
Just 35% of employees at typical Indonesian companies say they have a “great deal” of trust in their leadership. At Best Workplaces, that figure is nearly double. 85.2% of employees there say management delivers on its promises, versus 56.6% at typical companies. That difference decides whether people stay committed when circumstances get tough or quietly start looking elsewhere.
Two of the lowest-scoring statements in Indonesia point to fairness. Only 72.1% of employees at typical companies agree that managers avoid playing favorites, and just 74.7% believe promotions go to those who deserve them. In a workforce where 64% of respondents are aged 34 or under, that early sense of unfairness pushes ambitious people to build their futures somewhere else.
Only 35% of employees at typical Indonesian companies say they have meaningful opportunities to innovate, but at workplaces that invest in trust, 55% say the same. That 20-point difference is about whether people believe their ideas will go somewhere. When they do, organizations adapt faster. When they don’t, the best thinking never leaves the meeting room.
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This is Indonesia's moment. The workforce here is ambitious and increasingly engaged with their future. Job confidence is among the strongest in the region, and employees know their worth. The workplaces that made this year's list are the ones already operating under the knowledge that trust has become the hard currency of leadership.”
Evelyn Kwek
Managing Director,
Great Place To Work ASEAN & ANZ
Indonesia’s Best Workplaces data shows that fairness, credible leadership, respect, and strong team relationships function as the cultural infrastructure that makes performance, retention, and advocacy possible. The scores across each dimension tell the consistent story that trust compounds when it’s built deliberately, and erodes quickly when it’s not.
At typical Indonesian companies, only 57.3% of employees believe they’ll get a fair hearing if treated unjustly. At Best Workplaces, 85.6% do. That 28.3-point gap is one of the sharpest in the entire dataset. It tells you something important: in most Indonesian workplaces, the safety net that people need to take risks, speak up, and stay engaged just isn’t there.
Management delivers on its promises at 85.2% of Best Workplaces, compared to just 56.6% at typical companies. That is a 28.6-point gap in whether employees believe what they’re told by their leadership teams. Leaders who follow through build cultures where people commit. Leaders who don’t build cultures where people hedge, disengage, and eventually leave for somewhere they can trust.
89.4% of Best Workplace employees say they can be themselves at work. At typical Indonesian companies, that figure falls to 67.4%. When more than one in three employees feel they need to edit who they are to fit in, the organization loses something it can’t easily measure, which is the full contribution of people who are spending energy managing how they appear rather than doing their best work.
At Best Workplaces in Indonesia, 87.9% of employees say they want to work there for a long time, compared to 69.5% at typical companies. In a workforce where 27% of respondents have been with their current employer for less than two years, that gap matters enormously. Organizations that hold their people don’t just save on hiring costs, they also build institutional knowledge that competitors cannot buy.
Indonesia’s Best Workplaces are intentionally building cultures that people want to stand behind. 91.3% of employees at these organizations say they would strongly recommend their company to friends and family as a great place to work, compared to 64.7% at typical Indonesian workplaces. 93.7% of employees at Best Workplaces say they are proud to tell others where they work, while 76.7% say the same in typical companies.
Performance points in the same direction. 92% of employees at Indonesia’s Best Workplaces say people are willing to give extra effort to get the job done, compared to 75% in typical companies. The same share, 92%, say their organisation adapts quickly when change is needed, versus 75% elsewhere. In a labour market where technology, client expectations and business models shift constantly, responsiveness is becoming part of how work gets done.
Indonesia’s Best Workplaces are treating trust, pride and contribution as part of the operating system. They are investing in cultures where employees feel proud of where they work, confident recommending their employer, and clear on the difference their work makes. Over the next decade, the organizations that take those signals seriously will be the places where ambitious Indonesian workers decide to build their careers.
