What Indonesia’s Homegrown Best Workplaces Do Differently

Floodwater came through Indo Kordsa’s tyre cord plant in Bogor Regency on 4 March 2025. The site was evacuated, nobody was hurt, and production did not restart until May. Then the company subsidized repairs on its employees’ flooded motorcycles.

A motorbike is how most of those 939 people get to work. Nobody had budgeted for it, but it was the fastest way to show a workforce that management understood what the water had cost them at home.

Great Place To Work surveyed 74,140 employees across Indonesia this year, representing 179,248 workers. Ask people at a typical Indonesian company whether they would get a fair hearing if treated unjustly and 57.3% say yes. At the Best Workplaces, 85.6% do. That 28.3-point gap is one of the widest in the dataset.

What do the Best Workplaces in Indonesia have in common?

Operationally, not too much. PT PLN runs electricity for 96 million customers across more than 17,000 islands with nearly 47,000 staff, and in 2025 became one of two Indonesian companies in the Fortune Global 500, at rank 469. Indonesia now places 109 companies on the regional Fortune Southeast Asia 500. Eterna Indonesia has 105 people, all remote, all working American hours. DANA moves money for more than 200 million registered users.

Their retention figures land in the same unusual place. PLN reports voluntary turnover of 0.136%, which is roughly 64 people leaving a workforce of nearly 47,000. Indo Kordsa closed 2025 at 1.43%, under its own 2% target. DANA sits between 9% and 10% against a technology benchmark it puts at 20% to 25%.

Across the list, 87.9% say they want to stay a long time, against 69.5% elsewhere. In a survey where 27% have been with their employer under two years, that gap is large.

The restructure where nobody was made redundant

At typical Indonesian companies, 56.6% of employees say management delivers on its promises. At the Best Workplaces it is 85.2%. Promises get tested when money is tight.

DANA automated a division that had run on manual work. Rather than shrink headcount to match, it put affected employees through a year of structured upskilling, with assessments before and after. Those who made the transition stayed. Those who did not moved through an internal careers fair, with one-to-one consultations from HR.

Eterna faced a US client cutting the number of contractors it took. Leadership told the whole company, not only the affected staff, so the news would not arrive through the grapevine. It loaded those employees’ resumes onto a talent platform and pushed them to other clients. Every one was repositioned.

Indo Kordsa handled its post-flood costs with voluntary retirement for people within three years of retiring. Around 100 took it, negotiated with the union and registered with the Local Manpower Office. The company froze hiring and filled 80% of vacancies internally.

Four financial squeezes, no involuntary redundancies.

Why AI training became an employee experience story

Only 35% of employees at typical Indonesian companies say they get meaningful opportunities to innovate. At high-trust workplaces it reaches 55%.

Indosat Ooredoo Hutchison links every employee, in every role, to an AI-related KPI. Its company-wide challenge drew more than 3,000 participants and produced 382 initiatives. DANA has put 86% of its people through AI Mastery, and in legal and compliance, regulatory gap analysis that once took up to 30 working days now takes two or three. PLN spent around Rp1.3 trillion on learning in 2025, about 4% of personnel costs, with 5,314 employees enrolled in masters and doctoral programs.

See the full list of 25 Best Workplaces™

The sequencing is the lesson. Each trained the whole workforce before automating anything, so people met the technology as a skill they were given rather than a threat announced at a town hall.

“Trust has become the hard currency of leadership,” says Evelyn Kwek, Managing Director of Great Place To Work ASEAN and ANZ. With 64% of the surveyed workforce aged 34 or under, the companies that get this wrong are training talent for their competitors.

The playbook, company by company

Tap a company below to see the challenge it faced, the action it took, the result, and a practical idea you can apply in your own workplace:

PT PLN · Give people permission to stop the work

What they did: Under its Beyond Safety pillar, any employee can halt an unsafe job without fear of retaliation. In East Java in 2024, a junior technician stopped transmission line maintenance in dangerous weather. The supervisor backed him and he was later named a Safety Champion.

What happened: Fatalities fell from 15 in 2023 to 6 in 2024. Trust Index sits at 92%.

Action: Name one decision your most junior person can make alone and override nobody. Then publicly reward the first person who uses it.

DANA · Retrain the division instead of cutting it

What they did: A function shifting from manual work to automation got a year of structured workshops with pre and post assessments, then an internal careers fair where other teams opened roles to anyone who did not transition.

What happened: Voluntary turnover holds at 9% to 10% against a technology benchmark of 20% to 25%. Over 60% of managerial roles are filled internally.

Action: Before signing off a restructure, cost the retraining option properly and put it in the same paper as the severance figure.

Indosat Ooredoo Hutchison · Make AI everyone’s job

What they did: Every employee, in every role, carries an AI-related KPI. Learning is tiered by mastery level, from AI Essentials for all staff to an AI Translator programme for business users.

What happened: More than 3,000 employees joined the company-wide AI challenge, producing 382 initiatives including churn prediction work the company credits with protecting revenue.

Action: Swap your voluntary AI pilot for one shared KPI. Voluntary programmes recruit the already-confident.

Indo Kordsa · Fix what the disaster broke at home

What they did: After the March 2025 flood, subsidies for repairing employees’ damaged motorcycles, first aid and cleaning supplies, rented toilets and water, replaced gym equipment, and psychological consultations that continued all year.

What happened: Voluntary turnover of 1.43% in 2025, under a 2% target, across 939 employees.

Action: List what your people would need in the first 48 hours of a local disaster, then pre-approve the spend before you need it.

Eterna Indonesia · Tell everyone, not just the affected

What they did: When a US client cut its contractor numbers, leadership briefed the whole company rather than only the people involved, then pushed those employees’ resumes to other clients until each was repositioned.

What happened: Grew from 2 clients in 2023 to 26 clients and 105 employees in 2026. Nobody lost a job in the client reduction.

Action: Write the all-staff version of your bad news first. If it cannot survive being said to everyone, the plan needs work.

What other companies can copy this quarter

Six moves other companies can learn from these homegrown heroes, each already tested by a company on this list.

Pre-approve the disaster money now

Nobody writes “repairs to flooded motorcycles” into an annual budget. Indo Kordsa did it anyway, in the weeks when the plant was still full of silt, alongside first aid supplies, rented toilets, drinking water and replaced gym equipment. The amounts were small and the decisions were quick. Write down the five things your people would need in the first 48 hours of a flood, a fire or a transport shutdown, and get the money signed off while nobody needs it. Approval is the slow part.

Price retraining in the same paper as severance

When a DANA division moved from manual work to automation, the company ran a year of structured workshops with assessments before and after, then opened an internal careers fair for anyone who did not make the shift. Most boards never see that option costed. Put both numbers side by side in the same paper and let the meeting argue about evidence.

Write the all-staff version of bad news first

Eterna could have briefed only the contractors affected by its client’s cutback. It briefed everyone, on the reasoning that the grapevine would get there first and get it wrong. If your message cannot survive being said to the whole company, the plan underneath it needs more work.

Make AI participation a floor

Indosat put an AI-related KPI on every role, which is why more than 3,000 employees entered its internal challenge. Voluntary programmes recruit the people who were already confident.

“AI literacy should be accessible to everyone. We actively equip employees across functions with AI capabilities and encourage them to evolve from AI users to AI creators.”

Putu Wisudantari Parthami, Interim Chief People Officer, DANA Indonesia, on the approach the company calls Heartware

The gap between using and creating is where the return sits. DANA’s non-engineers now build their own chatbots and reporting tools, and its legal team cut regulatory gap analysis from 30 working days to three.

Give people the authority to stop the work

PLN’s stop-work rule let a junior technician in East Java halt transmission line maintenance in dangerous weather in 2024. His supervisor backed him. He was later named a Safety Champion, and the story was circulated across the company. Fatalities fell from 15 in 2023 to 6 in 2024.

A culture that “empowers employees to take ownership of workplace safety and process and product quality” while “encouraging everyone to speak up about potential risks and opportunities for improvement.”

Salih Kahraman, President Director, PT Indo Kordsa Tbk, on Safety First, Quality Always

Name one decision your most junior person can make alone, that nobody can override. Then reward the first person who uses it, loudly.

Then check your own fair-hearing number

All five moves above rest on one belief, which is that raising a problem is safe. Only 57.3% of employees at typical Indonesian companies think they would get a fair hearing if treated unjustly. Ask your own people the same question this quarter. If the answer comes back low, start there, because nothing else on this list will hold without it.

Frequently asked questions

What makes a company one of the Best Workplaces in Indonesia?

Certification rests on what employees say, measured through the Trust Index survey, then supported by a Culture Audit describing how the company operates. The Best Workplaces in Indonesia 2026 list draws on both, and the study behind it collected 74,140 survey responses nationwide. Scores cover credibility, respect, fairness, pride and camaraderie. A generous benefits list will not carry a company through. Employees have to report that the experience holds up across roles, seniority and location.

How do Indonesian companies avoid layoffs during restructuring?

The Best Workplaces in Indonesia treat redundancy as the last option rather than the first lever. DANA retrained an automated division over a year, then moved the remainder through an internal careers fair. Eterna repositioned affected staff with other clients. Indo Kordsa used voluntary retirement agreed with its union. Redundancy stays legal and sometimes necessary. What changes the outcome is sequencing, and paying for the alternative before you rule it out.

What is a good employee turnover rate in Indonesia?

It depends heavily on sector. DANA reports 9% to 10% voluntary turnover against a technology benchmark of 20% to 25%. Indo Kordsa reports 1.43% in manufacturing. PLN reports 0.136% as a state-owned utility with long tenure. Compare yourself against your own industry rather than a national average, read the trend across two or three years, and separate voluntary from involuntary exits. A single annual figure hides almost everything worth knowing.

Why does fairness matter so much in Indonesian workplaces?

Fairness produces the sharpest gap in the 2026 data. Only 57.3% of employees at typical companies believe they would get a fair hearing if treated unjustly, against 85.6% at the Best Workplaces. Just 74.7% think promotions go to the people who deserve them. With 64% of the surveyed workforce aged 34 or under, an early experience of favouritism sends ambitious people to a competitor. Fixing it starts with publishing how promotion decisions get made.